On an island lush with plants and small homes is a towering mango tree. Two boys grasp onto its branches. They spend a lot of time in and around this tree, flying kites from it and building a birdhouse within it. They even take naps here. The mango is their constant – their happy place.
Then one day, a storm tears through the island. It uproots the mango tree, and with it one of the boys. Soon he is forced on a journey into an unfamiliar land.
From internationally renowned artist Edel Rodriguez comes The Mango Tree, a wordless picture book that is largely inspired by his own childhood experience as a Cuban immigrant. Like the boys he features in his book, Rodriguez also has a best friend named Osledy who he spent days with in a mango tree they shared back in Cuba. “The tree’s large, shady canopy became our clubhouse,” Rodriguez writes in his author’s note.
The Mango Tree itself takes on a fantastical lens – complete with sea creatures and an intriguing new home for the boy who was swept away. It is an otherworldly, curious ride.
In anticipation of his recent book release from Abrams Books for Young Readers, Rodriguez spoke with Latinx in Publishing about his real childhood best friend, the symbolism behind the mango tree, and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on The Mango Tree. I understand this story was largely inspired by your childhood and the times you spent with your best friend, Osledy. Can you tell us more?
Edel Rodriguez (ER): He was my next-door neighbor. We shared what’s called a solar in Spanish; the backyard was shared by my house, his house, and my grandmother’s house. We were just always in the backyard playing, climbing trees, going on the roof or around the fields in town. We had kind of a free-for-all as kids in Cuba. Parents, at that time, just let you roam around. So at a very young age, we were going all over the place, making toys out of whatever we found. I think it did help me become a creative person, because I was very inventive from a young age.
The interesting thing between me and him is that I was always the more careful one – or not as crazy. And Osledy was always like, ‘Let’s do that. Let’s jump off that thing. Let’s do this.’ He almost got me in trouble a few times. We’re still friends. And he’s still like that. That’s his personality.
AC: In your book we meet two boys on a small island who spend their days in a mango tree. The tree is their constant. They eat the mangoes, fly kites from atop the tree and more. Does the mango tree symbolize anything to you in this story?
ER: It’s something that has roots, so it has that feel of the roots of our friendship. It’s something that grew with us, and then at some point I had to leave. So I floated away. [In the book] it’s a planter where the tree grew, but then it becomes a boat where I get pushed out to sea and I leave the country.
But it’s like our home. It’s the idea that you have to leave behind or be separated by things that are out of your control. Once I left Cuba, I tried to stay in touch with him as much as possible. He’s still my best friend. We didn’t see each other for 14 years, so we stayed in touch through letters. But it was this one time where we had sort of this idyllic place that we hung out in. And after that, it all kind of ended after I left. And after the storm happened [in the book], we never really had that again.
So I was trying to encapsulate that feeling when you have a special place with your best friend. Sometimes it’s a very small window of time, and then you either grow up or you leave, or something happens that changes that. But for some time, it was like our own little private club where we could just have fun.
“Part of what I like about the idea that it’s wordless is that kids have to figure out the book as it goes along. And they themselves become active in figuring out the puzzle of what’s going to happen next as they’re looking at it.”
AC: One of the boys is swept away in a storm and lands in a place that’s unfamiliar to him. It made me think about how change arrives in a child’s life. But children are so resilient. What does this change mean to your character?
ER: Part of what I like about the idea that it’s wordless is that kids have to figure out the book as it goes along. And they themselves become active in figuring out the puzzle of what’s going to happen next as they’re looking at it. For me, when I left Cuba it was very abrupt. We were just having a regular day. Everything was fine. And then suddenly, my parents decided we gotta get out of here. And from one day to the next, I basically lost my best friend. So I wanted to get that across: change can happen very fast.
But then once you arrive in a new place, you try to look around you and use the tools that you know to adapt to whatever that place is. Especially kids, as you said, are very good at that. I did it by drawing things when I arrived in the United States. I couldn’t speak, so I would just draw what I wanted or what I wanted to say. In the book, this boy arrives with this mango and he shares it with the other kids as, ‘This is what I know.’ And then you start conversations, and the other kids give you something of theirs. Here in the United States, a lot of times it was toys. Someone that was from here would give me a Superman figure and I would say, ‘What is this? I don’t know what this is.’ I’d never seen Superman until I arrived here. So kids have conversations in that way.
AC: I did want to ask about your book being wordless. What was it like to approach the story this way?
ER: You know when you’re in a place with your best friend often, you don’t really talk? You’re just kind of doing things, and there’s sort of a conversation that happens just by activities. Especially when you’re a kid, you’re not having deep conversations. You’re just having fun. And especially when you’re up on a tree, or in a jungle, you’re of like living in that space. It’s actually a very quiet place. So I wanted to create a book that did that.
I had just written a graphic novel and I wanted to do something different – totally the other way. At first I considered having text through the pages and I had some text throughout. At some point I took it off, and the book became more magical when I did that. So I called my editor and I said, ‘You know, I think this is better without words.’ It felt even more special because you almost feel like you’re looking into the lives of these two little children, rather than reading about them.
Generally when you’re reading something, the book is telling you what’s going on. Here you feel like you’re hovering above the jungle, just looking into these little kids playing and trying to figure out what it is that they’re doing. And eventually, every time you flip the page, you go ‘Oh, that’s what’s going on.’ And it makes you want to keep on going to try to figure out what the puzzle is. Whereas when you have the words, it’s telling you. So what I decided to do is basically take a lot of the text I had written and put it as the afterword at the end, so people get a bit more context about what was happening.
AC: You are an artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. Can you talk about how you approached your art for young readers in The Mango Tree? What, if anything, did you do differently?
ER: I remember when I arrived in this country, one of the first books that I remember reading was James and the Giant Peach [by Roald Dahl]. I didn’t really speak that much English, but I learned from it. And one of the things I liked about that book was this idea of adventure. That this kid is on a peach floating around [Laughs]. I’m like, I want to make something that would give kids that feeling that I got from that book. That you don't know what's going to happen next. Something crazy could happen. And that the kids themselves are running the show without any parental figure telling them what to do. I really like that. Often in children’s books there’s a lot of the relationship between the parent and the kids. And in this book, there are no parents. So that’s kind of fun. I always felt that it would be fun for a kid to open a book and they just see themselves.
Also, a book that would have no relation to what our reality is here in America, in New York City, or in American cities. I wanted to create a bit of a fantasy world, especially as you go through the book and you get towards the end. It’s a total different planet, almost. Right with the plants and exotic things and trees. So something that felt a bit otherworldly I wanted to create for the readers.
AC: What are you hoping readers take away from The Mango Tree?
ER: It’s about friendship. It’s the idea that friendships are important – friendships that you develop at a very young age, not friendships on the internet or social media, but actual people you spend time with and grow up with and just stay connected to. I’ve been friends with Osledy since I was a little kid. All through our life together, whenever I needed something for my family back in Cuba, he resolved it. He figured it out for my grandmother, whoever was left behind. Whenever his family needed something, I would help him out with that. He’s now in Miami, actually, with his family.
Those are the connections that help you get through life; this idea that you treasure the people that you know and the friendships that you have. That’s how we get through life and we move forward. And hopefully the book has a bit of that. And also to not be afraid of something new, of a new place.
Image by Deborah Feingold
Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist and author who has exhibited internationally with shows in Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Spain. He has received the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators and for many years was the art director of TIME magazine. Books he has illustrated include Song for Jimi: The Story of Guitar Legend Jimi Hendrix by Charles R. Smith Jr., Float Like a Butterfly by Ntozake Shange, Fascinating: The Life of Leonard Nimoy, and Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx/La juez que crecio en el Bronx by Jonah Winter. Throughout his career, Rodriguez has received commissions to create artwork for numerous clients, including The New York Times, TIME magazine, The New Yorker, and many other publications and book publishers. Rodriguez’s artwork is in the collections of a variety of institutions, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, as well as in numerous private collections. He lives with his wife and daughter in New Jersey.
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.
