Author Interview: ‘Abuelita’s Gift: A Día de Muertos Story’ by Mariana Ríos Ramírez

In the opening of Abuelita’s Gift: A Día de Muertos Story, a young girl named Julieta peeks inside a box containing skeletons and the traditional Mexican decorative craft known as papel picado.

She asks her family if Abuelita is really coming home. “Yes!” her mother replies. “Our ancestors’ souls will visit us on Día de Muertos.”

Excited by the plan to honor her late grandmother, Julieta sets out on a personal quest to find a special gift to offer on the traditional Mexican holiday. It’s important for her to find a gift that would make Abuelita smile, and demonstrate how much she is missed.

In Mariana Ríos Ramírez’s new picture book (out now from Knopf Books for Young Readers), the Mexican author brings readers a beautiful and open-hearted story about the deep and never-ending love between a child and her grandmother. As Julieta struggles to find the best gift, she recalls memories she shared with Abuelita: of her grandmother’s hands lacing flowers into crowns, for example. Illustrations by Mexican award-winning illustrator Sara Palacios add tremendous warmth to a book that is mostly joyful because it’s about love and connection between generations.

And when Julieta finds the special gift, she learns that it’s much deeper than a tangible object. It’s what’s embedded within.

Ríos Ramírez recently spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind Abuelita’s Gift (also out in Spanish as El regalo de abuelita), her personal ties to Día de Muertos, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Abuelita’s Gift: A Día de Muertos Story. I know you’re from Mexico and now live in the U.S. Growing up in Mexico, what was your relationship to Día de Muertos?

Mariana Ríos Ramírez (MRR): I grew up in Mexico, and Día de Muertos was always in my life, but not in my home. My parents are from Chihuahua, in the north of Mexico, and they didn’t grow up with the tradition because it is not as strong in the north as it is in the center or the south. We moved to Toluca when I was six, so in school we would set up ofrendas and exchange calaveritas with our classmates. There are also these poems called calaveritas that I remember we had to write as assignments. So it was in my life like that, but at home we didn’t set up ofrendas. I remember my parents would take me to this Día de Muertos market in Toluca called Feria del Alfeñique. It’s really famous during the month of October. I went there several times; you can buy skeletons, calaveritas, and candies. It’s very traditional and something to do about Día de Muertos.

When I came to live in the US, I wanted my kids to have a connection to Mexico and to our family. Right now we are the only ones here. (At the time) my son was five and my daughter was two – and suddenly there was this language barrier for them. They were missing home, missing family, so Día de Muertos allowed us to have an activity to do together. It was a celebration to set up the ofrenda, to talk about our ancestors, and to talk about our grandparents that my kids didn’t get to know. It became something that we started doing every year, that we all loved. Sharing about family is something that I really liked. I thought that the tradition was beautiful, and I wanted to share it with other children. So that’s why I ended up writing the book. It’s been an honor, truly, to be able to share that part of my culture through the book.

AC: Your story follows a young girl named Julieta as she struggles to find the best way to honor her late abuelita on the holiday. How did you create this character?

MRR: When I started drafting this story, at first it was nonfiction because it was more about explaining the elements of an ofrenda. My critique partners were like, ‘Well, it’s interesting, but there’s not a story.’ There was no character arc or anything. It was more like a description of the tradition. That made me think, so I changed it, which took me a while because I was learning how to write picture books at the time. This was one of my first drafts. So for a time, I couldn’t make it work. I put it aside. I wrote other things. And I came back to it because I really liked it. 

My grandma was still alive when I was working on this story. And as I said, living here (in the US) and far away from my kids’ grandparents also had to do with it. Because those are the feelings of longing – of missing. And even though my grandmother was alive back then, the feelings of my children missing their grandparents in Mexico were there. Since I was writing a book for kids, I put those feelings in Julieta. And given that the book is about Día de Muertos, it made sense to come up with an Abuelita who was going to be the relative that Julieta missed, because I think that it’s the closest relative sometimes for children that are older.

Julieta has the name of my grandma. And a lot of parts of the story have to do with my own memories. Many characters have the names of my uncles or my grandfather. So there are a lot of things that are very personal in the book.

AC: One thing I loved about your story is how you teach readers about the holiday. For example, readers learn about the setting up of an ofrenda. As you wrote this story, what did you envision showing readers about the holiday?

MRR: As you mentioned, the readers can see how this family specifically is celebrating Día de Muertos. I also felt that it was going to be in the background, because the main plot is Julieta looking for the gift. But as we follow her, she is remembering. And that’s so crucial of Día de Muertos: remembering those moments that you had together with your loved ones. That’s actually how Julieta is trying to find the inspiration for the right gift, by going back to those moments of connection and love with Abuelita. I think Sara Palacios did a great job of showing that, because that’s what built their relationship. That’s how we get to understand that pain and that love that Julieta is feeling because of Abuelita’s death. 

I wanted to show, but I didn’t explain, Why the ofrenda? What does it mean? How do we celebrate in Mexico? So I am showing it through the illustrations and as the story progresses, and that’s why it was very important for me to have an author’s note. It was crucial to have an opportunity to talk more in depth about the holiday, and how there’s not just one way to celebrate it. In different regions of Mexico, families do different things. Ofrendas look different from one state to another. 

For me it was important to clarify that, and also to say that not everybody that lives in Mexico celebrates Día de Muertos. Not everybody celebrates in the same way. Not everybody believes that our loved ones come to visit for the night. So there are many things that are very specific, and I am so grateful that I was able to go into more detail in the author’s note. And also in the last spread, with the ofrenda diagram that tells the readers what the meaning is of everything that we put in the ofrenda. I think that’s just beautiful, knowing that everything has a meaning and a symbolism because this is a pre-Hispanic tradition that has lasted for generations to our times. I feel so grateful that I was able to do that without being too didactic as I told the story.

“....And that’s so crucial of Día de Muertos: remembering those moments that you had together with your loved ones”

AC: The heart of this story, to me, is about the deep connection we have with our loved ones, especially those who have passed on. And how it’s possible and a great thing to still honor them. What is the heart of the story to you, as the author?

MRR: For me, the heart is Julieta realizing that the love with Abuelita never ends. That she can be connected with her. And for readers, too. It’s important to me that we can all still feel that love and connection with our loved ones – even if they are not physically around us – if we hold onto the memories and if we hold onto sharing their stories. For that, we need to know them first. But if we can do that, then that’s the way that people really live on. 

That’s why, for me, it was important to start celebrating Día de Muertos with my children, so that the people I love will live on through them in their stories.That they can talk about my mom or my grandma later with their kids, even if they didn’t get to know my grandma. I think that’s what’s beautiful about this celebration; to honor family and love and those connections, knowing that they never end. So I think it’s very hopeful.

AC: The book was illustrated by Sara Palacios, who is also Mexican and has illustrated many children’s books. What do you think her illustrations add to Julieta’s story?

MRR: Sara is super talented, and I am very grateful and I feel so lucky that she was part of the team. The fact that she’s Mexican made it easier. I remember at the beginning, I had a lot of illustration notes. When she came to the project, they were no longer needed because she understands the tradition. 

I remember my editor told me that she considered Sara to be really good at showing sadness and at showing joy. And that’s exactly what this book is about. It’s about finding the joy in honoring those that have passed away and that left a hole in our hearts. And she does a great job. I don’t know about you, but I tear up looking at the illustrations. She is just great. I think that she added a lot of warmth, a lot of emotion, and even more heart to the story than what the text had already.

AC: There’s a scene in the book where you write that Julieta’s eyes teared up as another memory came to mind. And the image is of Julieta placing flowers on her abuelita’s casket. It was perhaps the most somber moment in the book, because the story really begins with a child's excitement to honor her abuela. Why was it important for you to include that scene?

MRR: Día de Muertos Muertos is a holiday that celebrates the lives of our ancestors, but of course we’re celebrating them because they are no longer here and have passed away. And when someone we love passes away, that hurts. For me, it was important for children to understand that Abuelita had died, because I am sure that many of them have gone through something like that. It is important that they know that death is part of life, and that it hurts and changes our lives. In this case, Julieta stopped dancing for a while when she lost Abuelita. But (I hoped) that children also understand that with time, if you hold on to those memories and those good times, then you’re going to be fine. You’re going to find a way to still feel that love around you. 

So for me, it was important that they also know that death exists, that it’s real, that it’s part of life, and that it hurts. And that they can see the character go through that. I am sure that children that are going through hard moments like that can relate. But as you say, it’s something that is shown in the illustration. I think that the way in which the book presents it is somber, but you also didn’t need more words. The illustration is enough, and then showing on the other side how Julieta is feeling and how that impacted her life.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Abuelita’s Gift?

MRR: I hope that they get curious about their own family and ancestors. That they ask questions to their parents and grandparents about the past, so that they can better understand where they come from and can later tell their stories. What we discussed about how the love of family never ends, that’s something that I hope they can hold onto. For when the time comes, they might need it. 

And finally, just like Julieta, I hope they learn that the best gifts truly come from the heart. When that happens, it is a gift not only for the person that is receiving it, in the case of Abuelita, but also for the giver, like Julieta – who found the gift that is for Abuelita and herself. 

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Mariana Ríos Ramírez is a Mexican author living in Anderson, South Carolina. She worked as a high school teacher and co-owned an online business before discovering her passion for writing. Mariana is a member of SCBWI, Storyteller Academy, Rate your Story, and Las Musas.

Sara Palacios was the recipient of the 2012 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Award for her work on Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match. A native of Mexico, Sara graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City and went on to earn BFA and MFA degrees in illustration from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She illustrates for companies in both the United States and Mexico.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Q&A: ‘Libertad’ by Bessie Flores Zaldívar

Bessie Flores Zaldívar immediately places the readers in Libertad’s setting with the opening lines: “This fucking city,” and traps us in an overcrowded car along with the characters. The night is hot and loud, and Libertad and her friends have a party to go to. However, they are stopped by a cop and must bribe him if they don’t want to end up in jail. Libi, as her loved ones call her, is stuck under the pressure of her best friend Camila’s weight and vanilla smell as they wait for the driver to deal with the corrupted officer. 

They finally arrive at La Esquina, the bar where Libi and her friends usually go despite being underage, and the party begins. They dance and drink for hours, and suddenly Libertad and Camila can’t find the rest of the group in the crowd. When two older men try to dance with them, Camila pulls her friend inside the bathroom. Libertad’s mind is all over the place because she is drunk, but she comes back to the present when Camila’s lips touch hers. As the kiss intensifies, outside is Maynor, Libi’s older brother, looking for her desperately. The cops are in La Esquina looking for minors. When he gets to the bathroom door and interrupts the two best friends, will Libi be relieved that Maynor found them before the cops? Or will she wish he never knocked? 

In the prologue of their novel, Flores Zaldívar lets us know Libertad is about two things that are, as the author says, “inextricable from each other”: queerness and Honduras. They place us right next to Libi and we follow along as she discovers key things about herself and her country. The readers accompany Libertad through a year of growth where she must face hardships no 17-year-old should, but many do—especially queer Latin-American youth. 

Libertad inevitably becomes important to the reader and everything she experiences—Honduras’s hot summers, siblings love, mother-daughter arguments, grief, injustice—feels tangible. Each chapter is a page-turner, and readers eagerly follow Libi’s both painful and healing journey. 

Flores Zaldívar spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the process of writing Libertad.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Roxanna Cardenas Colmenares (RCC): Congratulations on your debut novel Libertad, Bessie! With your book being about growth and overcoming adversity, can you tell me about yourself in your early twenties writing this story? Did younger Bessie ever imagine this moment you are experiencing now?

Bessie Flores Zaldívar (BFZ): I started writing this novel in my second year of college when I was 20. I wrote a lot of it but only used the first three chapters to apply to the MFA, and this was my thesis at the end of it. When I finished the first full draft, I was 24 years old. Toni Morrison said that she wrote her first novel because she wanted to read a book like that and couldn’t find it anywhere. I think that is very much so why I wrote Libertad because I wanted to read a queer YA novel about a Honduran person, and I wanted it to engage with the political context. I also really wanted to see a family like mine depicted, and the family in this book is almost exactly like mine. So, this was the book I needed to write before anything else. In some ways that made it very easy, but in others, that made it very hard. Still, the book came to me very gracefully, like a gift. 

RCC: As an older sister, one of my favorite things about this book was the relationship between Libertad and her brothers. The bond between her and Maynor is key to this story, and you write it from the perspective of a younger sibling despite you being the oldest one in your family. Why did you choose to write from the point of view of a middle child and how did your own experience as an oldest sibling help you write this dynamic between Libi, Maynor, and Alberto? 

BFZ: Great question! The plot reason Libertad is a middle child is that I needed Maynor to be a student activist, and for that to be true, he needed to be of college age, which means he had to be older than Libi. Beyond that, queer young adults felt to me like a good place to grieve. I was telling my siblings that, as a queer person, when I came out in high school, I was the only person who was out, so a lot of it was that I wanted to reimagine what my youth could’ve been like if I had an older sibling, how that could’ve changed things for me. 

I love being an older sibling. I feel truly so lucky and blessed, but I also have always wondered what that could have been like for me, having someone who I really trusted and looked up to tell me it would be okay. How braver would I have been? I think that was key to my decision. Also, a lot of the grief depicted in the book comes from the things Maynor knows that Libertad doesn’t get to know and that we get to see from the chapters that I wrote from his perspective. 

Writing the dynamic was probably the easiest part. I would say it is a direct replica of the one I have with my siblings. 

RCC: Honduras is another character in this story. The book can’t exist without Honduras in the background. Tell me how it was to recall the quirks and corners of your home country while writing Libertad, especially from outside of it. 

BFZ: It was like being haunted. Especially because I was writing a Honduras I remembered living in but that wasn’t there anymore, and when I got to go home, things were different. La Esquina, the bar in the first three chapters, is the same one I would go to when I was in high school, and now it’s a Puerto Rican restaurant. It felt like I was trying to remember something that had become a ghost because my country is changing and there is nothing I can do about that since I’m the one who left. I’m the one who remembers it differently. In some ways, it was really pleasurable to process that grief of Honduras never being mine in the same way that it was before I left… I love Honduras, and what “Honduras” means to me is the people who live in that land. 

RCC: Your book also depicts the experience of closeted queers and, more specifically, the consequences of being outed. At the same time, the story takes place in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, an environment that was especially dangerous to queer youth at the time. How was it for you to write those painful moments Libertad had to face regarding her sexuality? What did you wish to tell young queer people with them, to both those who live in settings like Libi does and those who don’t? 

BFZ: I’ve been thinking about that a little bit because I knew I was queer pretty much as soon as I knew who I was, as soon as I understood myself, and I never really felt shame about it, even though I did grow up in such a homophobic country and society…When people come out, moms tend to say things like: “Your life is going to be hard,” which is what my mom said to me, along with “I don’t want your life to be harder than it needs to be. We already live in this country, you’re already a woman in this country. Why does it have to be any harder?” I never had a good answer for that until maybe two weeks ago. I realized that what I wanted to say in response was that my life would be harder, but I was raised by two very strong women. I saw my mom survive the same stuff Libertad’s mom did, so how could I not be strong enough to face what was coming? And I have been. 

A friend told me that when we ask God–or whatever we believe in–She doesn’t give us a little bottle of “Liquid Bravery;” you are just put in a situation where you can choose to be brave. That is what I wanted to put across to young readers, that being brave is just deciding to be so. I know there are issues to consider, such as safety, and the United States is not immune to this, but I now feel like the novel helped me find an answer to that moment in my life. Yes, my life will be harder, and I’ll have to be strong because it is more important to live my life authentically than to make it easier by shrinking myself. I’m so queer, so out, so happy… It was worth it. How could it not be? 

“I saw my mom survive the same stuff Libertad’s mom did, so how could I not be strong enough to face what was coming?”

RCC: You made interesting choices in your novel like having little sections with a change of the narrator’s point of view that added more details to the story beyond Libertad’s awareness, yet the most notorious one for me was the use of Spanish throughout the novel, more specifically when it comes to Libertad’s poems. Why did you choose to keep her poetry in Spanish and add the translations to the back of the book?

BFZ: You are going to love this. It almost sounds made up, but all the poems in the book were written in Spanish by me and my brother. They were written before the book was. Those are old poems that we wrote when I was 19, which means that [my brother] was 17. We wrote them together as those specific moments in time [mentioned in LIBERTAD] were happening, and I just copied and pasted them into the book–I might have edited them a little bit. Therefore, I made that choice because the poems were written before the book, and it didn’t feel good to translate them… Ultimately, I think I just kept them in Spanish and the way they are because I wanted Emo, my brother, to get to read his work in my book. A lot of it is his and not mine, more rhymes are his than mine, and in many ways this book is a love letter to my brother and sister. 

RCC: In the same topic of choices, you could have chosen to tell a story focusing either on queerness or Honduran politics, but instead, you connected the two. Why was the depiction of this correlation so important? 

BFZ: The best answer for that is that I didn’t get to choose what affected me. I had to be affected by Honduran politics and be queer at the same time. They are also inextricable from each other. When the coup happened in 2009, I was twelve, and power got cut and there was all this military presence in the country, and we couldn’t go to school. I didn’t understand what was going on. Years later, when I was investigating it, I found out that a lot of people were killed that night, especially queer people, and what was found on the scene were military bullets that civilians don’t have access to… It wasn’t reported on the news. We’re talking about queer sex workers who got killed that night. I already knew the state wasn’t interested in protecting my livelihood as a person, but [this discovery] made me feel aware of how my queerness made me especially vulnerable to that truth. 

RCC: One more choice you made that I’m very curious about is your author’s letter at the end of the book. Why did you decide to write it? 

BFZ: I love that you’re asking me about this!... I didn’t want a book that gave a very simplistic answer about Honduran politics, and I don’t think the book does. But in my author’s note, I wanted to acknowledge that my reality is very different from Libertad’s now. I got to grow up, move somewhere else, and I know what being openly queer feels like, which she doesn’t. Also, there has been a change in power in Honduras since the end of that book… We had this historic election with the most participation ever, we elected the first woman president, and she’s from the left, but the next day, people still lived in the same conditions. One year later, people are still living in the same conditions. I really wanted to tell the reader that history did move past this, and it has meant something, but it also has meant nothing in other ways. The things that are true at the end of the book are still true today.

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Born in 1997 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Bessie Flores Zaldívar is a writer and professor of fiction. They’re currently based in the New Haven area. Libertad is Bessie’s debut novel.

Roxanna Cardenas Colmenares is a Venezuelan writer living in New York City who loves to consume, study, and create art. She explores multiple genres in her writing, with a special interest in horror and sci-fi, while working on her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration. 

Her work has made her a two-time recipient of the James Tolan Student Writing Award for her critical essays analyzing movies. She has also won The Henry Roth Award in Fiction, The Esther Unger Poetry Prize, and The Allan Danzig Memorial Award in Victorian Literature.

In her free time, she likes to watch movies, dance, and draw doodles that she hopes to be brave enough to share one day.

Author Q&A: ‘Pencil & Eraser: We Have a Dull-Emma!’ by Jenny Alvarado

It’s the start of a new school year, and Pencil and Eraser face their first big dilemma. Pencil is dull. As in, her point is the opposite of sharp.

Pencil, who almost always exudes joy, panics. 

“What should I do?” she asks Eraser, a stout white-and-pink curmudgeon. 

“Sharpen up,” Eraser says.

“That is a great idea!” Pencil shouts, picking up Eraser for a hug.

So begins Pencil & Eraser: We Have a Dull-Emma! – the first book in a new early-reader graphic novel series by Jenny Alvarado. Out now from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, this imaginative story is equal parts hilarious and endearing as readers join Pencil and Eraser on an epic adventure to find a sharpener. The author-illustrator threads in joke breaks in between some chapters for additional laughs. A special touch comes at the end, with tutorials from Alvarado on how young readers can draw Pencil and Eraser themselves.

The second book in the series – Pencil & Eraser: Lost and Frown! – is slated to release next year.

Latinx in Publishing spoke with Alvarado about how this series came to be, developing her memorable characters, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo: Congratulations on Pencil & Eraser: We Have a Dull-Emma! What inspired this book?

Jenny Alvarado (JA): It started off as a picture book idea – completely different from what it is now. I had this idea of a very mean eraser that would erase everybody’s writing. And then it slowly transformed into an early reader (book). He’s still not nice, but he’s not as mean as he was in the picture book idea that I had. And he needed a character that would pretty much be the opposite of him, which became Pencil. She’s super joyful and exuberant.

AC: Now that you have the first book out from this series, do you look at your pencils and erasers the same?

JA: Oh no, they’re very different now. [Laughs] I was looking at the initial sketches of when I had the picture book idea, and even their design has changed completely. Their personalities, their design, everything changed from the initial idea.

“I had this idea of a very mean eraser that would erase everybody’s writing. And then it slowly transformed into an early reader (book). He’s still not nice, but he’s not as mean as he was in the picture book idea that I had.”

AC: Your book centers on Pencil, who loves thrills and is super optimistic. And then there’s Eraser, who is a big grump and a curmudgeon. Can you talk about the development of these characters?

JA: I usually start out with a drawing. That’s how I get most of my ideas. I think of the character first, and then I build the world around them. Obviously their world is school, for the most part. I see what I feel they’re like when I draw them.

AC: I love the humor in this book. Your characters are an entertaining pair, and you have these joke breaks in between a few of the chapters, which are punny. As the author and illustrator, what role did you want humor to play in this book – and in the overall series?

JA: I wanted it to be the main component. I love funny. I want most of my books to be funny and humorous. And I’m obsessed with puns. I don’t know if that came across but, yes, I love puns. I love doing drawings of puns, like vegetable puns and all sorts of things.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Pencil & Eraser: We Have a Dull-Emma?

JA: I hope they enjoy it. I hope it’s fun. There’s not really a huge message in it, except for sticking with your friend. I just hope they enjoy it – that they laugh and enjoy the jokes. I’ve been getting some parents tell me that their kids have been drawing Pencil and Eraser because there’s a little how-to-draw (exercise) at the end. I love seeing all their drawings.

AC: Why doesn’t Pencil have her own eraser?

JA: [Laughs] Because she needs her Eraser. If she had an eraser, then she won’t need Eraser. 

AC: [Laughs] That’s so funny.

JA: When I think of her, I think of those little lottery pencils that don’t have an eraser at the end.

AC: That is really funny, because I actually just realized she’s not like a regular school pencil, because she would have the eraser on her bottom. Well, you know what? In that case, I’m really glad she has Eraser in her life. [Laughs] I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me about your book.

JA: I really appreciate chatting with you.

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Jenny Alvarado is an author and illustrator of books for kids. She lives in Palm Bay, Florida with her family and little pup. As far as she knows, her real life pencil and eraser don’t go on adventures but she likes to imagine that they do. You can find more of her work at www.JennyAbooks.com or follow her @JennyAbooks on social.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Q&A: 'Tamales for Christmas' by Stephen Briseño and Illustrated by Sonia Sánchez

In the forthcoming picture book, Tamales For Christmas, a grandmother begins preparing long before the Christmas tree is decorated. She stands before her kitchen sink – her gray hair pulled back into a bun, her blue apron on. She’s ready to begin her labor of love.

“Her kitchen is the heartbeat of our familia, loud and cramped and perfumed with delicious smells,” writes author Stephen Briseño. “With so many children and grandchildren, she finds a way to fill the space underneath the tree: sell as many tamales as she can before Christmas.”

Based on the true story of Briseño’s late grandmother, Tamales For Christmas is a beautiful picture book that recognizes a grandmother’s boundless heart for not only her family, but those in need. With masa in one hand, corn husks in the other, Grandma works tirelessly to make tamales. The number of her delicious tamales grows from 15 dozen, to 60 dozen and beyond. As the holiday season marches on, Grandma continues making tamales – enlisting the help of others in her family to help with preparing and selling them. 

Briseño, whose debut picture book The Notebook Keeper won a Pura Belpré Author Honor Award, brings us another memorable story with tender and artfully-placed refrains that young readers will love. The illustrations from award-winning illustrator Sonia Sánchez, rendered digitally with handmade brushes and textures, add a deep warmth to Briseño’s text. Grandma’s kitchen itself is its own world, with a tiled backsplash and colorful plates – and crowded with energetic grandchildren. Readers are also brought into the visual joy that are parts of the tamale-making process.

Briseño spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind Tamales For Christmas (out on Oct. 8 from Random House Studio), the communal effort behind making tamales, and more. Tamales for Navidad, a Spanish version translated by Maria Correa, will also be released simultaneously. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo: Congratulations on your new picture book, Tamales For Christmas. I understand it is based on a true story, of your own grandmother. Can you tell us more about her?

Stephen Briseño (SB): My grandma, Rebecca Cano, was such a force of a woman. She didn’t finish middle school and worked really hard in every regard. She had nine children, and so she knew how to make a meal and stretch a dollar. She was always looking for ways to bless people. She was just a kind-hearted soul.

What stands out to me the most is she was a gifted storyteller. She would just have people leaning in around the kitchen table at all of our family events. Everyone would just be enraptured by her story, whether it was something serious, or chisme. She would have us rolling in laughter. I also remember her laugh. It was just this loud, full-bellied, unbridled laugh that you could hear down the street. She was just an amazing woman.

AC: You dedicated the book to her. What was it like to work on this book with your grandma in mind?

SB: She passed away years ago. Everyone still talks about her as if she was still here – like she’s never really gone. When the idea first came up [for Tamales for Christmas], it was going to be about a kid learning to make tamales from his grandma. A very generic story, but honoring that tradition in my family. I included her in the author’s note, and my agent sent it to my editor. And my editor was like, ‘This is a good story. It’s fine, but I want this story about your grandma making 1,000 tamales.’

It was wonderful, because I called my mom, several of my aunts and uncles, and was like, ‘Tell me about her… What was it like from your perspective? What do you miss about her?’... I got to hear stories that I hadn’t heard before about my grandma, that made her an even fuller person in my mind. It was a unique, fulfilling process to write this story.

AC: In your book, the main character’s grandma is a true hustler – making tamales so that she would be able to get her family gifts. The number of tamales she makes throughout the story grows and grows. It’s truly remarkable. It made me think about how much one person’s hands and hard work can produce, and the joy one person can spread. Is that something you thought of as you were piecing together this story?

SB: Yes. I remember this year that she made them, because I was a part of the process. I think I was 12 or 13, and I remember thinking even at that time, Man, this is a lot. I would see the number of tamales in her freezer just grow and grow and grow. And then every now and then the freezer would be cleared out, and then refilled back up again. Because people would buy them, and then she’d make more. 

As I was writing it, part of the craziness of this story is just the sheer number [of tamales]. And so I thought that the device of seeing that number grow and grow, and having that refrain of it, is just fun.

“It was wonderful, because I called my mom, several of my aunts and uncles, and was like, ‘Tell me about her… What was it like from your perspective? What do you miss about her?’... I got to hear stories that I hadn’t heard before about my grandma, that made her an even fuller person in my mind. It was a unique, fulfilling process to write this story.”

AC: Something I loved about this story is that Grandma’s labor of making tamales is really a family endeavor. The main character watches as Dad loads up the cooler with tamales and sells them to coworkers and friends. At Halloween, Grandpa helps give out candy while she works on the tamales. And when winter arrives, the other women in the family help by seasoning the meat, melting the lard, and more. Why was it important for you to place the hands of others into this story, on the page?

SB: That’s who my grandmother was. It was never like, I’m going to take this burden on, on my own. She was so welcoming and warm, and her house was always open. Her kitchen was always open. She was a member of a community, and because of that, she was open-handed. 

I remember so vividly seeing people make tamales with her, whether they were her own sisters or my mom and tías. It was this community effort. I feel like in Mexican American society, at least, and others in Latinx society, it’s not about the individual. It’s about the family. It’s about the community that you’re surrounded by. That’s what makes life so exciting and so rich. That’s who she was, and so I really wanted to highlight that process. 

My dad was a postal worker, and so he would get up early. I remember being in the car with him, sleepy-eyed and barely awake, before he dropped me off at school. He’d pull up to my grandma’s house and fill up his cooler [with tamales], just like in the book. She would have steamed them, so they would still be hot. I remember opening the cooler and watching all the steam pour out. He would go to his co-workers and set up in the front, and they’d all come by him. And then he’d take me to school. Yes, it was my grandma’s work, but she involved so many of us in it. It’s part of what makes the memory so rich in my mind.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Tamales for Christmas?

SB: A part of it is kind of a selfish reason. I want readers to know about my grandma. On paper, she was a mom, a grandma… She was so much more than that. She was such a powerful, wonderful, amazing woman. And the fact that readers will get to know her, and she’ll get to live on beyond my family, is such a thrill for me. 

I also hope readers see and think about: Who in my family or in my life is doing this type of work? Whether it’s food making or not. And how can I be a part of it? Can I find someone like Grandma Cano, who can show me the ropes and show me the ways to be a positive force in the community?

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Stephen Briseño is the author of The Notebook Keeper, which received the Pura Belpre Author Honor Award. He has taught middle school English for 15 years, and writes, reads, and drinks a ton of coffee with his wife and daughter in San Antonio, TX.

Sonia Sánchez paints with both traditional and digital brushes using layers of texture in her work to evoke emotion and movement. Her debut picture book, Here I Am, received two starred reviews and was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category of Best Painter interior art. She is also the illustrator of Evelyn Del Rey is Moving Away by Meg Medina, the 2020 Jumpstart Read for the Record Selection. Sonia’s art has been selected for the prestigious Society of Illustrators Original Art Show three times. She lives with her husband, son, and a sleepyhead cat in a blue house near the Mediterranean Sea.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Q&A: ‘Pockets of Love’ by Yamile Saied Méndez

Yamile Saied Méndez’s forthcoming picture book, Pockets of Love, begins with a flood of memories. “Grandma Monona used to visit her children and grandchildren all over the world. She would bring special candy, a new recipe or two, but most of all her laughter and love.”

Sebi and Star, the book’s young protagonists, are keenly aware that things are different now. Their maternal grandmother isn’t coming to visit them for Mami’s birthday. Méndez writes, “Heaven is just too far away.”

But the brother-sister duo are determined to cheer up their mother. They try different things like bringing Mami breakfast in bed, and flowers. Then, when she leaves for work, the siblings devise a plan. They’re going to make empanadas just like Monona used to. 

But there’s one problem. They don’t know the secret ingredient in Monona’s recipe.

Will Star and Sebi be able to lift their Mami’s spirits on her special day, the way Monona did? And what is this secretive special ingredient?

Pockets of Love is a heartfelt story about the ways in which we express affection to our loved ones, and the ways in which we carry on the legacy of our departed. Illustrator Sara Palacios adds extra warmth and heart to the story with her signature style of expressive and diverse characters. There’s also incredible detail into the different “pockets of love,” among them egg rolls, tamales, dumplings, and more.

Writers Mentorship Program mentee Amaris Castillo sat down with Méndez, her 2023 middle grade mentor, to discuss Pockets of Love – out on Sept. 3 from HarperCollins.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Pockets of Love. What inspired you to write this story?

Yamile Saied Méndez (YSM): I was in the grandparents mode when I was writing it, because What Will You Be? had just come out. I was talking to my brother about some recipes my mom used to make that we thought she had never written down. We learned them by standing next to her while she was cooking. And so I just had this idea.

I’ve had Star and Sebi, my two siblings (in the book), as little characters in my mind for a long, long time – but I didn’t have a story for them. Then everything kind of fell together like a puzzle. I thought about empanadas, because they’re one of my favorite things to make and that my mom used to make. It’s one of those magical things where I had the characters, I had a premise. I was missing my mom. And then in the meantime, we’d also lost another grandma – my husband’s mom – and so all these things were fresh in my mind. And the story just came together. 

I was also reading reports about how many people we’ve lost during the pandemic, and that one in five children had lost a loved one that they lived with, or somebody from their immediate family. I was thinking about these children and how they were coping and processing the loss of a loved one.

AC: Your story follows Star and Sebi, siblings who decide to make their Grandma Monona’s empanadas for their mami’s birthday. You write that their abuela is in heaven. Obviously death is a delicate subject. Can you talk about your approach on the page for young readers?

YSM: It is a very complicated subject because it’s not fun. This is part of life and it’s something that we need to talk about with our children, whether they’ve experienced the loss of a pet hamster or a beloved cat or a dog. When it comes to a beloved family member, those can make for very difficult conversations. But at the same time, I believe that we need to be open so that our children can process these losses in a safe and loving environment. 

I’m hoping that reading my book will bring families together, and open the door for these conversations in a way that each family can fill in the blanks for what they believe is next. Whether they’re religious or not, I hope that the story will, again, give families the space and opportunity for these loving conversations… We all have different beliefs. But at least one thing we can all agree on is that, even if we don’t know what happens next, we know what happened while we shared that time together with our loved ones in this life. And we can go back and reminisce on those times, and not forget them.

AC: Star and Sebi worry about not knowing their grandma’s secret ingredient. I felt like that was deeply resonant; many families have relatives who keep certain ingredients closely guarded, or whose measurements are vague and, instead, instinctual. There was also this innocence you capture when children place so much emphasis on something. In Star and Sebi’s eyes, what is at stake if they don’t get the ingredients right?

YSM: They just want to make their mom feel special on her birthday. Since making food was the way that the grandma made their mom feel special, they’re just scared that their mom won’t have a special day because she’s missing the grandma’s empanadas. 

I think that’s a way that children show love, and that they care. Even when they’re little. The stakes are super high because, when you’re a little child and you’re scared that you’re not going to have those answers like what the special ingredient is, it makes for a very stressful situation. But when they learn that the special ingredient is love – and they do love their mom – that’s something that they can give. Even if it was a different kind of love from Monona, they do love their mom and, again, that’s an ingredient that they do have in their power to share.

“I’m hoping that reading my book will bring families together, and open the door for these conversations in a way that each family can fill in the blanks for what they believe is next. Whether they’re religious or not, I hope that the story will, again, give families the space and opportunity for these loving conversations…”

AC: In the book, Star learns what pockets of love are, and how every country has its own version of them. Why was it important for you to highlight that?

YSM: Because I wanted to make the story accessible for children that are not Latine, also. We call them empanadas, but it is true that versions of these little savory or sweet turnovers exist in pretty much every culture. I wanted to open the book for people that are not from my background, to also feel seen in the story.

AC: You dedicate this book to your late parents, and I saw in your author’s note you mention your mom’s famous empanadas. What was it like to work on this book with your parents in mind?

YSM: It was very emotional. In fact, I really don’t know how I’m going to get through a reading of this book without getting choked up. It was also a little bittersweet. One of the most magical things happened to me while I was going through a box of things that I brought from Argentina. I’m an immigrant. You know how it is; for immigrant families, you can’t bring everything from home. You have to pick and choose. Among the things that I brought, and that I was able to keep all these years, were some old journals of mine. And mixed in these old journals was a spiral notebook in which my mom had written recipes by hand. She dedicated it to my dad and my siblings and me. It was such a special thing to actually have the recipes in her handwriting. Like we say in Spanish – “puño y letra.”

It was like a gift. My mom’s been gone for 10 years now. I didn’t ever remember having this notebook in my possession, but since then I’ve made copies for my siblings to give to them. It’s very special that, even though I didn’t think that she’d written the recipes for these dishes, she had. I also found this notebook after this book was written, so it was like a little present from my mom from beyond.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Pockets of Love?

YSM: In my family and in my culture, food is one of the ways in which we show love. With my busy lifestyle and having teenagers and kids that are in college, it gets difficult to get together for a meal. But nothing makes me happier than when we’re all together and my kids eat my food, or the food that I provided. 

I hope that when families read the book, they can find the ways in which each family shows love. Maybe it is through food. Maybe it is through playing a game together, or sharing stories of the people that are not here anymore… Hopefully families will identify their own particular ways in which they share love.

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Yamile Saied Méndez is the author of many books for young readers and adults, including the award-winning picture books Where Are You From? and What Will You Be? She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, and now lives in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains in Utah with her husband, five children, two dogs, and a majestic cat. She’s a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA writing for children and young adults program. She’s always trying new empanada recipes. Connect with her at yamilesmendez.com.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Interview: ‘The Best That You Can Do’ by Amina Gautier

The Best That You Can Do brims with life, sorrow, joy, and nostalgia. Winner of the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, Amina Gautier’s short story collection brings readers across time to the present day with stops that include Chicago, Philadelphia, Lisbon, and the author’s own native Brooklyn. The stories are compact yet potent, exploring relationships, the connection and rights to one’s own heritage, and complexities embedded in one’s identity.

This collection, in many ways, feels like a master study on the richness of everyday lives. In “Rerun,” Black and Puerto Rican siblings are desperate for Boricua representation on their television screen. “We’ve got the Evans family – Florida, James, Michael, Thelma, and J.J. a.k.a. Kid Dy-no-mite – but we have to work to find the Boricuas,” Gautier writes. “We collect Puerto Rican actors the way other kids collect comics, valued all the more because they’re so rare.” In “Why Not?” a Black woman struggles with the low dating standards others expect her to accept, and the subsequent fallout after a date with an acquaintance. In “Housegirl,” an elderly woman grapples with loneliness in the space of time between visits from her personal home-care attendant.

Gautier spoke with Latinx in Publishing recently about the inspiration behind The Best That You Can Do (out now from Soft Skull Press), re-exploring Puerto Rican identity, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on your stunning book, The Best That You Can Do. Your collection is lyrical and bursts with many themes, including identity, Blackness, and womanhood. I felt like I was right beside your characters as their stories unfolded. You were the inaugural winner of the Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, which is how The Best That You Can Do came to be in readers’ hands. What has winning this prize meant to you?

Amina Gautier (AG): I love winning prizes, first of all [Laughs]. Who doesn’t? The Kimbilio Prize, specifically, is important to me because Kimbilio means ‘safe haven,’ and it is an organization that nurtures and promotes the work of writers from all across the Black diaspora. So it’s a very important award. 

Many of the awards for short story collections are typically attached to university presses, which tend to be small independent presses. Having this contest be attached to Soft Skull Press, which is distributed by Penguin Random House and is connected to Catapult, I think, makes the contest even more significant and more visible because it’s a larger press. It’s not one of the Big Six, but it is larger than an independent press which means that it has the power to get the work distributed widely.

But specifically as a writer of short fiction, it’s important to win contests because short fiction or short story collections tend to not be publicized or promoted as widely as novels are. So having a contest win attached to your book is an extra layer of publicity that will make people pay attention to it. All four of my short story collections have been published through contest wins. 

AC: You center complexities within the Puerto Rican diaspora in the first section of your book. In “Buen Provecho,” siblings keep their desire to learn their father’s language hidden from their mother so as not to wound her. In “Quarter Rican,” a teenage girl visiting family on the island is made to feel not fully Puerto Rican by a relative. As a writer with Puerto Rican ancestry yourself, I know you have been writing about your community for years. For this collection in particular, though, what truths were you hoping to unearth in re-exploring Boricua identity?

AG: Some of the things that I’m always interested in promoting and exploring with Boricua identity and Latino identity is 1) Constantly reminding people that Puerto Ricans are not immigrants. People seem to keep forgetting that. When I’m writing about Latinx diaspora experiences, I’m interested in pushing the boundaries and reminding readers that there are so many different ways to be Latino or Hispanic. 

Even with the narrative that is frequently pushed about languages – like, ‘OK, you know how to speak Spanish because you learned it at home, or because you learned it in school because of exposure.’ But there are plenty of other reasons why a person could decide to forgo speaking the language, or decide to be interested in it. At a certain point in your life, or development, or age, it can become a conscious choice. 

In “Buen Provecho,” we have a mother who makes a decision not to learn Spanish because she associates with her father. And we have kids who are not exposed to it in the house because the mothers isn’t exposing it to them. But then they go see their Titi on the weekends, and they can get exposure in other ways and make the choice for themselves. 

I want to remind people that that language is not only just a process of education and exposure, but has an emotional and psychological component to it as well… There’s so many different choices that people are making when they are choosing to adopt a language or adapt a language. And I want to remind readers that all of these possibilities are valid and valuable. That we are expansive.

“When I’m writing about Latinx diaspora experiences, I’m interested in pushing the boundaries and reminding readers that there are so many different ways to be Latino or Hispanic. ”

AC: In that vein, your focus on Puerto Rican identity in this collection is deeper than, “Am I Puerto Rican enough?” You cover the complexities and relationships across generations, and also how, for example, that identity impacts a partner who is not Puerto Rican. As you worked on these stories, was there anything that surprised you about the expansiveness of what it means to be Puerto Rican?  

AG: All the stories surprised me. I don’t start out with any kind of organization or plan. For instance, “Making a Way” is one of the last stories that I wrote. The collection was accepted at the beginning of January 2023 but I felt that it needed just a few more stories, so I wrote a few more to round it out. In “Making a Way,” I have this wife who is resentful of her husband. I thought I was going to explore her keeping the kids and not letting them go to PR for the summer as a way to punish him, and realizing that this specific character can have one relationship with her husband – but still want an experience for her children. 

She would like to have been able to go to Puerto Rico to see her husband’s native land, but just because she can’t she’s not going to deny her children that experience. I didn’t know that that’s what I was going to have her do. Her story is where I started really thinking about language as a form of inheritance, as a form of birthright. That despite what’s happening with her and her husband, her kids have a right to spend time with him, to go to the island, to learn Spanish if they want to. And she’s not going to deny them that experience.

AC: Your collection drips in nostalgia. I loved the many TV show references in “Rerun” and appreciated you placing the reader in the post-summer break frenzy in “Summer Says.” Much of your book is inspired by the 70s and 80s. What was it like to place that time on the page in many of these stories?

AG: It was a lot of fun to go back and think about the cartoons and different shows I was watching, but also about how the pop culture that Gen X kids were exposed to helped shape our identity. Like watching all the cartoons with morals on the end of them… I wanted to make this a love letter to Gen X. I feel like my generation is constantly forgotten. I really wanted to infuse in deep references to that pop culture. We Gen X kids were forced to be immersed in our parents’ lives and music. We had to watch the TV shows that they did, so I also think that it’s one of the last cross-generational moments before people split off and everyone went to their own separate rooms to watch their own separate TV shows. 

AC: In the section titled “The Best That You Can Do,” we see more stories about women and their disillusionment with love and with men. We see disappointed women, tired women. The men in many of these stories, fall short of their promises to their partners. In “A Recipe for Curry,” a wife is stuck in a monotonous life – having to cook curry for her husband once a week. She hasn’t been able to realize her dreams, despite her husband’s promises to her. I’d love to learn more about your depiction of hetero-relationships in these stories. What do you want readers to take away from them? 

AG: As you know, this section is the longest one in the collection. There’s a whole cycle-of-life going on with the first two sections being about youth and childhood, and then this longer section being about adulthood and adult relationships. And then the next section is about our external lives politically, and the last section is about when we come to the end of our lives. 

In this long section about romantic relationships or about adult children’s relationships with their parents, I’m really exploring social pressures and social expectations that are on us when we’re adults. What happens in our relationships based on what our friends or our partners are expecting us to do? How are we navigating the goals and dreams that we have for ourselves as adults, in conjunction with our parents or our partners’ expectations?

In “A Recipe for Curry,” the dream was just to get out of Guyana and to make it to the U.S. That’s more tangible, even though there are other promises: a house, a car, all these moments of exploration. But just getting to the U.S. kind of becomes the focus. And once they’re there, they become stuck in this rut. What part do we play in becoming engineers of our own self-destruction? Because the wife plays a part in that – in continuing to make it for him once a week and not pushing back.

AC: Some of the stories are a few pages long – some only a couple. How do you know when a story is complete? Do you step away from it once you feel you’ve answered a question – or posed one to your reader?

AG: I don’t deliberately try to pose questions. Hopefully they come out organically. I don’t like to be a heavy-handed writer. I do focus on an image, or an issue, or a problem, and then try to follow it through to its natural conclusion. With this collection, I knew that it would all be very short fiction… That meant that I would have to compress a lot of the action, and condense it. I wouldn’t always have time for a scene, so I would have to use language and lyricism to create this sort of narrative pressure to push the story through. 

I would know that I was done when I couldn’t do anything else with the language to make the point. Which is a little different from my other collections, which have more traditional-length stories with multiple scenes and more dramatic action. But for this one, the focus is really on the language and the syntax. So once I get this feeling that everything sounds right, then I know that the story is done.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from The Best That You Can Do?

AG: Besides calling it like my Gen X love letter, I’m also calling it my pandemic book because it wasn’t the collection I was supposed to finish next. I had a whole research leave and I was going to write another collection. The pandemic hit, and I couldn’t focus on writing 25-page stories when the world was in such chaos. For months I didn’t write anything because I was depressed and isolated. I told myself, OK, you can’t write your usual 10-12 hours a day or five days a week, but maybe you can write two days a week. Maybe you can’t write a 25-page story. Maybe you can write a four-page story… I used that to kind of write myself out of the depressive environment of a pandemic. I was just thinking, nobody knows exactly what to do right now. We don’t have guidance. We’re just all trying to do the best that we can do – which is why that’s the title of the collection. 

In addition to hoping that readers enjoy the pop culture moments and think about the ways in which characters help undermine their own destinies, I want this book to be inspirational. Because I’ve told myself, OK, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t complete the project that I set out to complete. It just matters that I kept writing. And this is what came out of it. I hope that when readers or aspiring writers who get stuck in a project, they can remember that, ‘Maybe this project isn’t working right now. But as long as I just keep writing, I can write something else. I can change genres for a couple of months. As long as I keep writing, there’s hope and there's promise. And what I do is valuable.’ 

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Amina Gautier, Ph.D., is the author of three short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, and The Loss of All Lost Things. Gautier is the recipient of the Blackwell Prize, the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, the International Latino Book Award,the Flannery O’Connor Award, and the Phillis Wheatley Award in Fiction. For her body of work, she has received the PEN/MALAMUD Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Q&A: ‘I Am La Chiva!: The Colorful Bus of the Andes’ by Karol Hernández

“On breathtaking mountains, where coffee beans grow, I carry my friends to the green hills below. I drive through the Andes, so windy and steep. Me llamo La Chiva. That’s me! Beep, beep, beep!”

With its vibrant opening, I Am La Chiva: The Colorful Bus of the Andes demands your attention. The joyful picture book by debut author Karol Hernández and illustrator Lorena Alvarez Gómez transports readers through the rugged Andes mountains on a chiva. La chiva is the name used for artisan rustic buses used widely for public transport in rural Colombia.

The idea to write about the iconic bus came to Hernández when her son mistook her ceramic miniature chiva for a school bus. She searched for picture books about it, but couldn’t find any. So she decided to write one.

Out on July 9 from Dial Books for Young Readers, I Am La Chiva is a cheerful rhyming book told from the perspective of la chiva. The bus picks up its passengers one by one – including people with produce, and even animals. Readers meet Doña Ines with her curious hen and warm arepas, and Don Ernesto with his pig named Chanchito. On the way to the town center, la chiva hits a small snag which makes for some added excitement to the story.

Alvarez Gómez, who is from Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, uses a rich color palette to illustrate the beauty of rural Colombia. Much like real-life chivas, the chiva centered in this book is intricately decorated in swoops of teal, purple, orange, and more. There is an incredible amount of detail in the spreads, which is sure to make young readers linger longer on each page.

The Spanish translation of the book, titled ¡Me llamo la Chiva!: El colorido bus de los Andes, will be released on Aug. 27.

In anticipation of her debut book’s release, Hernández spoke with Latinx in Publishing about revisiting la chiva for readers, the inspiration behind her characters, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on I Am La Chiva. I know you were born and raised in Colombia and I understand you were 13 when your family left. What inspired you to write this book?

Karol Hernández (KH): La Chiva is an answer to a question. During the pandemic, I was taking a picture of my little ceramic chiva, and my son – who was three years old at the time – approached me and said, “What a cute school bus.” And I was like, “No, this is not a school bus.” I tried to explain the role of chiva buses in Latin countries, but I didn’t feel that the concept quite clicked. So I went to look for a picture book on the topic. I didn’t find one, so I wrote the story originally for him. 

Because my kids were born in Tennessee, we were getting all these awesome picture books from the Imagination Library. And I just made the connection. I was like, This story kind of reads like something I would see in a book – like the ones I get from the Imagination Library. And that sparked the idea of turning the story that I wrote for him into a picture book for a broader audience.

AC: For those who don’t know, what is a chiva?

KH: A chiva bus kind of looks like the body of a school bus, if you will, except that it has pew-style seating, no buckles, no windows. This is like an open bus, and it’s used to transport people in rugged terrain. Our story takes place in Colombia, in the Andes Mountains, so that’s where our chiva travels in the story. 

The buses are very beautifully decorated. They’re painted by hand by artisans. And when you ride on a chiva, you could be riding next to people, produce, plantains, coffee, chickens, pigs, dogs, you name it. And people. Things are also put on top of la chiva, which you can appreciate in the illustrations. 

“Chiva” literally means “goat.” One of my kids said, “Oh, of course, because it’s the greatest of all time,” and I should have made that connection myself. But “chiva” means “goat,” and that is because back in the 1930s when chivas were first introduced to Colombia, their horns sounded like a goat. And so farmers would refer to it as la chiva. Nowadays you can also find chivas in touristic centers in Colombia and in some major cities in the US, as party buses.

“ I tried to explain the role of chiva buses in Latin countries, but I didn’t feel that the concept quite clicked. So I went to look for a picture book on the topic. I didn’t find one, so I wrote the story originally for him. ”

AC: You begin the book by saying “On breathtaking mountains, where coffee beans grow, I carry my friends to the green hills below. I drive through the Andes, so windy and steep. Me llamo La Chiva. That’s me! Beep, beep, beep!” I love that the entire book is told from the perspective of la chiva. How did you decide to tell the story this way?

KH: When I sat down to write the story, I closed my eyes and started recalling vignettes from my childhood, and vignettes from my landscapes and experiences I had as a kid in Colombia… Two stanzas in, I realized that I was la chiva. And so, “I am La Chiva. It’s me.” 

I don’t know why it felt so natural to write it that way, but a lot of the characters that we meet along the way represent real people in my childhood. I didn’t live in a small rural town. I lived in a city, but we would go to a small rural town to get together with our family in la finca. And so I did these journeys, and it felt so natural to narrate it in first person as if I were the bus.

AC: La Chiva plays an important role in this book. Here is where Doña Ines boards with her curious hen, and Don Ernesto arrives with his pig, Chanchito. How did you come up with all these characters? 

KH: In Colombia, we call it la cuadra – the block. So in the block where I grew up, we had Nancy, who was the lady who made arepas. Nancy was a fixture in my childhood, so I thought, Well, I need to include the lady who makes arepas because she was part of my childhood. Nancy didn’t work (for the book) because of the meters, so I went with Doña Ines. And I wanted to introduce the word “Doña.” 

Funny enough, Nancy’s family had a pig. We would all bring our scraps throughout the year, and they’d feed the pig. You can imagine what happened with that pig at the end of the year, for Christmas time. But I wanted to include a pig (in the book), although Chanchito does not meet that fate in the story. That was decided by my children… These were just people who made an impression in my life as a young kid because of what they did. What they did was relevant to my experience of people and culture, and they did it with such joy and pride. I wanted to communicate that these people, everything they did, they did with joy and with pride in service of their community.

AC: I want to ask you about the illustrations by Lorena Alvarez Gómez. They were just so beautiful. I love the color choices. Was there any collaboration with her for this project?

KH: There was incredible collaboration between Nancy Mercado, our editor at Dial, Lorena, and myself. I think that what made this very natural and easy is the fact that Lorena is Colombian as well. She actually lives in Colombia. When Nancy shared the manuscript with her, I think she immediately got the vision, made it her own, and she was graceful enough not just to do an incredible job, but she also included little Easter eggs for my kids, which was awesome because now they feel that the physical book is theirs. And they’re so proud to show people. She elevated this book to a place that I could not have imagined. 

The creative team behind this book is all Colombian American, and I think it gives it incredible authenticity and a level of detail that you probably can’t get from just looking at pictures and doing research. I think it shows that the team behind the book has experienced the Colombian Andes, and knows the place and function of a chiva in Colombian society and culture.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from I Am La Chiva?

KH: I have a couple of big dreams for the book. One, I hope that this book serves as a gateway for people to want to learn more about the Andes. Not just Colombia, but the Andes Mountains; the Andes are the longest mountain range in the world, and they cross seven countries. And along the ridges of these mountains, there’s incredible diversity of culture, food, music, textiles, flora, fauna, Indigenous communities. Our story takes place in Colombia, but Colombia is one link in this chain of culture that crosses a continent.

Secondly, as a first-generation Colombian in the States, I remember when I moved here as a teenager and would tell people that I was Colombian, usually the first response I got was that I probably was related to Pablo Escobar. While I get that that was a joke, it was a painful joke. Because I was 13 years old and couldn’t understand how, at the time, the 32 million people in Colombia could be reduced to one story. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up surrounded by hardworking people who did what they did with joy, with pride. We weren’t perfect, but within our imperfection there was so much beauty. 

With time, I learned to redirect conversations by saying, ‘No, we make wonderful coffee. And have you heard of Shakira? Have you heard of Carlos Vives? And have you seen las gorditas de (Fernando) Botero?’ I was able to rely on people’s art to create a different narrative. Now I want to contribute to the stories that are told about Colombia abroad, because there’s so much to our countries – not just Colombia. And so I feel like it’s taking power back by telling a different story.

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Karol Hernández was born and raised in Colombia. She currently lives in Florida with her husband, three kids, two dogs, and a fish. https://karolitadotcom.wordpress.com/

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Q&A: Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park by María Dolores Águila

In Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park, a girl named Elena is walking with her mom to their local tiendita for some masa and corn husks. On the way, they bump into a neighbor who has sketched the Coronado Bridge stretching over the bay from Barrio Logan – one of San Diego’s older Mexican American communities. A diesel truck passing by leaves behind clouds of dust.

Later, as they pass by a junkyard and get barked at by dogs, Elena’s mother stops and says, “Be brave, Elena – sé valiente.”

It’s this bravery that Elena and her community must later channel when they discover that the park they had been promised by the city would instead become a California Highway Patrol station. Barrio Rising is a historical fiction picture book about one community’s twelve-day land occupation and resistance in April 1970 that led to the creation of a colorful park below criss-crossing freeway overpasses. Written by debut author María Dolores Águila and illustrated by Magdalena Mora, the duo beautifully captures the fight and tremendous heart of an often-ignored community. Barrio Rising will be released on June 18 from Dial Books for Young Readers. Its Spanish version – El barrio se levanta: La protesta que construyó el Parque Chicano – was translated by David Bowles and will be released simultaneously.

Águila, a Chicana poet and writer from San Diego, grew up a few miles from Chicano Park – which features Chicano murals, sculptures, picnic tables and playgrounds. “And I always passed by the murals (in the park), but I never connected how and why they got there,” she told Latinx in Publishing. “It just never occurred to me.”

Then one day, a mural caught Águila’s eye. What followed was a years-long obsession to learn everything she could about Chicano Park. The fruits of that research and curiosity would eventually form Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park.

Ahead of the book’s release, Latinx in Publishing spoke with Águila about the inspiration behind Barrio Rising, what it was like to portray an ignored community on the page, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Barrio Rising. What inspired you to write this story?

María Dolores Águila (MDÁ): That’s one of the questions that I get the most and I think it’s one of the hardest to answer, because I can’t tell you a singular reason of why I wrote the story. The short answer would be that I live less than five miles away from Chicano Park and I’ve lived here for the majority of my life. I’ve driven by Chicano Park thousands of times. My father worked in the tuna canneries when they were there in Barrio Logan. I used to go to the community health center there. And I always passed by the murals, but I never connected how and why they got there. It just never occurred to me. 

My mother-in-law lives in Barrio Logan and one day we were driving by (the park). And for some reason, the mural of Laura Rodriguez caught my eye. I don’t know why. It sparked something. I looked up her story, which was incredible by the way. Her entire story is like a real-life Cinderella, mariposa del barrio story. After that, it became like an obsession. For close to half a decade, I chased down every scrap of information that I could find about Chicano Park by visiting the park, going to the events, listening to speakers, watching movies. When I finally had a full understanding, it was like, Oh, my God. I have to write about this. People should know what happened here.

In a lot of ways, I wrote it for myself, because I’m a Chicana kid that grew up next to Chicano Park that didn’t know how to get there. After I figured out what had transpired, I was like, No. This has to be a story. People have to know. The world has to know what happened. Because I feel so often, as Latinas in the United States, we’re made to seem like we don’t have a history – that we’re very recent arrivals. But that’s not true. We have a very long history, and there have been a lot of things in our community that people have fought for but they’ve been buried.

AC: In your book we meet two Barrio Logan residents -- a mother and daughter -- walking near the Coronado Bridge. Almost immediately, readers can detect that this area is neglected. What was it like to portray an ignored community on the page for young readers?

MDÁ: For me, it was just portraying my own lived experience. I live in National City, which is directly south of Barrio Logan, and we have many of the same issues. We have the same issues of air pollution and heavy industry mixed in with residential areas. And even though I live in a bayfront community and Barrio Logan is a bayfront community – we’re literally on the bay – we really don’t have beach access. So this is something that I’ve lived. It wasn’t something that I had to really dig deep to find.

“Our stories are still meaningful, still beautiful, and still worthy, even if the institutions around us have not been supporting us the way that they should have. ”

When I see other people that haven’t lived that kind of experience, they tend to portray those communities as just simply downtrodden – like there’s no glimmer of hope. The one thing that I did want to portray is that these communities have grown roses in concrete. Our stories are still meaningful, still beautiful, and still worthy, even if the institutions around us have not been supporting us the way that they should have. There’s still a lot of joy and beauty. Even though the area and the schools might not be great, there’s still a lot of really great things about where I live and about Barrio Logan. I think Magdalena did a lot of the heavy lifting with the illustrations in that aspect.

AC: You beautifully capture a close-knit Mexican American community throughout the book with your text with Spanish sprinkled in, and illustrator Magdalena Mora, like you just mentioned, with her gentle illustrations featuring parts of the culture like food. What was it like working with Magdalena? Were there specific suggestions you had for her to portray this time in the community’s history accurately?

MDÁ: I was actually really hands off because I wanted Magdalena to bring her own vision without me influencing it, as much as possible. I was beyond honored that Magdalena agreed to collaborate on Barrio Rising with me because her body of work is really incredible. I think the amazing thing about picture books is how two artistic mediums come together – the words and the art – to tell a singular story. My editor, Rosie Ahmed from Dial, did ask me if there were any particular images that I liked. And I did send her some. There was one of a girl holding a pickaxe. She was a young girl. And I don’t know why that image stuck with me. I sent it to Rosie, who sent it to Magdalena.

I just stayed hands off as much as possible because I wanted her to do her thing, and bring what she has to bring to the story. I pretty much wrote the story without outside influence, and I wanted Magdalena to have that freedom without me hovering around. When I finally saw the art, I knew that I had made the right decision because she brought in things that I hadn’t even thought of – things that would have never occurred to me because my brain doesn’t work that way. I was just so happy when I saw the illustrations.

AC: Even though this is a fictionalized account of the story behind San Diego's Chicano Park, you feature real residents and even a local councilman who played key roles in its creation. What was your research like while working on this book?

MDÁ: I love to do research, so for me it’s always like the most enjoyable part of the process. I did the usual things: I hunted down newspaper articles, I read academic articles, I read books. I read the applications that they filled out to make Chicano Park a cultural heritage site. And Chicano Park themselves have a website, so I read all that. 

In my research, I had come across this thesis entitled “Singing the Great Depression: Mexican and Mexican American Perspectives Through Corridos” by Michelle Salinas, where she describes how Mexican and Mexican American communities have traditionally expressed information and history through alternative mediums like songs and art. So I did all the usual things, but I also listened to songs. There’s a song called “Chicano Park Samba” by Los Alacranes Mojados and they sing about the history of Chicano Park. There’s also two murals at the park called La Tierra Mia and Chicano Park Takeover, and that has the history in images. So I studied those as well.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Barrio Rising?

MDÁ: More than anything, I want young readers to find power within themselves and their communities. I want them to know that Latine communities have a long history of resistance and resilience, and that together we can accomplish our wildest dreams. I want them to see themselves in Elena and I want them to be inspired to make the changes that we need in our communities.

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María Dolores Águila is a Chicana poet and writer from San Diego, California. Deeply inspired by Chicane history and art, she seeks to write empowering and inclusive stories about everything she learns. She also loves drinking coffee, browsing the bookshelves at her local library, and spending time with her family.

Magdalena Mora is an illustrator, designer, and art educator based in Minneapolis and Chicago. Her work has been recognized by The New York Times, The American Library Association, and The Chicago Public Library, among others.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Author Interview: ‘Daughter of the Light-Footed People’ by Belen Medina

“From deep in the copper canyons of Mexico, her swift footsteps echo. Clip clap, clip clap.”

That’s the vivid opening of Daughter of the Light-Footed People, a forthcoming nonfiction picture book about Lorena Ramírez, a runner from Mexico’s Rarámuri Indigenous people (also known as Tarahumara). The clip-clap sounds come from the athlete’s well-worn huaraches cut from rubber tires. Ramírez, now 29, is internationally known for running in sandals and in a brightly colored skirt.

Written by Belen Medina and illustrated by Natalia Rojas Castro, Daughter of the Light-Footed People takes readers on a sixty-mile run with Ramírez. We learn that her strength comes from kicking balls across miles with her siblings, and that her patience is built from walking for hours. “Over hot, cracked earth and rocks, through cold, hard rain, she runs,” Medina beautifully writes. Castro’s illustrations are equally gorgeous, infusing rich colors and textures to the page. In one spread, Ramírez’s long, dark ponytail morphs into a memory bubble of her as a child, herding goats and cattle for her family.

Out on June 11 from Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Daughter of the Light-Footed People is not just centered around this one Mexican athlete, but offers a real-life lesson that you can persevere and achieve so much even if you don’t have as many resources as others.

Ahead of the book’s release, Medina spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind her debut picture book, what sets Ramírez from other runners, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Daughter of the Light-Footed People. This book is about María Lorena Ramírez, an Indigenous long-distance runner belonging to Mexico’s Rarámuri ethnic group. What inspired you to write this story?

Belen Medina (BM): I have two kids, and during COVID I was home with them a lot. I found a Netflix documentary about her and we watched it. And I was just completely awestruck. We were all just dumbfounded by this woman who was running with just her huaraches and her Indigenous clothes. I was so profoundly moved by her grit and endurance, and her story. And so were my kids. And I just thought, Gosh, I feel every kid should know about her. Every person. And as a Mexican American, I just felt especially proud. 

I’ve written other books that haven’t come out yet, but I started to look to see if there had been any books about her. I wanted to know more, and realized that there hadn’t been. So that’s how that journey started for me. But mostly, I was just so incredibly inspired by her story and I thought: What an amazing person, and what a great example of just having so little and doing so much. I thought this is a great message for kids and for adults.

“What she was doing wasn’t just for her. It was for her family. It was for her people. She’s running as a community, which I felt was really moving and powerful. ”

AC: Your story beautifully follows María Lorena on a run and also touches on her background, such as her strength coming from herding goats and patience built from walking for hours to buy food. Can you describe your research process to be able to include these details?

BM: I basically scoured every available information I could find. I read some books about long-distance running and Tarahumara people. There wasn’t a lot, but as much as I could watch every interview she did, read every interview she did. I just did a lot of research that way. Then I synthesized the information, because in picture books you have very few words that you can use. And then the process was just whittling it down and trying to make it concise and moving for kids to be inspired by her in as few words as I could. 

As you know with editing, I have editors ask me where everything came from – and I had to go back. I have a bibliography of things, but it was fun. I really do like research. I love learning about the Tarahumara people. I didn’t know about them – from where they come from, which is this area that’s bigger than the Grand Canyon… I was blown away by so much that I didn’t know about Mexico.

AC: In your author’s note you write that María Lorena made international headlines when she won the Ultra Trail Cerro Rojo in 2017 – not just for her victory, but because she was wearing huaraches and a brightly colored skirt. There’s one part of the book where you write that she weaves to the front of the pack of runners without fancy gear or gadgets. It made me think about what distinguishes her from other runners. In telling this story, is there anything else you took away from what makes her unique in the running world?

BM: What stands out for me –  and not so much in terms of Lorena, but Lorena and her family and her people – is that they don’t just run for themselves. She’s running for her family and to make a better life for other people. I sometimes find that – and I’m generalizing – in America, in our culture, we tend to be very individualistic-minded. We do it for our own selves, or maybe for our ego or whatever we’re proving to ourselves. But we’re not running, or whatever we’re trying to do, because we’re bringing up everyone around us. And that’s what I felt like I learned from her: What she was doing wasn’t just for her. It was for her family. It was for her people. She’s running as a community, which I felt was really moving and powerful. That just gives her that extra motivation.

AC: Your prose is beautiful, and so are the illustrations by Natalia Rojas Castro. What do you think her illustrations add to your text?

BM: Oh my gosh. It brought the words to life. And it’s funny because I thought to myself, Maybe I could illustrate this [Laughs]. Because I do portrait illustration. I was laughing at myself because of the things that I tried to draw. And then I gave up pretty quickly. What she did just elevated the story – the movement, the color. I fell in love with the colors. They reminded me of the colors I think of, of Mexico: just a real richness and deepness and vibrancy to the colors, and the movement. I think she really made the book. I had really little feedback. I think she nailed it. And I’m so happy that she decided to take a chance on my words, and made it her own thing. I was so amazed by some of those spreads that incorporate and then add to my words. I was so thrilled.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Daughter of the Light-Footed People?

BM: As I alluded before, I want people to be aware of Lorena and her community. A lot of people say you can do hard things, and you can. You don’t have to have all these resources to put limitations on yourself. Kids can see that you don’t need all the stuff to be successful and that, with grit and perseverance, you can accomplish amazing things. I think that’s a great message – not to make excuses for ourselves… But seeing a woman who is from a modest background able to achieve these amazing things against people with so many more resources – now they can also accomplish whatever it is that they want to do, even if they don’t have all the things that they think they need.

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Belen Medina, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, was born and raised in California’s Central Valley. She spent her childhood summers in Mexico with her grandparents and has been navigating two cultures her entire life. Still a Californian at heart, she now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two sons. Daughter of the Light-Footed People is her debut picture book.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

Review and Author Q&A: The Dream Catcher by Marcelo Verdad

In The Dream Catcher by author-illustrator Marcelo Verdad, a young boy is awakened by his grandfather who lets him know it’s time for work. Soon they will head out for the day to sell cold coconuts and macrame dream catchers along México’s Oaxaca coast.

“Look how many coins I have already, Abuelito,” Miguelito says, holding up a jar of coins to his white-haired abuelo. “Do you think this is enough to buy an airplane?”

His grandpa tells him they’re getting closer.

At home, Miguelito has been hard at work on his dream catchers. His mom taught him how to weave them. The knotted textile creations make him feel close to his parents, he confesses to his abuelo.

 The Dream Catcher (out on May 14 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) is a poignant story about a boy with a big dream: to make enough money to buy an airplane someday so he could reunite with his parents. Miguelito’s story is rooted in a photo Verdad saw years ago of a young boy selling dream catchers on a beach. The image stayed with him. “In a sense, I wanted to honor all of our kids living under unfavorable circumstances and create a space for them to feel seen,” said Verdad, who was born and raised in México and now resides in Los Angeles.

In his tender picture book, Verdad brings readers into the direct and deep conversations between Miguelito and his grandfather as they work, daring his audience to question what a dream means to them. At one point, the young boy peers up at his grandfather and asks if dreams come true. 

With themes of poverty and class, readers of The Dream Catcher may feel compelled to pause and reflect on the stark differences in the dreams held by people from different circumstances. This is done very effectively through Verdad’s text and illustrations, the latter of which include people of even lesser means than his young protagonist. Even with the heaviness that comes with realizing that not all dreams happen for everyone, there’s a ray of hope that emanates from Miguelito and Abuelito’s story.

Ahead of The Dream Catcher’s release, Verdad spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind his book, dreams, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): What inspired you to write this book?

Marcelo Verdad (MV): Years ago, I found this picture of a young kid selling his dream catchers on the beach, and that image just got stuck in my head. I felt the urge to draw it myself. And as soon as I finished the piece, I knew that this kid had a story to tell. It took me some years, but eventually I was able to listen to him and to write the story that he wanted to tell.

 AC: In your book, Miguelito has big dreams to sell enough art to buy an airplane and reunite his family. It is both beautiful yet heartbreaking to read this. How did you decide on this dream for him?

MV: I’m an art teacher, and I work with kids – which I love. What I value the most about being close to my kids is learning from their innocence and their imagination. They really help me reconnect with my inner child, and remember my own innocence and imagination. In this case, Miguelito’s wish needed to represent that innocence and imagination that I find so pure in kids, and that I love. 

Another key aspect about Miguelito was his background. I’m born and raised in México, and that’s exactly how I feel a lot of times when I think of my country. It’s beyond gorgeous. It’s so rich and so beautiful, but yet heartbreaking at times. But also life itself, in that it can be both beautiful yet heartbreaking. And that’s the story that I wanted to tell this time, about life on Earth. I’m not very into fairy tale happy endings, but I wanted to do something honest and full of life and heart.

AC: The entire book consists of direct quotes – conversations between Miguelito and his Abuelito. You don’t see that often in picture books. Why did you structure the story in this way?

MV: I’m both an author and illustrator, but I went to college to study art and design so I’m naturally more of a visual storyteller. I enjoy meaningful minimalism, so I heavily rely on my illustrations to tell the story. And anything that I can’t show visually, that’s when I tell. There’s this thing that authors and illustrators always say: “Show, don’t tell.” So that’s what I try to do first: show through my images. And anything that I can’t show, I just tell it.

I love, love, love keeping a text to a minimum. I’m a bit of an edit freak, so anytime me, my agent, or my editor suggests getting rid of lines and it works, I get really, really happy lowering the word count. In my first book, The Worst Teddy Ever, I used a mix of dialogue and an omnipresent narrator trying to play with the reader by giving them more information than what the main character knew as the story progressed. And that resulted in a fun and engaging tiny book. But this time, what I was trying to do with the dialogue in The Dream Catcher was to make it feel more intimate and personal. And the reader, in my mind, gets to experience a personal and deep conversation between a kid and his guide and protector, in his realm. And I wanted it to feel almost as a conversation with the universe, with life, or a caring and loving being from a higher realm – offering support, wisdom, and guidance throughout Miguelito’s consciousness and spiritual journey.

“...I see this book as an homage to their innocence, their resilience, and generosity in a beautiful and respectful way. ”

AC: There is so much you do visually in The Dream Catcher. We see the beauty of Oaxaca coast, and the harsh reality of people of lesser means. What was it like to bring this all to the page?

MV: To me, it just feels honest. And me being born and raised in México and then coming to LA, where I live currently, that’s just a part of the reality that I experienced. In a sense, I wanted to honor all of our kids living under unfavorable circumstances and create a space for them to feel seen. And I see this book as an homage to their innocence, their resilience, and generosity in a beautiful and respectful way. I also wanted to share visually my favorite place from my country, and showcase all the magic, beauty, richness and culture that inspire me so much. It makes me feel extremely proud of being mexicano and Latino.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from The Dream Catcher?

MV: I think that it’s human to have dreams and plans and hopes for the future. I think that we all have them. But at the same time, I feel it’s really important not to get lost in those so we can stay present and be grateful for what’s already here and now. I believe the dream called ‘today’ is the one thing that’s real, and everything else is an illusion. I’d love (it) if The Dream Catcher worked as a tiny reminder to stay grateful in the present moment, and to always keep faith even under difficult circumstances.

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Photo: Ximena Verdad

Marcelo Verdad is an author and illustrator from México who likes to tell stories from unconventional perspectives. He graduated from ArtCenter College of Design, where he came upon the Children's Book Illustration class and immediately fell in love with kids' books. He is a member of SCBWI, and was one of the recipients of the Mentorship Award at SCBWI’s 2019 Summer Conference. The Worst Teddy Ever is his picture book debut. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family and dog.