![]() ![]() So, when they are packing up to leave, and her father tells her that a "terrible hurricane is coming" and "we have to leave as fast as we can," she hears the fear in her father's voice, but she also hears that he's trying to be brave.Īnd then later on in the book, when they see what has happened to their home, her mother says, “We're safe and we're together. One thing that was really important is that, throughout the story, I wanted Alicia to feel reassured. ![]() What was it like to sort of tease out all of this grief and loss for children? Was it really difficult or did you have an idea of how you wanted to lay that out in the pages of the story? And the illustrations do a lot of that legwork because the illustration shows what has happened. The pages in the book - many of them have a lot of text, but then when we get to the part where Alicia and her family, who have taken refuge in a shelter, leave and make their way home, there's a little short sentence of five words: “Alicia's neighborhood was in ruins.”Īnd that is a place where Alicia and the reader, who is identifying with Alicia, has to pause and just take that in. What was your process like in figuring out how to write about loss and a natural disaster in your children's book?Ĭhildren respect honesty and I think I would be doing a disservice if I didn't portray honestly what happened there. So she hears in her mind the coquíes singing their love for Puerto Rico and that is mirroring her love and her family's love for Puerto Rico. ![]() We love the beautiful niñas y niños the very best of all. ![]()
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