[music] welcome to between the covers summer series i'm anne boccock and with me is award-winning children's author alexandra alessandri she's the daughter of colombian immigrants a former associate of professor of english and a poet and she was a finalist in the 2021 international latino book awards and won the silver medal in the 2020 florida book awards for young children's literature her latest book is a picture book isabelle and her colorist go to school welcome it is so nice to see you thank you so much thank you for having me this is that dreaded first day of school and there's added pressure because isabelle doesn't speak english very well tell me about this story so isabel and her colors go to school is about isabelle who is starting school and she is artistic and creative and she is looking forward to going to school but she is really nervous precisely because she doesn't know how to speak english she comes from a spanish-only home and she's worried about not being able to fit in not being able to understand her teachers not being able to make friends a lot of those milestones that kids are looking forward to and she has to find a way to bridge that language barrier with whatever means she has who did you write this story for oh i wrote it um i wrote it for those students who like isabelle and like me have found themselves in a classroom with not knowing [music] not necessarily just not knowing how to speak the language but maybe in a new situation but in particular those who are coming from homes where english is not the main language and they're finding themselves figuratively lost in their new environment is there one particular takeaway that you hope parents and their children will come away from with this book that it's important to be able to um offer that hand in friendship through sarah one of the main one of the characters that isabelle comes in contact with um she is given that friendship and that hand into feeling like she belongs and it's important that we are there for our students to be able to feel like they belong we all want to feel that and we all want our children to feel that too this book is interesting in in because it is it's a bilingual picture book and talk about that if you would because that's really interesting to me so it was always a dream to be able to have a bilingual picture book not just because it would mean that my mom could listen to it and hear it and understand it in her native language but also because it is the language that i speak i'm constantly speaking and spanglish if you will and spanish was my first language um i the book was originally submitted in english and it was my editor who suggested actually having it in both languages in which case i translated the the english text into spanish but it the text itself was always written in spanglish since that is my bread and butter my daily life that was brilliant when did you know that you wanted to write and when did you know you wanted to write for children i've always been a storyteller uh and i didn't always know i wanted to be a writer um i did always write from the moment that i could i had a lot of notebooks poetry um my teenage years were spent writing in that notebook but even from the moment that i was a child i was always telling story and i was always in story whether it was through books that i was reading or telling my cousins in their sleepover having a telling them stories of clouds and princesses or with my neighborhood friends i was always in story when i went to college i had a moment that i thought i was going to focus on poetry but it wasn't until my son was born after my dad died and after my son was born that i started reading uh to my son and i would just see him fall in love with the characters and with the plot and there was always this bright eyed more i want more and i realized how much i loved that because it reminded me of when i was a kid when i was a kid i was an only child my son's an only child and stories just were my comfort and where my safety and i saw that in him and i realized that i wanted to be able to gift that to children i want to know if you kept that notebook from when you were a teenager and you still have it though i did and then i lost it and it's somewhere in my house okay it's in your house you'll find it it's in my house somewhere is there a void it's particularly in children's books when we talk about diversity yes absolutely and there we've made some strides and i from the moment i started in 2012 seriously pursuing publication to where we are now it's there we have so much more but there's still so much that is left to say there's so many communities that still haven't been given that that chance to tell their stories so we definitely need that um i think the last numbers in publishing was that it's about 10 12 i want to say of books featuring latinx characters well keep that up because we we love what you're doing alexandra on your website you say that poetry is your first love what is it about poetry poetry i love the sounds of poetry so i love the sound of words and the way they come together but mostly because they are a vehicle for emotion and a vehicle for being able to speak about hard things without needing a lot of words and sometimes in that in that silence in the white space on the page that's when a lot of the emotion comes together and it's just it's a vehicle for being able to dive into yeah those hard subjects that maybe we're not ready to speak in prose well said you speak like a poet your very first book you hit it out of the park winning awards and i know you have a book for middle schoolers that you're working on if i'm correct it's going to come out in 2023. give us a tiny peek into what it's about so the middle grade novel is uh which was released in spring 2023 is a middle grade fantasy adventure and it is a story of 12 year old valentina and her brother julian who don't believe their father's stories about the myths and legends of colombia they don't believe in the madre monte or the patasola or mano peluda but when they're in the andes trying to chase a patasola they end up in with an earthquake that ends up bringing them to this alternate world where all of these myths and legends are real and they have to convince the madre monte who does not like humans because humans have a tendency of violence and destroying the earth um she they have to convince her to send them back home and save their dad i love it and i'd love for you to come back and talk with us later about that when when that book is out but now i'd like to do a really quick lightning round with you if we could do that okay first question you've taught in college what's one thing you've learned from your students to keep an open mind what was your first job i was a cashier at navarro pharmacy discount what is one place you never get tired of going back to colombia what is one thing you do not like doing cleaning the house and one piece of advice that you would give to your teenage self don't be afraid to dream big and take risks thank you so much for being here alexandra it has been a pleasure to chat with you thank you so much for for inviting me it's been an honor alexandra alessandri's latest book is isabelle and her calories go to school look for her middle school book in 2023 i'm ann beaucoc please join me on the next between the covers and you can listen to our podcast go between the covers wherever you get your podcasts [music]