Among the many voices bringing contemporary Indigenous stories to young readers in North America, one narrative has been conspicuous in its absence. By that I mean stories of relationships between Native American or First Nations characters and those from India—children with very different origins and histories, from very different places on the face of our planet. yet sharing a moniker that is a bitter kind of joke, bestowed upon many diverse communities by the circumstances of colonization. So when I heard about Firefly Season (Heartdrum) by my dear friend and colleague Cynthia Leitich Smith, I knew I'd want to hear more from her about the making of this book.

Children’s Book Press, founded by Harriet Rohmer in 1975, published my second picture book, Chachaji’s Cup, a story set against the history of India’s partition, at a time when American picture books with brown characters were about as rare as flying pigs. When the press closed and the CBP list was acquired by another of my publishers, Lee and Low, it felt like predestination.

This year, Children's Book Press turns 50. In honor of this milestone, I'm reviving an old post from 2010, the year they turned 35, when I traded emails with editors I’d worked with, Janet del Mundo and Dana Goldberg.

In a big-hearted treatment of place and history, akin to Australian writer Nadia Wheatley’s iconic picture book, My Place, Karen Krossing’s latest release, My Street Remembers, is grounded in conceptions of people and place that we’d all do well to reflect upon:

• everyone is part of history and every place has a story worthy of telling.

• story should be told in all its aspects, joyful and sad.

• just as the Earth has layers, so do our histories.

• if we are to grow beyond our worst instincts, those histories must be told and read and talked about.

I'm delighted to welcome Karen Krossing to Writing With a Broken Tusk.

“Where nothing can be named, nothing is.”

In the tradition of novels that play with words (The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, The Wonderful O by James Thurber, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende) Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words by Payal Kapadia hit me like a—well, like a box of words falling off a warehouse crane. It felt significant to be reading it now in the middle of a time when words are often weaponized and taken away from people in the real world, where words exercise power and judgments are frequently made by the powerful about who ought to use them and when. 

Here’s my conversation with my colleague and friend, Payal Kapadia.

bibliophile | ˈbiblēəˌfīl | noun a person who collects or has a great love of books

That would be me, from the tender age of four, when I received this book as a prize in the admittedly modest category of “Best Endeavour.” I loved that book. I “read” it over and over, upside down and sideways. I have it still, moth-eaten as it became through years of being forgotten, then moved around as my parents hauled it with them once I had left home, finally disinterred from the bottom of an old steel trunk when my father died and my mother decided to move out of their house.

3 Little Kittens managed to survive heat, dust, damp, dryness, neglect, and small chewing insects. It is a reminder of how early in my life I fell in love with the object that is the modern book.

I fell in love with Lulu Delacre’s little coquí characters from the first time I laid eyes on Rafi and Rosi. These little siblings frolic in their Puerto Rican habitat where Rafi makes magic and amazes his little sister—until he’s found out and has to make amends. Mangos and mangroves, stars and bioluminescence. There’s so much packed into this lively little chapter book and its sequels. They have delighted children for years and now there will be a final title in the series.

In the fifth and last book in the Rafi and Rosi Series the Coquí siblings take readers to Puerto Rico once more—this time through the joys of cooking. They have to help Abuela assemble 60 pasteles to fulfill an order! That’s a hefty goal and they must surmount platters of challenges—and they’re just a pair of little coquís! Lucky for them, they end up with the crunchy arañitas, sweet guava shells in syrup, and savory pasteles puertorriqueños that are on the menu. Lucky for us, we get the recipes in the book.

Here’s Lulu Delacre’s recipe for her delicious beginner reader series.

Arwa Mahdavi, writing for The Guardian, said this about famous people who insist on writing books for children:

If I were queen for the day I’d focus less on white-collar criminals and more on literary ones: implementing an immediate ban on celebrities writing children’s books. Should a famous person so much as think of penning a kids’ book, it’d be straight to jail: locked in a cell full of the strongest-smelling air fresheners available.

Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of seven when she wrote a story called “Little Ballerina” and wasn’t satisfied with it when she finished it. She added a sequel and then more, until she had “an impossibly long series.” More from her web site:

I wrote stories and poetry all through grade school and even college, but as an adult, I suppressed my dreams of pursuing professional writing.

This pathway so closely mirrors my own childhood writing experiences and my own reluctance to honor them as an adult that I thought I’d reach out to Jamilah for a guest post. I meant to, but got sidetracked by the daily shuffle.

Lola Opatayo is a crafter of words and the host of a generous, welcoming literary podcast, Journey of the Art, on which she invites writers and storytellers to talk about their art.

I asked her to write about what she gets out of creating space for others’ writing. Here’s her piece on one of her interviews, a lovely meditation on what happens when you refuse to treat this writing business as a competitive sport:

The Gift of Fire

by Lola Opatayo

When I logged on to speak with Radha Chakravarty for Episode 24 of my podcast, I was immediately arrested by her calm disposition. Her burgundy scarf complemented the calm in her brown eyes as she softly asked if I could hear and see her clearly. It was 6:30 am in Delhi, where she lives and works, and I suspect she feared that the dawn was casting a gloom over her face. Little did she know that she herself was the light and that she had come to alter my life in a special way.

From its mango-yellow endpapers with letters scribbled across them in multiple Indian language scripts to its freshly voiced text and the colourful, energetic illustrations by Ashok Rajagopalan, 5 Fantastic Facts About the Indian Constitution is a charming invitation from the writer-editors of Tulika Books to young readers.

I emailed Radhika Menon about the book and this is what she wrote:

It really was a challenge to do a picture book on the Constitution for five and six year olds as their first introduction to the Constitution. It is personally a very important book for me to have our children - and grandchildren -  grow up with the knowledge that we have a fantastic constitution…and why it is fantastic. The idea had to be introduced visually with humour and affection for it to stay with them. Ashok was the perfect illustrator.