Welcome to Fresh Voices! In this new series, we are excited to share with you authors whose books capture a unique aspect of the human experience. Enjoy this Q&A with the creators behind Areli Is a Dreamer, author Areli Morales and illustrator Luisa Uribe!

Areli: I became fully aware of my undocumented status at a very young age and was struck with fear when I realized that everything could be taken away at any moment if I spoke about my first home. For many years I kept my status a secret because I thought my silence would keep my family safe and united. It was a challenge to find the courage to break out of that silence and write my story down on paper. It feels liberating to share my true story and meet new people that share similar experiences. Sometimes, I did not have the right words to communicate my experience to a younger audience through the perspective of a child. Thankfully I had the support of my agent, Brenda Bowen, who is also a talented children’s book author. She helped me find the right words to address the complex emotions and circumstances. The easiest part was writing about my relationship with my family. This book is proof that their support, love, and sacrifices made a difference.

Luisa: Getting the moments of emotion were hard for me. I felt that I had to do justice to the sad but hopeful points in the story. When Areli leaves her grandma and arrives in NY, her being so small making such a hard journey, and the embrace of her parents afterwards, those images were hard. The easiest drawings were the happy and hopeful moments. Drawing the pictures of Areli thriving was exciting and motivating after drawing her struggles earlier in the book.

It feels absolutely magical and surreal to see my story documented in a picture book gorgeously illustrated by Luisa Uribe. The pairing of my words and Luisa’s illustrations beautifully captures the hardships, lessons, and triumphs of my immigration story. I also feel privileged to share my story with the world because so many undocumented immigrants still don’t have that privilege.

In the book, I focused on my relationship with my abuela, my brother and parents. However, there are so many wonderful relatives and friends that cared for me and nurtured my growth. I wish I could have included these people and the special moments I shared with them but couldn’t due to the length of the picture book. The famous phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” rings true in my childhood both in Mexico and New York. One day, I hope to write about my lovely aunt Rocio that brought me lunch every day in kindergarten. My friend Rose, the owner of my first home in NYC that treated my family like her own family, and my late grandfather Jorge that took my brother and me on rides in his old red pickup truck around our small town in Puebla.

My sister left Colombia years ago and now lives in the US, and many relatives and good friends live far away–some halfway around the world. They are all looking for a better life for themselves and their families, and I miss them but I’m happy for them. Coming from a country where opportunities to grow and live well are scarce I understand the need to look for something better and to make sacrifices so that your family can have a better future.

As for the challenges of depicting a living person’s story, it is process that requires a lot of research. It’s obviously important to get the characters, the setting, and all details of the story as accurate as possible so that it feels authentic. It was also a challenge to maintain the accuracy of the details, but also be able to add poetry and magic to the images, because it’s something that I like to do. Some of the choices are already made for you, in a way, which is an interesting challenge. And it was helpful to have Areli who lived the story, to let me know if anything didn’t feel exactly right.

Areli: I want this book to be a mirror for immigrant children so they can see themselves reflected in my story and connect with others going through similar experiences. I want this to be a window to those that don’t share this experience but feel encouraged to uplift immigrant voices.

Luisa: Areli said it perfectly, I want immigrant kids and kids that come from immigrant families to have a story that is about them and for them, with characters that look like them, and for other kids to understand what this experience is like so they can be allies in the future.

Areli: Currently reading: Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds (with a student I’m tutoring) and In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero, Michelle Burford.

I will always reread and be inspired by The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

Luisa: I just finished reading Cry, Heart, But Never Break by Glenn Ringtved and illustrated by Charlotte Pardi, and am getting ready to start on Can We All Be Feminists? Edited by June Eric-Udorie. I read a lot of science-fiction last year and Ursula K. Le Guin is a great inspiration.

Areli: I would love to work on a project focused on the experiences of children and youth who were born or raised in the US and returned to Mexico with their parents. I would love to meet them and hopefully collaborate on a children’s book that talks about their experiences living between two countries, cultures, and languages.

Luisa: I’d love to work on a project for children about climate change, which would underline the urgent changes we need to make while being hopeful for the future.

Training for an Ironman is incredibly boring for spectators. I find the long workouts centering—I solve all my writing problems in the pool!—but six hours straight on a bike does not dramatic tension make. Trying to keep training interesting to read about was really hard!

The easiest part, unfortunately, was writing Miho’s experience of racism. It’s still pretty easy for me to pull up the exact feeling of being told I didn’t earn my spot in college because I’m a person of color, or the feeling that everyone around me is staring because I’m the only non-white person in a room. This book was a nice way to turn some of my lingering bitterness into something positive. Make good art, as the saying goes.

I gave small pieces of my own insecurities to all the kids in this book, including the “villains.” I see a lot of my teen self in all these characters. But, as an adult, I definitely identify most with Tua. I’m a student supervisor at a university library, and the challenge of working with new adults has been one of the most satisfying parts of my library career. Friendship and family are at the heart of many books, but mentorship is something that is particularly important to me.

I would put Bicycle from The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle into this story. Bicycle is a quiet but very determined girl who rides her bike across the country in search of friendship. I think Miho’s next chapter should involve branching out with some new bike friends who are different from her, but just as passionate as she is!

I hope that teens leave this book more conscious of the labels that they apply to themselves, and the way those labels can both empower them and limit what they think is possible. Miho is an artist and an athlete from the very start—she just doesn’t know she’s allowed to call herself one. Identity can be a powerful community-building tool, but it can also be a prison.

I am currently reading We Ride Upon Sticks. Naturally, I have a soft spot for books about teen girls in sports, and this one is beyond delicious. Every sentence is just perfectly rich.

Patterson: Condensing years into just a few stand-out moments was challenging. There are so many moments that make up the gradual shifts in family dynamics – and choosing the few that resonate the loudest almost felt impossible. But in the end, with the help of my kids, we were able to pull out key memories that highlight our journey.  

Trusting that an illustrator will capture your family precisely can be nerve wracking. At first I was focused on each character looking exactly as we do in real life. But as with writing, illustrating is a layered process and as that process moved forward and the details began to come through, I realized that the key is to capture our essence. I think Charnelle Pinkney Barlow captured the essence of each of us beautifully. 

Barlow: The most difficult part about illustrating BORN READY was visually showing Penelope’s frustration without making him look like a mean kid. He’s not a mean kid, he just needed the space to express himself and be seen. The easiest part was showing Penelope’s joy as it really shines through in the writing and illustrating all of the fun ninja sequences. 

Patterson: Penel and his siblings are all smiles about the book! Each time they pick up BORN READY, which is often, they beam with pride and they marvel at how we all look and sound just like ourselves. I made sure to include all the kids in the process of writing BORN READY. I had them help with language, but also with choosing which memories to share and what feelings to convey. Now when they hold the book, it’s a trip down memory lane for them. BORN READY feels truthful and authentic to them.  

And I think I’m the one who has more ideas and wishes that I want to share with our audience. And maybe those ideas will come out in forthcoming books. But, for Penel, I think he has a sense of accomplishment – with this book for sure, and from life in general. I believe Penel feels both seen and heard and this book will be a prized accomplishment for him for years to come. 

Barlow: The character I identify with the most is Penelope’s friend Big D. While he only plays a small part in the story, I identify with the way he accepts Penelope as he is with no second thoughts. 

Patterson: I would invite James Baldwin into our lives. Baldwin sitting at our kitchen table, sharing his wisdom on gender and how it relates to race and sexuality and humanity would make for an epic moment of invocation.  

Barlow: I honestly can’t think of a character that I’d insert into this story; mainly because this story is about real happenings, so it is complete in and of itself. On another note, it would be fun to see Penelope hop into another book and go on an adventure with another character. 

Patterson: Kids have a unique power. They see the world with fresh eyes. I want kids, especially trans identified and gender nonconforming kids to know they were born ready, ready for anything that comes their way. Kids: You can move through any problem or person, any construct or system that stands in your way. You can even fly over obstacles because you are bigger than obstacles. You’re a ninja – and what you’ve come here to do is important. 

Barlow: I want kids to see that they have the freedom to be who they were born to be and belong in this world as they are. I love that this story acknowledges different questions of what it means to be trans and gender nonconforming that both children and adults have at times (such as Grandpa G exclaims that there aren’t any gender pronouns in his native language or when Penelope’s principal asks him if he is feeling embarrassed about the other kids asking him about his school uniform). This book shows what it means to ask questions while listening and giving support. BORN READY says it best: “‘Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.’” 

I’m not sure if Chinelo’s character was inspired by any one thing in particular. I think she came into my head partially formed, and the rest of her was filled out with the idea of who I thought I was at sixteen. Ginger East is also a bit of a reimagining of the neighborhood I grew up in, although way more commercial. The way I describe the street, the park, the bus stop at the top of the hill–all of it is right from my memory of the place I grew up in. It was pretty cool to include those details and see how they fit in with my idea of Ginger East.

The most difficult part was writing the eventual deterioration of Nelo and Kate’s friendship. Maybe deterioration isn’t the best way to describe it, but the subtle way their interactions change was hard for me to tackle at first because writing a friendship breakup is never an easy thing. On the flip side, I really liked writing the scenes with Nelo and Rafa because I love writing banter. It’s easily my favorite thing!

In a small way, I identify with all of them, but maybe Bo and Nelo the most. Parts of Nelo are a (bolder) version of myself, and Bo is that classic “I was kinda nerdy and now I dress better” story that I am embarrassed to say I relate to! Although, just like Bo, I never really grew out of being a nerd.

My first thought would be a character like Penny from Mary HK Choi’s Emergency Contact. To me, she’s someone who would’ve wanted to escape Ginger East the second she could, and I feel that would’ve put her in direct opposition with someone like Nelo who absolutely loves Ginger East. It would’ve been an interesting dynamic.

I’d love for teens who aren’t familiar with the world of Ginger East, and neighborhoods like it, to recognize the humanity in the people who live there. I think it’s important that we come to an understanding of what it’s like to grow up in neighborhoods like these, primarily immigrant neighborhoods, and see the good in them as well.

I just finished reading Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age and Jason June’s Jay’s Gay Agenda, and I’m waiting impatiently for my copy of Courtney Summers’ The Project to arrive!

Welcome to Fresh Voices! In this new series, we are excited to share with you authors whose books capture a unique aspect of the human experience. Enjoy this Q&A with Katie Heaney, author of Girl Crushed!

Pride looks a lot different this year, and I think it’s more important than ever that, as much (or more) than we celebrate, we treat Pride month as a time to give our time and resources to the members of our community who need it most. Any money I have to spare this June is going to the Trevor Project and other nonprofits that work with trans and queer young people of color, who are already at-risk, and even more so now. The official Pride can be super corporate, and so for me it’s also a good time to gather with my actual queer community rather than the companies that want to sell rainbow merch for a few weeks.

After coming out in my late twenties, I felt a certain amount of grief for the queer adolescence I didn’t get to have. This book was a good way to let myself have some of those vicarious experiences — and it was also a way to have fun imagining my own version of my wife’s youth. She came out at 14, in 2002, and I am so continually impressed by the bravery in that. I wanted to see a YA novel where the queer protagonists are already out and comfortable with their sexuality, so I wrote it!

I think the hardest part for me was putting myself in the shoes of a main character unlike me. Quinn and I may both be anxious, but she’s confident and self-possessed in a way I just wasn’t at 17. The easiest part was the feelings. I’m 33 now, but I still have such ready access to those swoony teenage feelings about love. Maybe that never really goes away.

I’m probably most like Jamie — kind of a control freak, type A, snarky.

This question makes me laugh because I am, as I mentioned, a control freak, so the idea of inserting someone I didn’t put there already makes me kind of antsy. It’s already set the way I want it! But if I had to, my first thought is Jo March. I can see her definitely fitting in with these girls.

I want them to know that it’s okay to figure themselves out on their own timeline, and also that they’ll never really be done figuring themselves out. I also think an important theme here is accepting that there are alternate futures for all of us, and that the one you’ve been counting on isn’t necessarily superior just because it’s the one you’ve always had in mind, or been told is right for you.