Latinx in Publishing is very excited to partner with Paw Prints Publishing to bring you an exclusive excerpt from Raj Tawney’s middle grade novel, All Mixed Up (on sale October 28, 2024, National Immigrants Day). Keep reading below for an exclusive sneak peak!
A half-hour after the school day ends, Jaz and I are already rushing off the bus and toward my house. It’s an Indian summer; the sun beats down on us and sweat trickles down our necks and arms, which are covered by fall jackets. Mine, a fleece my grandma got me. His, a black I Heart NY windbreaker.
“Hey Jaz, let’s go round back,” I tell him.
He raises both thumbs into the air, then sprints across our lawn ahead of me.
I meet him in the backyard where our freshly mowed, half-acre of grass sits before the untamed woods that stretch for a good while. During the day, the woods are always exciting to enter. I imagine I’m in a jungle and exploring unknown land. But during the night, I get totally freaked out by the pitch blackness. One time during the summer, I had been roaming back there for way too long, and the sun began to set. It got dark while I was still in deep, and I got lost clawing my way out. I ended up tripping over a big, dead tree trunk and fell into a wild thorn bush. By the time I finally found my way to our back door, I was scraped up pretty bad. Mom screamed. She thought I had gotten into a fight with a raccoon and wanted to rush me to the emergency room to check for rabies. I told her what actually happened and she took me into the bathroom to dab me a hundred times with rubbing alcohol. It was my turn to scream then. The rubbing alcohol felt like a thousand bees were stinging my body. That was the first, and last time, mom let me wander in the woods without her knowing. Well, until today.
It was a good lesson for a city kid. My family had only moved from Queens when I was eight; that’s where I first learned to explore. Where there’s concrete everywhere: buildings, sidewalks, playgrounds. We didn’t have much nature in our old neighborhood. Our apartment building was part of a row of buildings that looked just like ours. When I played outside, it was mostly on a hard surface. I tripped and fell plenty on the cracks in pavement, scraping my knees too. Thorns are painful in a different way. A bigger way even.
Still, I don’t miss the city at all. Even though there were more kids with darker skin in my last school, I found it hard to make friends there, too. I learned to have my own fun without friends, camping out in my bedroom under the covers, pretending I was in the middle of a forest. It’s almost like my imagination wished for a new home because when dad got a new job, we packed up and moved to the middle of Long Island, into a house at the base of a gigantic forest. Dad tries to tell me it’s only some brush that hasn’t been built on yet but to me, it’s another world. A happy world.
When I approach him, Jaz is gazing at it all, amazed. And it makes me smile. “This is all yours?” he asks me.
“Yep,” I say proudly. “Wild, isn’t it?”
“Yes!”
Jaz and I cross over the lawn and enter the woods. We pick up twigs and sticks of all sizes, feeling each one for their weight and length. After about ten minutes, we run back to the grassy clearing, just outside of the thicket. We dump armfuls of broken branches on the ground in front of us. His pile looks a lot bigger.
“Whoa! That’s impressive.” I say excitedly.
“Thank you! I helped my father build an entire tent using what we found in the fields outside of the city. Right after we left our home.”
“You mean you lived in it, too?”
“After he lost his job, my parents couldn’t afford our old home anymore. So, we traveled a lot.” He sees I am sad for him, and he waves it away. “It is okay, Kamal. Being hungry sometimes stunk but I got used to the rumble down there.”
My dad recently lost his job too but we’re still in our house somehow, and our refrigerator remains full of food. I can’t help but wonder if we may end up like Jaz and his family, homeless and hungry. I try to put my own fears out of my mind. It’s not the right time to tell him about my family’s problems. I want him to have a place to unload—his sticks and his feelings.
“What about school?”
“I missed a few months. After that, we ended up here.”
“How?”
“On a boat and stuff. . .” He is no longer looking at me. I’m afraid I’ve upset him. But then, he grabs for a particularly long, gnarly twig. “Hey, look! This stick is also a wand! Ta-da! I’m Harry Potter and you are Ron Weasley!”
Jaz separates his feet into a wide stance, holding out the stick as if he has some incredible power. For a second, I almost believe he is about to perform real magic in front of me, this kid who has known what it’s like to wander, to go hungry, to make fire. I’m also impressed that he knows who Harry Potter is. I quickly grab a stick too and mirror his stance. We raise our wands high, and hoot and holler until we collapse to the ground, laughing so hard our stomachs hurt.
We’re lying down, gazing at the clouds and trees. Then, we’re sitting up, staring into the woods.
“Lions and bears! Oh my!” He’s gotten the quote from the Wizard of Oz wrong but it’s okay. We just laugh and laugh. Lions and bears. Really, our woods are full of squirrels and raccoons that like to pick through our garbage cans for leftovers. Still, I love nature. I keep the TV on Animal Planet when I’m home because I’m just so curious about different creatures. From lions to wolves to elephants, they all seem to do similar things: hunt, play, clean, sleep, and look out for their family. And the ones who eat other animals never kill more than what they need. Humans don’t seem to do that. “They all live in harmony,” Mom likes to remind me whenever she sees me glued to the screen, watching something about the rainforest or the ocean. “They’re all mixed up,” I agree.
Excerpted from All Mixed Up, copyright © 2024 by Raj Tawney, provided by Paw Prints Publishing.
Raj Tawney is a writer and journalist whose work largely reflects his multiracial American upbringing. Born to an Indian, Puerto Rican, and Italian American family, Tawney has explored his identity and family history through personal essays published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and other outlets throughout the country. His debut memoir Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey Through a Mixed American Experience (Empire State Editions/Fordham University Press) has received critical acclaim and was recently awarded the Bronze Medal at the 2024 Living Now Book Award for Inspirational Memoir. His Middle Grade novel All Mixed Up (Paw Prints Publishing/Baker & Taylor) is already receiving praise before its pub date on October 28, 2024, National Immigrants Day.
