>> Susan Schadl:. Hello and welcome. It's a special honor for the Latin American Caribbean and European Division at the Library of Congress to partner with a consortium of Latin American Studies Program class in this virtual celebration of creative works that engage young people with stories about Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx communities in the United States. Children's and young adult books are tremendous gateways for learning and understanding. And it has been a pleasure to work with these authors, our Latinx librarian, Maria Daniela Dani Thurber, Denise Woltering, and Colleen McCoy while planning this conversation. My heartfelt thanks to all authors and illustrators who helped amplify voices from across Latin American and Latinx communities and especially those with us today. Aida Salazar, Yamile Saied Méndez, Angela Burke Kunkel, and Raul Gonzales the Third. And to our facilitator, Ruth Quiroa. My name is Susan Schadl. It is my privilege to oversee a tremendous team of librarians in the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division. As we reach the end of National Hispanic Heritage Month, I invite you to listen to our 2021 National Hispanic Heritage Month release of La Biblioteca Podcast Season Two and 50 new streaming recordings in the Palabora archive. We are recording this National Hispanic Heritage Month event on Indigenous Peoples Day from several states. I'm in Maryland within the DC metro area, which also includes parts of Virginia. Our panel joins us from Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Utah. Our partners are participating from Louisiana and Tennessee. Together we want to recognize indigenous presence in our everyday lives and take a moment to consider what it means to acknowledge the indigenous peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant communities who make their homes in these locations and others today. We gather from the traditional territories of many people's including but not limited to the Nocostan, Anacostan, Piskatawe, [inaudible], Nantego, Matapune, [inaudible], Monakan, [inaudible], Peoria, [inaudible], Kikapo, [inaudible], Olone, [inaudible], Massachusetts, Abenaki, Webanaki, Ute, [inaudible], Choctaw, Omah [assumed spellings], Tunica, Cherokee, and Shawnee peoples. Please enjoy this conversation this evening and accept my invitation to look for connections between the past and present, and between communities, books and your homes. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to turn over the microphone and the camera to Denise Woltering and Colleen McCoy. Thank you all for joining us. >> First, thank you so much to Susan Schadl, Dani Thurber, Liliana Lopez [assumed spelling], and the Hispanic Reading Room at the Library of Congress. The Américas Award is so grateful for its long-standing partnership with the Library of Congress and the chance to work together on programs just like this one. The Américas Award was founded in 1993 by Julie Klein at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and since then has recognized hundreds of exemplary children's and young adult books that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx culture in the United States. Among other criteria, review committee members face specific emphasis on the books potential for classroom use, making the Américas Award a fantastic resource for teachers and librarians. The Américas Award is sponsored by the consortium of Latin American Studies programs and is coordinated by Tulane University's Stone Center for Latin American Studies and Vanderbilt University's Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies. >> I would like to share a special thanks to our 2021 committee members for this year's awards that they've recognized, Pat Austin Christie Moraga, Melinda [inaudible], Lou Marzulli, and Dani Thurber. Generous support for this program is also provided by Florida International University, Stanford University, the Ohio State University, UNC Duke consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Florida, University of New Mexico, University of Texas at Austin, University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, we encourage you to visit the webpage classprograms.org /americasaward, which I'll drop in the chat box in a moment. Please visit our site to explore related curricular resources and to learn more about the award itself. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our moderator, our amazing moderator for the evening, Dr. Ruth Quiroa, former Américas Award committee member and associate professor of reading and language at National Louis University, also a former kindergarten and bilingual second grade teacher. She teaches masters level courses in youth literature, comprehension, teaching writing, and preservice literacy methods as well as doctoral courses in comprehension, and diverse youth literature. Her research focuses on picture books and the politics of aesthetics and the impact of BIPOC literature on K 12 Teachers instructional practices. Other research areas include trends and issues of Latinx themed youth literature published in the United States, international Spanish language youth literature, and wordless picture books. I hand it over to you, Ruth. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Thank you. Hello, and welcome to the celebration. This is a celebration of children's and young adult Latin American and Latinx literature. As I introduce our panel of authors and illustrators, I'll be starting with those who created the primary level books recognized by the Américas Award, followed by those of the secondary types. So Angela Burke Kunkel, can you wave? There you go. I like this on your website. You're a librarian by day and an author by night and formally worked with all kinds of readers as an English language arts teacher in both Massachusetts and New Mexico. She now lives in Vermont with her husband, two children, two dogs, two guinea pigs, and a bearded dragon. Her 2021, Américas Award winning title for primary readers, the picture book biography titled Digging for Words: Jose Alberto Gutierrez and the Library He Built , illustrated by Paola Escobar was her debut book for children, which I didn't know until I researched. This book set in Bogota, Colombia, and more specifically, in the barrio of Nueva Gloria tells the tale of two Jose's. A man who is a garbage collector, and picks up trash in wealthy neighborhoods, rescuing all the books, and the other a young boy who cannot wait until Saturday because that is the day he and the other children can visit Senor Jose's home and look at his books and borrow them from the many towering stacks of titles all that were rescued from the trash. Raúl The Third or Raul Gonzales the third, I learned, is the author and illustrator of the Américas 2021 honor book for primary readers Vamos! Let's Go Eat . He currently lives in -- did you wave? You have to wave. He currently lives in Boston although his work -- good -- although his work focuses on contemporary Mexican American experiences and his own autobiographical memories of growing up in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. For example, the mercado de -- let's see if I get it right, [inaudible] in Vamos! Let's Go to the Market was modeled on the market in Ciudad Juarez. He knew this market really well. He probably still does. Because his mother and two brothers went there often with the rest of the family to work with the -- with his family there. He has said that when you are working hard at the market, you get really hungry by afternoon which makes sense because the second book Vamos! Let's Go Eat is all about eating really great Mexican food and I'm excited to hear about your research process with that one. Something interesting I learned about Raul in my research is that he first came across comic style art when he found it at the 7-11 store because his father sent him there on Sundays to get the Sunday paper. And then when he was 15, he started working at Bill's Coins, Cards, Stamps and Comics where there were more comics and he started to become interested in a greater variety of art than just superheroes. In fact, I found that you were a bit obsessed with copying and drawing comics during all these years, and I loved your Little Writer series, so I'm excited to hear you talk about the Vamos series today. And then for our secondary books Aida Salazar, who is -- go ahead and wave. There you go. Who is the author of the Américas 2021 Award book for secondary readers titled Land of the Cranes , has published many other award-winning books and short stories, all of which explore topics of identity and social justice? Born in Mexico, Aida grew up in Southeast Los Angeles with her six other siblings. She has an MFA in Writing from the California Institute of Arts. And now lives in a teal-colored house in Oakland with her husband, who is a Latin jazz musician, two artist teens that she homeschooled through elementary school. Aida has also taught visual arts, poetry, and fictions to students of all ages and is an arts activist, producing festivals, other events, protests, artists residencies, and conferences. I'm excited to hear the back story for Land of Cranes today, a story about a little girl and her pregnant mother who are caged in a U.S. Immigration detention facility. And finally, Yamile Saied Méndez, is the author of Furia , a young adult novel about a soccer star who happens to be a teenage girl, who happens to live in a family where this is not a thing girls do. Although it is perfectly fine for her superstar [foreign word] brother. Originally from Argentina, Yamile came to the United States to study something practical at Brigham Young University like international economics, after which she worked as a translator but just could not escape her lifelong desire and need to write. An MFA at Vermont's College's Writing for Children and Young Adults program, and she's been off ever since writing. One of Yamile's quotes that really stood out to me as I was researching all of you today, and I'm going to end here with this, and maybe have it help frame our conversation today. Yamile, in one interview you said, "Writing is a revolutionary act in itself, especially for members of marginalized communities who have sometimes been incorrectly labeled "voiceless" through the years. We have a voice, and traditionally marginalized authors have been writing for a long time. The stories they created paved the way for me and authors like me to tell our stories today. Not only stories of resistance and oppression, but also of joy and fulfillment, of victory and love, which are revolutionary concepts too. The mind can change when exposed to different ideas and worldviews and as an author I recognize the power and responsibility I have to be as authentic as possible in every word attributed to me." And I think that's why a lot of us are here today, for that very reason. Maybe we have -- maybe there's teachers who have to be -- do it subversively, there's others who have the power to bring in books. And so now we get to move to the part where you all get to share your stories. And I really liked, Yamile, you know, you covered everything, from the victory and the joy to the resistance and oppression. So my first question, and I'll ask Yamile to start our conversation, is, why this story? Why the story at this time, Furia ? In other words, why is your book's theme, protagonist plot and/or their life important to share with readers today? Take it away. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you for this introduction. And again, I am so happy and honored to be here sharing this space with my esteemed colleagues, whom I admire so much. And I started writing Furia a long time ago, before -- when I was the mom of four young children, I wasn't 30 yet, and I would just write during nap times, and at bedtime, a story that was just in my heart. Although Furia is not my first published novel, it was the first story that I attempted to write even when I didn't know what I was doing. They didn't teach me how to write in my economics in college. But I've always been a reader, and I had a goal. I really -- when I started writing this story for myself, and because I was very homesick. I hadn't been home in Argentina for a long time. And I remember going to writer's workshops and one of the -- the one piece of advice that I would hear over and over was to write what was in my heart, to be authentic. And what I had in my heart was soccer, which I love. I [inaudible] obsessive person when it comes to soccer or football, howe we call it. [Inaudible] a lot of very famous players, like [inaudible] and Haley Maria [assumed spelling], all players that are all -- have one thing in common, they're all men. But I grew up watching women playing and I -- and I was a fan of the sport ever since I was a little girl. And Furia is not only about soccer, it's the story of Camila, who has this passion, but it's also told with the backdrop of [inaudible] that started in Latin America in 2014, which was after I had started writing Furia . But this topic of violence against women and equal rights was the conversation already happening when I was a child in Argentina. And I -- it's kind of sad that these topics of violence and inequality continued into my adulthood, and even though I started writing this story a long time ago, they're still very valid themes, and very -- we see them in the news every day. And although the story takes place in Rosario, Argentina, Argentina doesn't have a monopoly on this issues, these are problems that we see all over the world. And yes, even here in the U.S. And so although the journey to publication for Furia took a long time, the topics were very valid and timely still. And so it also happened that the market was a little more ready to have a story with -- I know we will talk about titles later, but with a title in Spanish, with a brown Argentine girl on the cover, it was more open to these kind of stories than it was 10 years ago when I started this journey. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Thank you. Thank you. And Angela? >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Thank you, Ruth. I just want to echo what Yamile said for welcoming us and for this honor, and to be in such amazing company. In terms of this story at this time, you had such a great introduction to Digging for Words , but I have worked as a school librarian since 2011, and at the time that I began working on this story in early 2017, I was working in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Truman Middle School, which has a well-recognized dual education program. The school population is, you know,98% Latinx and 100% free and reduced lunch. And so much of my role was outreach to communities, and getting families to, you know, use the library and access the services that we offered. And getting kids excited about reading, which I think is what Jose did in his community in a really beautiful way. So one fact that just captured my attention when I first encountered his story was that Bogota is a city of 10 million people with 19 up libraries. And there wasn't one in La Nueva Gloria until he started his library from discarded books. So opening his doors to children was just something that I really connected with. And the -- the importance of the work that so many of us do as educators or librarians or authors is getting children excited about reading and books, and the way that he did that really captured my attention. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Thank you. And you, Aida? >> Aida Salazar:. So Land of the Cranes came during a time when the Trump Administration was recently installed, and they were going after sanctuary cities and states pretty aggressively. I live in California, in Northern California. And there were people really fearful. There was a kind of a sense of terror that my community was experiencing. And when I say, "my community", I'm talking about the undocumented and formerly undocumented community. I was born in Mexico and brought over when I was nine months old. And I lived undocumented my whole childhood, until I was about 13 years old. So our community was -- was under siege. They were picking up people off the street on their way to take their children to school. At one point ICE alerted the mayor of Oakland, where I live, that they were going to be doing a massive raid in the Bay area, in the area, in the East Bay. And she turned around and alerted the community and it was all over the Spanish language media, and everybody was really terrorized. And despite the mayor's warnings, which were later, you know -- she was later attacked for those warnings. And despite those warnings, they rounded up about 300 people, undocumented people during that day -- on that one day. And they took them from work, vending off the street, whatever. And there was also something else that -- that was -- was happening, people were getting chased. There was a couple, a husband and wife who were on their way, they were farmworkers in the Central Valley, on their way to work to pick the field -- pick in the fields. And they were chased. They crashed and died in that crash. They left behind six U.S. born children, orphans. And so these were the kind of stories that were kind of whirring around, and -- and it was in that environment and because of my history that I -- I wrote Land of the Cranes . I wrote it in part because of that -- that kind of sense of fear that our communities were enduring, but also because the muse is what it is, and I'm artist and a writer, and I opened myself up one more -- one day as I was studying other work. And my pen just wrote the word "deportation", and -- and like in the next hour, hour and a half, I sat down and wrote the first 30 pages of the story. And it was as if this child, this little spirit, was there in the room and was telling me that she liked chocolate milk and her -- that they were undocumented, and that she had a papi and a mami. And -- and Ms. Martinez [assumed spelling], her teacher. And so all of this kind of came flooding out. And within the -- by the end of the week I had the full synopsis written. And I was just awash in tears because the story was so tragic. It was so -- it was not my story, it was a collective story from my community, but it was something that needed to be told for my community. So it -- that was around February of 2019, the book sold on proposal, and 50 pages. And -- and in June of 2019 that's when we saw the Zero Tolerance Policy kind of displayed. And all the world's eyes turned their attention to that moment -- to that tragedy. And it was -- I only changed a little bit of the story in response to that, but more than anything I was able to kind of really take from the incredible work of journalists who were sharing their stories -- more details about what it was like to be inside detention. So it was urgent. It was urgent to tell. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. Right. Very timely. Thank you. And now we'll turn to Raul. Why your book? Why now? >> Raúl The Third:. Well, honestly, I almost feel like this kind of book should've been around for decades because my family, on the border, and in Mexico, and [inaudible] they've been creating magic there for as far as back I can remember, and as far back as they can remember. And as a little boy growing up in both [inaudible] and in El Paso, I was fascinated by all things having to do with cartoons and animation, as well as the power in pop culture symbology on both sides, whether it was in [inaudible] or knock-off pinatas that my Abuelita would make to sell, whether it was E.T. or whatever popular character, my Abuelita would make a pinata of it. And so as an adult growing -- living most of my life here in the Boston area, I kept wondering why there wasn't a cartoon universe that was set in the magical border town that I grew up in. I had seen them in New York, and California, but never in El Paso [inaudible]. So another thing is I grew -- living here in Boston I was also an instructor. I taught after school art classes, museum classes. And I would notice that kids from incredibly rich cultures, whenever we would begin a design your own character exercise they never created characters that were a reflection of their own stories, their own histories, or the way that they looked. They always chose, you know, the white superheroes, and they began to create white superheroes. And so I realized that I was very similar. The characters that I created as a kid were, like you mentioned, Ruth, were simply copies of preexisting characters. And so in my 20s I started to really create work that was more a reflection of myself and my own personal history and heritage. And I -- with the !Vamos! series I really just wanted to create a world that was a wonderful introduction to all of the cool things that I have been inspired by since I was a little kid. And I will say that creating each and every one of these books is not difficult for me because the source material is so incredibly rich and fun, and exciting. And the world of !Vamos! is a -- not just a celebration, but it's also a love letter to the part of the country that I grew up in. And through it, and when I visit schools, I was just in Midland, Texas last week, I want to show kids that they should be incredibly proud of where they're from and the language that their parents speak. And also that there is value in their personal stories, and where they're from. And so Little Lobo, Kookie-Dookie [assumed spelling], Coco-Rocho [assumed spelling], La Oink Oink, El Toro, and everybody else helps me show this. Wait a second, was I muted this whole time? Darn it. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I was, so I couldn't come right back in because I wasn't sure when you were -- >> Raúl The Third:. No, I could not have done that again. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. You know -- and just the layers of meaning in your images and the cultural reference you make for kids, you know, who traveled [inaudible], you know, with the [laughter] -- and just -- and the foods. And it's just this rich, joyous life that's been there forever, like you said. And yet there's this wall that -- you know, this literal wall that you cannot take away the life that is borderless, so. >> Raúl The Third:. I'm really excited that my -- my book, which comes out tomorrow. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Oh, we get to see it. >> Raúl The Third:. It's all about a celebration in between two lands, !Vamos! Let's Cross the Bridge . >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Oh, that's so exciting. Yay. I'm going to have to find it right away [laughter]. So now we want to know -- the next thing that I'm curious about is when you're conceptualize -- all of you, when you're conceptualizing and drafting titles, who do you envision? Because I've read some titles where I can see they're supposed to be for children who are Latino. And my daughter, when she was four, she's all grown up now, I was reading her a book with a little -- you know, a phrase in Spanish and then there was a [inaudible] and then there was a translation in English. And her four-year old self was irate with me, and she got off the couch and she put her hands on her hips and said, why did you do that? And I said, do what? And she said, tell me what it means. I said, I didn't do that, that's the way the book was made. And she just -- I can still see this today and it's 20 some years later. She said, don't they know I already know what that means? And so I'm curious because, you know, sometimes you have to have a certain audience, or your editor -- I don't know the process for any of that. But when you're conceptualizing, who are your readers, who are you talking to when you're drawing or when you're writing. There's some books that are so wonderful, as yours. But I'm curious what goes on in your head when you're thinking about that reader or that viewer of the visual narrative out there. So this time we will start with Raul. We'll go back to you and start over again. You get to keep going [laughter]. >> Raúl The Third:. Well, that is an interesting question. And obviously, you know, I do have my readers in mind when I am creating these books. But simultaneously I would say that one of the more important readers that I have in mind, and this might be a little selfish, but it's myself as a little kid, and the kind of books that I was searching for. And I do remember specifically going to a bookshelf or going to a comic book stand hoping to find this book about the area that I was living in and hoping to find it on the bookshelf. And -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yes. Yeah. >> Raúl The Third:. -- that was kind of difficult. And so this cartoon universe that I have created is something that I created as -- as -- not just to a younger version of myself, but also as a gift to young Latinx boys and girls who are seeing themselves in these drawings and in these stories. But also their parents who are looking at these books and understanding that these books were made by someone who is just like them. And I also -- you know, and one my deepest desires is, as a kid there weren't a lot of people like me or my other amazing colleagues onboard today, that my parents could look up to and say, well, if they could do it, then [inaudible] might actually stand a chance at becoming an artist. And so becoming an artist was never in their wheelhouse. They never thought that I could ever possibly make a living. And so when I make these books a !Vamos! [foreign word] I do it so that parents can also say, wow, this guy's making stories about what it's like to be a Mexican living on the [inaudible], or maybe [foreign word] could one day do the same exact thing. So those are all little items on my wish list. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. That's neat. That's neat. Touched my heart. Thank you. And Angela, what about you? >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. I think with Digging for Words with this particular book, it was my students in Albuquerque. And you know, loving that job and knowing that for a lot of them the school library was their main point of access for, you know, getting those stories, where either they saw themselves represented in certain books, or if they just wanted, you know, a complete escape, to experience, you know, when they dove into those pages. So video footage of Jose's library, a lot of it is really wonderful because it shows, you know, children going into his library and looking through the stacks of books and pulling out things they're excited about. And I think for anybody who works with children in that way, like you know that moment where that child finds that book that they want to take home and they want to read. And so I think that connection between seeing footage of children in Bogota, in his library, and then -- and doing that as a career, I just -- I wanted -- I had that same excitement reflected in seeing students find that book. And so I had those students in mind in terms of like showing what that space means to people and the possibilities that are there. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Thank you. What about you, Aida? >> Aida Salazar:. So the title for Land of the Cranes is a direct translation of the word Aztlan. And Aztlan means land of the cranes, but it's also the mythological homeland of the Aztecs and the Machika [assumed spelling] people. And it's a myth that said that the Aztecs descended from a place in the southwestern United States called Aztlan, land of the cranes. And that they were to travel South until they saw an eagle devouring a [inaudible] on a cactus, where they found their great city of [foreign word]. The myth says that one day the people would return to Aztlan to live among the cranes. So it's a metaphor, you know, it's -- the whole myth is very argued by historians and linguists and activists. But it -- it, to me, was such a perfect metaphor to talk about migration. To talk about what it is when we cage people for trying to do, as all migratory animals and creatures on this planet do, which is looking for safety, look out for their wellbeing, for shelter, for food, for safety. So it just -- it really made it so that I could talk about this very difficult and very tragic and barbaric thing happening in the world, the criminalization of people who migrate, and the caging of people who migrate in a way that was beautiful and understandable to children. And, you know, the Latin American -- I'm sorry, the Puerto Rican poet, Piri Thomas, said, "Every child is born a poet." And when I write in poetry for readers -- all readers, mostly Latinx children, I write and -- I'm kind of writing to that sensibility about that them, that they are poets and they understand the world in these very strange and beautiful ways, and they express themselves in language that's very creative and very fresh and new, and inventive. And so I'm kind of trying to appeal to that sensibility about them and allow them to make -- allow them to understand really difficult concepts, and -- real world concepts in a way that is not going to turn them off, but really kind of allow them to get it. So it's the power of metaphor, right? So [inaudible] definitely that's what's at the center of it. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Poetry, too. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yamile? >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Well, like -- I'm going to echo my -- their words, because at first my target audience was the child that I was a long time ago. I grew up in Argentina, so like a lot of Latina authors who grew up in the -- were born or grew up in the United States, I did see myself in the art produced by my country people. Argentina has a very rich tradition of literature, children's literature especially. And I grew up reading the words of [foreign word] authors who are not even translated into English, sadly, but they're well-known all over Latin America, and who have made their mark on every little nursery aged child knows the songs of [foreign word], so I was very inspired by them. But although I did see my culture, I also didn't see a part of my identity in the books that I read because sometimes the stories that I was exposed to showed a type of society that was very different from mine. I grew up in a very humble home. And the media that we get from Argentina sometimes is the white European part of the population. So I wanted to show in Furia what rich heritage my country has. Like Camila, my character, I come from a multicultural, multiracial family with branches and roots from all over the world. My name is Arabic said with a Spanish accent. I have a great-grandmother who was from Yugoslavia, and she immigrated to Argentina with an Italian passport. So I wanted to show that it's not as we see it sometimes on TV, on the media that we get. And then my [inaudible] evolved to want to show my children that I -- I mentioned that they were very little when I started writing, and one of them didn't even exist by then, my little one. And so I wanted to show not only the hard parts of growing up in [inaudible] Argentina, but also the beauty of it. And I understood that it was a very fine line to walk, I didn't want to paint the place that I love so much in rose-colored -- you know, show it through rose-colored glasses, but show the reality of what it was. And I was conscious all the time that I was telling a story in a language that is not the language that in which I grew up. And so I had to write in English and trying to give the impression that everybody in my story was speaking Spanish. So when I heard the news that Furia was going to be translated into Spanish, that was perhaps one of the greatest moments of life, even more than when I found that it was finally going to be published, because my one target audience, which is a girl from a [inaudible], would be able to read the book in Spanish. So I believe that through different parts of the process the target audience in my mind kept changing, but the main thing is not only for girls to read Furia and have an understanding of what it's like to want to do something that is forbidden by society or your family, but also wanted to show men and boys what it's like to be a girl growing up -- a Latina girl growing up in this world. And I've been very heartened and touched and moved by the messages that I've received from the readers. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Have you gone back and seen if your book is on the shelves [inaudible] or some of the other bookstores yet? >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. I have not been in Argentina -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I would like to see it up there on the -- >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. I know [inaudible] my most favorite places in the world. But I did go to Argentina for the last time in December of 2019, when I was working [inaudible] of Furia . And so my book was due for final edits about a week after I came back home, and so I poured all of the fresh experiences that I had into that last polish. And hopefully, hopefully soon I'll get to go back and see it there. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I hope it takes place [inaudible] that sometimes creeps across many -- >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. Yes. No, and [inaudible] I was saying that sometimes a lot of the literature -- I mean, Argentina has a rich tradition of literature, but when I go and look at the shelves, I see a lot of translated works from the United States, which is awesome, but [inaudible] of course the super bestsellers and then the work that gets produced, it's kind of like a copy of those stories that come from the U.S. instead of being original stories that show what it's like to grow up in Argentina. And so I know there -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. I know there are authors who are doing the work, but it's hard. It's hard to -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. -- share the stories. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yes. Well, thank you. So I'd like to hear more about your research process as you were writing or illustrating this title. And so Aida, since you've just been sharing, can you -- or Aida, can you share for us first your -- you said it came to you. So did you have to do any sort of other type of research when you were writing? Youve already described your process a little bit. >> Aida Salazar:. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I wrote -- I used -- I mentioned earlier that I used the information that was gathered by the journalists. I spoke to immigration attorneys, to immigration journalists. And there a few immigration journalists who -- who are very conscientious of not creating trauma porn as they call it, you know, and showing the -- the migrant experience is just one of victimhood. And so I only used their working because they had this consciousness about making sure that people were shown with dignity and agency. So -- but I didn't interview any children myself because the trauma was so severe. And I'm not a trained therapist, and I didn't feel qualified, and I didn't feel, you know, right interviewing children to retraumatize or to talk to them about their experiences, so I didn't. But I didn't have to go very far to learn what it was like to be in detention from my own family, because I have family members who have been deported. I have family members who crossed the border and were never heard from again. I -- you know, I know what it's like to cross the border as somebody who's undocumented. And not -- not telling the truth about what my status us. So the fear and the living in the shadows and that whole part of being [inaudible] was lived in many ways. But being inside a detention center, no. And I would say, also, like so inside the detention [inaudible] they get sick, and my mom was dying at the time. She was dying -- battling cancer, and so all of that kind of loss and longing for mother and knowing that -- that, you know, there was going to be a separation was really -- was an emotional kind of like -- it was an emotional truth that I was speaking to in the book. So research from the heart and -- and a little bit on the outside. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. Right. Let's tell truth, right? Yeah. Tell truth. Thank you. Raul, I saw that you did some art in restaurants? >> Raúl The Third:. Yes, that is correct. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Is that part of your research process every time, or is -- >> Raúl The Third:. Well, no, but -- but, you know, I am a self-taught artist, and so a lot of the ways that I make [inaudible] into the art world and in the publishing world happened in maybe not a way that a trained artist or author might make it. And so I started out here in the Boston area just trying to figure out a way to make a living. And one thing that I did, and my dad was a door-to-door salesman, and so I picked up a lot of tips from him. And obviously he would tell me to knock on doors, and so I remember being that I was Mexican, I would go to Mexican restaurants in the south end of Boston and then Somerville, and Cambridge, Brookline. And I would look at their menu and I would say, hey, I can draw a much better menu for you. And so there's about five or six restaurants in the area -- in the Boston area that not just showcase my menu designs, but also later went to designing the entire visual look of a restaurant. So if you come to Boston, you'll go to the Pink [inaudible] bars and to this day I can still go in -- now, you know, I can still go in and get free food. So it's pretty fantastic. And so for research for !Vamos! is interesting. And I love doing the research because the !Vamos! books are, at least the first three, have been taken from very close personal experiences. So the first book, !Vamos! Let's Go to the Market , is basically a story about me and my brothers visiting [foreign word]. And we went to the [foreign word] because my mom and her family moved from [foreign word] and they helped found the [foreign word]. They, you know, had booths and everyone in the family sold something different. And so the first book is all about all of the different [foreign word] that my family sells. Everything from [foreign word] to [foreign word], all sorts of fun stuff. Pinata, [foreign word], all sorts of, you know, things that I knew would be just very visually captivating. And for some research, since I had been away for 20 years, I had my prima, and my entire family's still there, send me tons of pictures of all of the merchandise that they were still selling, and believe it or not, it's pretty much the same stuff, except that pinatas, instead of E.T., the extraterrestrial, it's SpongeBob or, you know, stuff like that. And as for !Vamos! Let's Go Eat , it's as simple as just going back home and, one, eating my mom's amazing cooking, as well as going to the [foreign word] and visiting the basement, and going to the [foreign word] and you name it, that was a really fun part of the research. And, of course, delving in just a little deeper to understand how a food truck works, because there's a lot of food trucks in this book, and also ingredients that are used in preparation of these delicious plates. But simultaneously there's one booth that -- one food maker that I really love and it's based on a trip that I made to Los Angeles, and I -- my friend, Mario Ybarra, from Los Angeles is -- he's an amazing artist and has a great art center called Slanguage in L.A., and he took me on what he called the ghetto tour of L.A., and then he took me -- he's like, dude, you got to try these, and I'd never had them before. But it was an amazing -- it was a Korean taco, and it was made by Chef Roy Joy [assumed spelling] I believe his name was, [foreign word]. But what I loved about it and why I included it in this book, along with [foreign word], because I'd never had those either, because those are from El Salvador, was how just naturally we all influence each other. And we all bring something the to the table. And through that we create something very beautiful and in this case quite tasty. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Good. Thank you. Let's see, who is next on my list? Oh, I lost my space, I was [inaudible]. Yamile, I think [inaudible] you, what is your process to write or illustrate? I know you talked about writing during naptimes. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. So [inaudible] children might be [inaudible] naptimes, has that changed or are they still in naptimes [laughter]? >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. No. No. My youngest is nine-years old, so no. The school time is my sacred writing time. I cannot do the late shifts anymore with teenagers that have to get up so early. But like I research for this book for my whole life. I remember being a very young child and making the conscious decision of learning the rules of football and soccer because I knew even -- I couldn't have been older than 10 years old, I knew that if I didn't like it was going to be miserable all my life because everything in my family revolved around football and soccer. And so I -- I'm obsessive, like I said, about the sport. I've learned about the history of it, with the magic and -- of the internet now I can read archived articles from the women who played the first World Cup in Mexico in 1971, the [foreign word] who were the pioneers of the sport. And the people of their generation made it possible for the U.S. national team today to have all these championships and Olympic medals. And I read a book that it was so -- I mean, it's amazing how synchronicity works, because as I was doing my revisions of Furia I came across a book called Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America by Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel. And it talks about how the sport evolved in Latin America, and what it means. And I learned how women -- how it was illegal even 50 years ago for women to play soccer in Brazil and Argentina. And they would go to jail, and they were only relegated to playing in the circus dressed as men, or like I did go in a -- only with my family or my friends. So also part of my research was playing soccer myself. I never got to play in a team, but every time I go back to Argentina I get together with my high school friends that went to the same school all my life, and these girls, these women now, middle-aged women, and we get together -- we got together every time I've been back to play. And of course the body can't do what it could do 20 years ago, but we still have fun together. And I follow the sport, and I follow the -- now something that is amazing to me growing up I didn't know about this, [foreign word], I learned their names later on. But now the names of the women who are the faces of women's soccer are pretty much household names, everybody knows about Alex Morgan, and Meg Rapinoe, and even players from other countries, and that was not something that was common knowledge when I was growing up. So it always makes me excited for the future to know that things have changed so much in these last few years, and I'm excited to see what the future will be like for the next generations. And so the research was fun. It was sometimes heartbreaking when I had to go and look into the names of the girls and women who disappear. And -- but it was also rewarding to know that they're not forgotten. That even, not only my book, that people still know about this girl, someone who had disappeared and have marked [inaudible] society. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. Right. Right. During that difficult time. Just to mention, Meg Rapinoe has an autobiography out this year for -- >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. -- [inaudible]. So -- >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Have you seen it? >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Good [laughter]. And Angela, what are your thoughts? >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yeah. Well, I also need to mention that Roy Choi, who makes the Korean tacos, has a picture book biography, I think it's called Street Food Remix . Yeah. That's -- >> Raúl The Third:. And that's [inaudible] graffiti artist named Man One [assumed spelling]. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yes. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. Is that with the Readers to Eaters publishing company, I think? Yeah. Yeah. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. I don't remember the publishing company. But yeah, picture book biographies, you know, it's a [inaudible] where you want to make sure that you're honoring the person and telling their story accurately, and also dealing with some limitations in terms of research sometimes. So I first encountered Jose's story through like a three-minute video on social media, which cannot give you a complete picture of someone's life or their project. And that video was produced by AJ+, which is the social media arm of Al Jazeera. So thankfully that helped me track back to a [inaudible] article in Al Jazeera by a journalist named Simitri Daniel [assumed spelling], who was [inaudible] fellow in Columbia doing journalistic work in Columbia and covered Jose and his library in a very detailed article. And from there it was really important to me to research in both English and Spanish, and to go to the earliest articles [inaudible] major newspaper in Bogota and read the earliest coverage of why he started it and what it meant to people in his community, and to him to have that space. And thankfully for you two, which is an amazing resource in terms of finding, you know, video footage of news interviews and things like that, and watching, you know, every interview he gave with local news sources. And then I'm really, really grateful to Dr. Kristina Lyons, who's a Latin American studies and anthropology professor, who does a lot of work in Columbia communities because she was able to connect Jose and I so that he could read a draft of the story before I started querying agents and sending it out so that, you know, he could see how the story was being conveyed. And then I had to make the decision in terms of -- of feeling that, you know, the audience was children and those children in his library were such an important part of the story to create that second invented character, the child Jose in the book is not, you know, one specific character that's true life, it's more a combination of, you know, of any child who could enter his library. But that character needed to be there in order to make the story accessible to children, I guess is what I would say. So making those kind of craft decisions while doing a research was kind of a balancing act. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. But what [inaudible] for kids that they can look at and say, oh, two perspectives going on here, you know, whether in a visual narrative, like Raul does, or in a written narrative, so that's really neat. Thank you. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yeah. You're welcome. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. So my next question is, and I'm going to switch it a little bit, the original that you received was, what part of the story, if any, was most difficult to write and/or illustrate and why? And if you feel like you might've already touched on that, you might want to change it to what was most fun as well. Because, you know, even though it's an emotional topic, there's something about, you know, getting it out there and, I don't know, besides seeing it in print [laughter], you know, that's always the fun part. But the laborious part, what might've been fun for you or what was difficult? And so I'll start with Yamile. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. The most difficult part of writing Furia was the ending for me. Like the climax, when Camila decides to go to the march because the sister of one of the girls from the team, the little sister went missing and then she was found, and so she joins this march. And it was very emotional for me to get myself into that moment because I had been to these marches, and I know sometimes when we see the news, they're just one more person that goes missing, but this person meant something -- meant the world for a family. And all the feelings that just bubble to the surface [inaudible]. I wanted to do it justice and also not do it in a way that was like [inaudible] pain porn . I wanted to create consciousness that this is not a spectacle. But the most joyful parts of the book for me were the parts when she gets to play. And she gets to do what she loves, like her coach says, with no expectations. And she just does what she does best because she loves it. And she has her community, and she feels invincible. And also the parts with the love interest, Diego, because I felt like -- like you read in the little excerpt in your introduction, that joy and love can be revolutionary concepts in our community sometimes. And Camila, who grows up in a very harsh environment, for her to find somebody who really loves her and respects her and supports her dreams, that's a treasure that she found -- that she was lucky enough to find in life. So I had a lot of fun writing the love story and writing about the soccer. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Did you dream you were playing soccer at night ever? >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. All the time. All the time. I -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. You [inaudible] in it. Yeah. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I bet. I bet. That's really fun. Thank you so much. And Angela, what about you? >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. I'm going to say that the most fun piece and the most challenging piece are the same piece. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Okay. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yeah. But it was -- I think the fun was in the process. So when Digging for Words was acquired and Ann Kelley, my editor at Random House, and I were going through revisions, one of the things that she requested is, you know, can you show a little bit more about books that were meaningful for Jose and that experience. And at first I was not really sure how to do that without it sounding like a book report, or, you know, the novels that were most meaningful for him were pretty, you know, adult works of heavy literature. So Ann [inaudible] One Hundred Years of Solitude and it was really difficult to wrap my head around at first. And then I realized, because I'm an author, I'm not author/illustrator like Raul, that you need room for your illustrator, and you just show the experience of reading, but you don't need to tell every single thing about those books that were meaningful to him. So Paola did such a beautiful job of, you know, taking one or two details in a sentence and for One Hundred Years of Solitude she has Gabriel Garcia Marquez [assumed spelling] yellow butterflies all over the page, which is something I never would've imagined, because she's the visual thinker, and the artist. Or, you know, showing the scenes from [inaudible] surrounding Jose as he's leaning against a garbage can with a stack of books, reading, and the cover in her illustration is the real cover of the very first book he found. So the -- findings those details from my research and sharing them and weaving them in, the collaborative process with an illustrator is just so much fun once you realize how to get there. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. And the illustrations in that book are magnificent. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. She did an incredible job. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I was sorry she couldn't be here today. So yeah. Thank you for sharing a little bit about her. I was going to ask you that at the beginning, if you knew anything, to share that part too, so thank you so much. And let's see. And Raul, you haven't shared yet. Would you share with us? >> Raúl The Third:. Well it's funny because since !Vamos! Let's Go Eat , I have written and illustrated five books and just illustrated two more, so that's a total of seven since then, so it's kind of hard to like remember exactly [laughter] what I was going through at the time. But I will say that I mainly have fun more than I -- you know, than I struggle with a creation of these books. But one thing that I loved about !Vamos! Let's Go Eat that was different than !Vamos! Let's Go to the Market is that when I started working on !Vamos! Let's Go eat I knew that the series had expanded from just two books all the way up to 10. And so that meant that I could have a great time really exploring the personalities of some of the characters and bring out characters that I wanted to make the flagship characters in the series. And also put a spotlight on characters that were going to be spinning off into their own titles as the world of !Vamos! expanded. And so it was a lot of fun to just kind of think about the entirety of the world of !Vamos! as I worked on this one particular volume. So yeah, it was fun. And, you know, it's always -- it always -- it is obviously always challenging because, you know, any drawing, a spread could take anywhere from 24 hours to 40 hours to complete. And so it does take a lot of focus. But it's something that I've been training to do since I was a little kid, so it's fun. I really enjoy it. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah, it's like creating -- you know, fantasy writers have to create the back story, and the lighting, and where everything comes from, and to think about you were able to create this, I mean, whole world -- >> Raúl The Third:. Yeah. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. -- of -- that's real and yet not. That's -- >> Raúl The Third:. Yeah. And I -- and also during the making of book number two I also found out that we were going to be adapting it into a television series, and so it added an extra layer of -- of development. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. Because then you have to [inaudible] that's a different -- that's sort of a 3D thing [laughter], kind of blows my mind a little bit to think about today. But that's exciting. So you're creating -- >> Raúl The Third:. Yeah. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. -- within a [inaudible] sort of 3D I guess? >> Raúl The Third:. Yeah. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. Oh, that's neat. Congratulations, that's exciting. That's very exciting. And what about you? >> Aida Salazar:. Wow. Well, it's a difficult story. It was a -- so difficult to write. As I mentioned earlier, I cried through a lot of it. It was what kind of helped me regulate my emotions as I was drafting it. My husband would walk into the room, and he'd see me just like just bawling. And he'd say, what? What happened? I'm like, [foreign word], it's, you know, this is what happening at this moment for her. And because my mom was sick, the moment when her mother is having preterm labor and is taken away, that moment was really, really difficult to write. And the moments when, you know, her best friend inside the detention center confides in her that she's been molested, that was also a very difficult passage to write. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I can imagine because the best friend was relating something that [inaudible] might not have even completely understood. >> Aida Salazar:. Mm-hmm. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. And that to do that and the way you did it, I mean, literary, it was beautiful, the reality of it wasn't, you know. I'm sorry to interrupt, I just -- >> Aida Salazar:. Yeah. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. >> Aida Salazar:. Yeah, that was a very -- I had to be really careful about how that was delivered. And because I think as children's book authors we have this kind of unspoken Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. And while it's important to point to the wound and the truth of that wound, it's also important to take care of our readers and to make sure that we're telling the truth without triggering or creating further harm. So that was I think one of the most difficult. And then one of the kind of most healing moments was when [inaudible], the little girl receives a package of drawings and poems from her father, picture poems from her father, and a letter. And every time I read that letter, even now, I start to cry, and I'm not crying because -- I mean, it's painful, and it was painful to write, but I cry because it was a moment of healing for my character. And it kind of really gets to the heart of so many -- why so many parents risk that -- take that risk to come to a new country with their small children, and it explains the fight for freedom. And the struggle for freedom. And so that was like very joyful. But I'll end by saying that the most wonderful poem to write in the entire book was this poem called [foreign word]. And Betita is waking up in East L.A., her bedroom is a converted laundry room, and her dad's put up Christmas lights in there. And, you know, it's like a little duplex. And she gets up and her mom's making breakfast, and the [inaudible] are coming, the music's coming in from outside. The neighborhood is popping car wash rituals, all sorts of things are happening in the neighborhood and her parents start dancing [inaudible]. And she gets pulled into the dance, and she's putting her face on her momma's [foreign word], and they're dancing. And it's just in the kitchen, which was one of like -- of something that I remember experiencing as a child, dancing between my parents while they danced [inaudible]. So very joyful and very, very satisfying to write. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Thank you. That was beautiful. We have a few questions in the chat, so I do want to mention -- or in the Q&A, to our participants, in a few minutes here we will be taking some of your questions, and so do put them in the chat so we can have our panelists speak directly to what you're also interested in that isn't being covered, or you'd like to know more about. Going back to the questions, could you describe -- I know Raul, that you're writing -- you know, many of you the books might be autobiographical, but is there a specific character in your book, may not be the primary character, but one that resonates most for you? And why might that be? And we'll start with -- some of you had fewer characters than others, but we'll start there, and if you kind of want to, you know, spiral off onto another topic you're interested in, feel free to do so. We'll start there with Angela. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yeah. I don't think mine will be very long because I think I've kind of already touched on it. But I think what really resonated [inaudible] book access that goal of getting books to children. And I'm going to say that I resonated a little bit with both the real Jose and invented Jose and just loving stories and wanting to share them with other people. But -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. That's a librarian, of course. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yeah. That's -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Librarian -- >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. I think that's -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. -- [inaudible] the passion, the -- >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. -- [inaudible] young adult librarians, where would we be without people? In my own life I had a librarian that meant a great deal, so yes. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. I think a lot of us do. Yeah. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. Definitely. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I [inaudible]. Thank you. And what about you, Aida? >> Aida Salazar:. Can you repeat the question? I -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Sure. >> Aida Salazar:. -- read the Q&A and I wasn't sure if it was addressing one of these. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yeah. Which of the characters resonated most with you? >> Aida Salazar:. Okay. Okay. Yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Either now -- because sometimes you're writing a child but really you night be somebody else in the -- you know, does any of them resonate with you the most? >> Aida Salazar:. Yeah. Well, I think I'm a little bit of everybody. Betita is a poet, so I'm definitely, you know, resonate with that. Her mother is a teacher, and as you mentioned, I homeschooled my children, and through the arts, I used the arts integration as a way to teach them. The father is a dreamer and believes in [inaudible] and that's pretty much -- not pretty much, but it is -- that resonates with me. And there is this character, Yellow Hair [assumed spelling], who is Latina, but she dyes her hair orange or yellow, and she kind of betrays -- she's a guard, she's a prison guards, and she betrays the community. And that I think is also me in some ways, you know, as I check my privileges, being able to be an educated -- being able to be documented, not always being the most allegiance with my community, you know, for whatever reason, not because I don't want to, but because my privileges that [inaudible] me from my community. So I'm a little bit of everything in that book. Yeah. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. That's neat. That's really neat. And what about you, Yamile? I'm saying your name wrong, I know I am. Yamile. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yamile. Yamile. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Oh, I am saying it okay, then. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. You're saying it [inaudible] in there, yes. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. I got it [laughter]. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Very much like I said, I'm a little bit of everybody. Of course I love soccer, I share that passion with Camila. But I grew up in very different circumstances, although I set the book in a real neighborhood of housing -- of government housing [foreign word] it's the same place where I grew up. But our families were very, very different. I also did not ever date a professional soccer player, but in every other way, her passion for learning and for wanting to break the cycle in which many of the women of her family had been trapped in for generations. But it's very true, and that was all [inaudible] from true emotions and feelings that I had. But also I want to believe that I would've been somebody in Camila's team with a little -- like Aida also said, a little more privileges. I did have a very supportive mother, who always believed in my dreams, and even allowed me to go to school in the United States by myself when I was 19. My daughter is 19, I would not let her go to another country in which she knows nobody, but I'm grateful that my mom let me, and she really [inaudible] me. But if there is one person in which I drew the most to create Camila was my mom. She -- she was not a soccer player, but she loved soccer. And like Camila, she taught at an orphanage. And she was very revolutionary in her thoughts. She kept her maiden name all her life. And even though she married when she was very, very young. And so I feel like there's a little bit of everybody that I planted in all the characters. Perhaps the one that I feel like I resonate the most is the little girls at the end of the book that go and cheer for their team at the stadium and they [inaudible] -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Yes. Yes. >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. I've been there. I'm not ashamed to be a fan girl when I see my favorite players. And if I ever saw my greatest idols I think I would faint even [laughter]. I'm not ashamed to say that. So I think I resonate a lot with them just to see your -- these idols in real life is a wonderful experience. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Okay. That's great. Thank you. And Raul, what about you? You have a lot of characters in your book. >> Raúl The Third:. Yeah, I do. I have a lot of characters. You know what I love about making these books is like how some of these characters like remind me of people that I've known in the past. So for instance, there's this character who keeps showing up in each and every one of the books, and his name is Papetro [assumed spelling]. And he's like this guy who walks around with a staff and hanging from the staff are puppets. And when I was a little kid growing up we would go to the [foreign word] and I would sit at my Abuelita's [foreign word] and this little old man would hobble by and he would come in and he would wear layers of clothing [foreign word], he had a hat, he had [foreign word] on. And he would come in with his staff and hanging from the staff were all sorts of puppets. And I remember he would try -- he would sell his puppets outside of the [foreign word], but then at the end of the day, when he had leftovers, he would come into my Abuelita's [foreign word] and try to sell her his remainders. And he always held a handkerchief to his mouth, and he would ask -- you know, he'd start to negotiate with my Abuelita, and they'd go back and forth. And when he would remove the handkerchief, he had this gigantic piece of skin missing from his cheek, so you could see all of his back teeth. And I remember once upon a time when I was an adult here in Boston, he was one of the first characters that I drew. And so I drew him with his -- with his cane and his puppets, and the way he dressed, and the piece of skin missing from his cheek. And I sent it to my mom, and I was like, oh, yeah, [speaking in foreign language]. And my mom was like, oh, my God, I haven't thought about him for decades. And she's all, let me ask you [foreign word] and -- my grandma and grandpa had passed away. Let me ask them if they remember. And immediately everybody recognized who he was, and nobody had thought of him for 20 or 30 years, and so they couldn't remember his name. And unfortunately, this was before anyone had a phone, there were no pictures that existed of him. So suddenly it was like he was born again in these books. And it made me really think that I like to make artwork for perhaps people who have never considered themselves -- never considered that they could possibly ever be characters in a fictional work of art, or seen themselves in works of art. So I'm not sure if I answered the question, those are the types of characters that I like to create our -- they are cartoons characters, but they are also people who really helped define and shape my imagination as an artist today. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Thank you. I'm going to move into the question and answers from those viewing today. And the first one is -- it says, a couple of panelists mentioned trauma porn or pain porn, and this implicit victimization associated with people in the stories, and the question is, how in a predominantly white world conservative area, what sort of language and message could be used to best serve a younger population without regular exposure to difference? So possibly -- I'm assuming maybe that the use of the word "porn", not that we would use that probably with children, you know? I see your -- but how could this be expressed in a way maybe kids could understand? And just who wants to share. >> Aida Salazar:. Well, I'd like to speak to that. You know, the writing of -- or the revision of Land of the Cranes was written with an eye to do that. So this is written nine-year-old's to understand a very difficult and complex situation. And so I wrote it with this consciousness to show -- give this main character agency so that she knew that through poetry and visual arts she could voice and not be a victim, but an agent of change. And so -- so when you read the story in white spaces, predominantly white spaces, I would lean into that. I would lean into the example that Betita shows us, that she is not just a victim, but an agent of change herself. And that if she, in her most difficult and darkest hour can find a way through the arts to lift herself up and rise -- and raise her voice, then they can too. So that was my attempt. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. Right. That makes sense. Does anyone else have a thought? >> Yamile Saied Méndez:. Yeah. Sometimes I think we look too much into the differences. But the experiences that children from communities, you know, the Latino community, Black community, Native American, they're children, they're just children. And if we just look for the similarities instead of [inaudible], instead of reading to find offense. I've heard people say, oh, if we share these books with children from rural, you know, conservative communities, if we [inaudible] a whole other, you know, topic of conversation in that phrase alone, then Caucasian children will feel bad. But what if we just read with -- with an intention to grow compassion and grow bridges instead of walls to divide us. There's also a misconception that we don't exist in these rural communities, and we do. We're here. I live in a very rural community, and we are participants of this community, and we're as much members of this society as everybody else that's here. And so I think we just need to perhaps change our point of view to be really inclusive instead of, you know, looking for these divisions. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. I agree. Anyone else? And I guess I would also add on that the books, even they can be windows. And where you can also see yourself in the child, maybe the child is a poet, you're a poet, you know? And to kind of allow you to enter a world where the child is a child like you, and has feelings like you, and to better understand that author and the relationship. Because you are an other to someone else. So yeah, you know, I agree. Let's see. Someone entered late, but they're really interested in -- It's a really long question. The questions -- it's sort of a vague question about the relationship between the writing and the illustrating as the two exist together in the book. So some of you have books with smaller illustrations or none, and some of you, you know, the illustrations have a visual narrative that expands on. And so she just wants to know a bit more about how that relationship works or how it comes about. >> Angela Burke Kunkel:. I can speak to that a little bit as someone who write but doesn't illustrate, and Digging for Words is a picture book. I think it's important to leave space for the artwork, which tells, you know, half the story if not more, because that's what children are looking at as we're sharing those books with them. And I think it's incredibly important that -- Paola Escobar is Columbian and is from -- lives in Bogota and brought that -- all of those wonderful details in her illustrations to really reflect [inaudible]. And I think you write with the story in mind, and I think many of us picture the story in our head, but you give up that control to honor the illustrator and their vision and their talent. And so I would say, if you're at the early phases of writing, it's okay not to worry about it and just to tell the story the best you can. Because my favorite parts of Digging for Words are the collaborative pieces that I couldn't have predicted what they would've turned out like. So -- >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Raul, I know you've illustrated for others in the Lowriders series, do you have anything to say along those lines? >> Raúl The Third:. Well, it is a -- it is a collaborative process. I've been really fortunate in that a lot of the works that I have created with collaborators, Cathy Camper and -- specifically Cathy Camper and Jason Reynolds, these were projects that we created outside of the system. And so I was a big part of conceptualizing the visual look for both of these series. And so in a sense as an illustrator for, you know, these graphic novels, I almost feel like I am a director in that I am directing performances from the characters, based on the dialogue that the storyteller has given me. And then when it comes to the collaboration within a picture book, what I love -- I worked with Matthew Ringler recently on Strollercoaster , is -- the spareness of the text and how it really left it open to mine and my collaborator, Elaine Bay's imagination to fill in the blanks with, you know, what we ended up putting on the page. And like Angela as just saying, it's probably best not to worry too much about what the final image is going to be because when you get to the point of creating the book, either an editor or the author themselves has chosen the illustrator because they want to work with them as opposed to look over their shoulder as they create the work of art. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. >> Raúl The Third:. Which I don't want. >> Ruth E. Quiroa:. Right. No. No [laughter]. I see that we're sitting right at 6:30 -- or my time is 6:32 [laughter]. It's 7:32 on the East Coast, and we're supposed to be ending, and we have -- yes, it's time to go to bed for some of you, it's quite late. I appreciate the time you've taken today. And not only that, but the giving of your hearts, and your joy, and your deep research, and napping with your children [laughter] while you write, and we do look forward to many more of these books. There was a question that I think I'll sort of end with, how do preserve the interest in children for their rich culture when it seems to have so many forces in the opposite directions? And I would say that you all keep publishing. Getting it on those bookshelves, both in Argentina and here, so that we're seeing these books front and center, everywhere. They're the first things that come on the ads, you know, not just because I'm into it. But keep at it, even when it's hard and painful, I just encourage you to keep at it, because it's such an inspiration to me, to my colleagues, and more than anything, to the librarians, to the teachers, and to the children. Thank you all for your wonderful discussions, and to everyone here, and for this wonderful panel. Very well done. [ Music ]