Children’s Book Shares Experience of Immigration.

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Children’s book author Yuyi Morales tells her immigrant story in ‘Dreamers’

Profile image for Nancy Churnin By: Nancy Churnin, Theater Critic


For 15 years, Yuyi Morales has been writing and illustrating magical, award-winning picture books about clever tricksters, monster-fighting niños and heroic historical figures such as Frida Kahlo. In all that time, it never occurred to her to tell her personal story. 

Now in the wake of attacks against immigrants, she’s decided to share her perspective on her trek from Mexico to America with her then two-month-old son, Kelly, when she was 25. In Dreamers, she uses spare, lyrical language to describe the love between a mother and a son:

“I dreamed of you, then you appeared. Together we became Amor-Love-Amor. Resplendent life, you and I.”

Available in Spanish as Soñadores, Holiday House Publishing, NY.

She doesn’t tell you why they made the journey in the book, but she shares how the journey to this strange place where no one spoke their language made them feel: scared and, finally, hopeful, when they discovered the wonders of a public library where they could read books, practice their English and, for Morales, awaken a passion that would make her realize what she had to do with her life.

The book comes out Sept. 4 in English as Dreamers and in Spanish as Soñadores from Neal Porter Books at Holiday House Publishing in New York. She’ll present the books at Barnes & Noble at Stonebriar Centre in Frisco on Oct. 25.

“I never thought my story could be a book for young children because I came to the United States as an adult and a mother,” she says on the phone from Xalapa, Mexico, where she has returned to live.

In the end, she wrote the book because she couldn’t write anything else. She was so distressed by harsh rhetoric against immigrants after the 2016 presidential election that she shut down.

“My editor and my agent said, ‘We want your story, we want to hear it; this is the right time to tell it.'”

At the same time, her son, who was finishing college in the United States, asked her what happened when they came to the U.S. She dug deeply into her memories to share the transformative moments of their journey together.

 

In many ways, the book is a children’s book version of the letter she wrote to her son.

“There were so many things we didn’t know…”

Read more here…


School Library Journal Review: Dreamers by Yuyi Morales

Dreamers
By Yuyi Morales
Neal Porter Books (an imprint of Holiday House)
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4055-9
Ages 5 and up

Work in the children’s book business long enough and you run the risk of harboring grudges. Or, to be more specific, grudges o’ love. Grudges on behalf of the hardworking authors and illustrators that never seem to get their adequate due.

There are whole lists of talented people out there that somehow don’t appeal to award committees, year after year, in spite of their supreme talents. That’s why it makes me so happy when things begin to change.

Yuyi Morales may be a name new to you, but I’d been following her career closely over the years. Her remarkable model work on her Caldecott Honor winning book Viva Frida was preceded five years earlier by the unjustly ignored model work she did on Tony Johnston’s My Abuelita. And for all that the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor given to Thunder Boy Jr. celebrated her unique ability to enclose and encircle and gather together, where was the wide acclaim for her earlier Mexican wrestler delight Nino Wrestles the World?

So you can imagine my happiness when I saw Dreamers for the first time. Not since Jerry Pinkney’s Lion and the Mouse have I had such a palpable sense of a long-term artist finally getting their due. Now, at long last, the world will know better the name “Yuyi Morales”. And keep knowing it too, if I don’t miss my guess.

On the title page, a girl sleeps on a desk, a pencil fallen from her hand and drawings scribbled beneath her. Turn the page and now that same hand is holding a pencil, but it is adult now. It has written “Amor – Love – Amor.” above the image of a mother and child falling towards one another. The text reads, “I dreamed of you, then you appeared.”

The child is tiny and the two travel across a bridge to a place full of fog and bats and words that cannot be understood. Unable to connect, the two learn, make mistakes, and just walk endlessly until they reach “a place we had never seen before.”

The books there are for the taking and it is “Where we didn’t need to speak, we only needed to trust.” And with trust comes knowledge. And with knowledge comes creativity and art and the ability to find your own voice. And the hand that at the start wrote “Amor – Love – Amor” writes “Love Amor Love” at the end.

A personal note from the author and an extensive Bibliography of “Books That Inspired Me (and Still Do)” bring everything to a close.


 

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