The annual BookFest at Bank Street, held in partnership with KidLit TV and Epic!, took place on November 1 at Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan, with a focus on “Celebrating the Joy of Books for Children and Adolescents.” The program featured a conversation with actor and author Sonia Manzano, two craft-specific panels, and a closing keynote by Laurie Halse Anderson, followed by a joint book signing.
Say Hola
Kicking off the day’s events, Sonia Manzano, beloved for her portrayal of Maria on Sesame Street, spoke with Carlos Hernandez, Pura Belpré Award-winning author of Sal & Gabi Break the Universe and professor of English at the City University of New York. Hernandez began by saying, “Sonia, you taught me English.” Growing up in a Spanish-speaking household, he was introduced to the English language and many key educational concepts through the PBS television program.
Manzano recalled that when she was a child, she didn’t see her Nuyorican identity reflected in books and on the screen until her teacher took her to the 1961 film West Side Story. The experience was overwhelming. “It was the first time I saw the banal things from my neighborhood exalted,” she said, realizing that her everyday life was worthy of artistic representation. “It gave me strength.” Years later, when working on Sesame Street, Manzano said, “I remembered myself [as a child] watching television” and the things she’d wanted to see. The creative team was receptive to her input. “The things that I suggested were acted upon,” including her concept for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers-inspired number “You Say Hola and I Say Hola.” Her goal, she said, was to make the show’s Latinx content as fun and exciting as the Muppet shenanigans.
Describing the themes that are threaded throughout her work—from her YA memoir Becoming Maria to her historical middle grade novel Coming Up Cuban—she said, “Everything I write is very personal. I remember my childhood abnormally well.” In response to a question from the audience about authentic representation, Manzano said, “Don’t feel you have to write the whole experience. Write your experience.”
Picturing America
The first panel, “Illuminating the American Experience,” brought together picture book creators Winsome Bingham, C.G. Esperanza, Jason Griffin, Traci N. Todd, and Eric Velasquez. Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Honor recipient Lesa Cline-Ransome moderated the discussion, during which each of the panelists shared an aspect of the American experience that came into clearer focus while working on their books, and what they hope readers of all ages will take away.
Bingham said that her debut picture book Soul Food Sunday, illustrated by fellow panelist C.G. Esperanza—and for which she was named a 2021 PW Flying Start—reminded her to slow down and spend time with family over a meal or another shared experience, particularly coming out of the pandemic. Raised by her great-grandmother in Jamaica before immigrating to Florida, she noted that family stories and traditions provided early inspiration. “I write for families. I center communities,” she said.
A native of the South Bronx, Esperanza said of his picture book Boogie Boogie, Y’all, “I want kids and adults to stop and look around more and appreciate the stories in their neighborhoods.” Having initially pursued a career in animation, he said that his illustration professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, co-panelist Eric Velasquez, encouraged him to consider the cinematic power of picture books and to provide “many details to tell a story.”
Caldecott Honor winner Griffin said he’s come to appreciate that “at the core, we’re all so similar and want the same things.” While illustrating picture books like The Table, written by Bingham and Wiley Blevins, he said, “I’m trying to take the words and create more entry points and windows for readers.”
Todd’s upbringing in a house “full of music” formed a direct line to her picture books Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, illustrated by Christian Robinson, and most recently Make a Pretty Sound: A Story of Ella Jenkins―The First Lady of Children’s Music, illustrated by Eleanor Davis. “I will never not write about Blackness,” she said, adding, “There are so many stories where white men are at the forefront, but if we dig deeper, we see there were others” making history. She’s always asking, “Who else was there?”
NAACP Image Award winner Velasquez aims to show in books such as She Was the First! The Trailblazing Life of Shirley Chisholm by Katheryn Russell Brown and Going Places: Victor Hugo Green and his Glorious Book by Tonya Bolden “how universal our stories—Black stories—are.” Commenting on the current political moment, he said, “It seems like more people are consuming a fabricated history. I feel I get to illuminate the part that gets hidden.”
The More the Merrier
The next panel, “What Do Kids Really Love to Read? Series Books,” featured series authors Adam Gidwitz, Debbi Michiko Florence, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Mika Song, Karina Yan Glaser, and moderator Emma Otheguy. The group discussed their process for crafting character arcs and plots that keep readers hooked across multiple books.
The Operation Kinderspion duology was originally conceived by Newbery Honor-winner Gidwitz as a long single volume, clocking in at roughly 550 pages. But with guidance from his editor, he broke the WWII adventure into two middle grade novels that could stand on their own: Max in the House of Spies, taking place in London, and Max in the Land of Lies, in Berlin. In both books, he set out to address big questions about complex moral issues. “It was important to me to depict the villains not as monsters but as humans who did the most monstrous things possible,” he said. Gidwitz believes that kids crave comedy and action and ideas all at once, and he rejects the notion that “you have to hide the broccoli,” referring to serious subjects. “I make a mean broccoli! My wife is Italian—we use lots of garlic and oil,” he said.
Around 2009, when Michiko Florence first pitched her chapter book starring a spunky Japanese American girl, she received rejection letters calling the story too niche. Inspired by the activism of We Need Diverse Books and the encouragement of a school librarian friend, she tried again a few years later. Editor Grace Kendall at FSG acquired Jasmine Toguchi, Mochi Queen and asked her to expand it into a series. Michiko Florence said she thinks of herself in “partnership” with newly independent readers and hopes Jasmine is a consistent character whom they can relate to across various storylines. “I want readers to feel successful” as they move through each installment.
Rhuday-Perkovich, author of the Operation Sisterhood series, moved around a lot as a child and found comfort in series books. “I took those books everywhere we moved and it really was like carrying my friends.” For that reason, she said, “I start all my books with a character. I’m always trying to write Black children and teens as multidimensional humans.” Describing the kinds of books she thinks young readers gravitate towards, Rhuday-Perkovich said, “Kids know when a book is genuine. They want to read good books that they can sense mean something to the people who created them.”
Mika Song originally planned the first title in her Norma and Belly series, Donut Feed the Squirrels, as a standalone picture book, but after she learned via her agent about the new Random House Graphic imprint focusing on early reader graphic novels, she recalibrated her idea. When asked about character growth across the series, she joked, “My characters don’t really change. It’s a comedy... and they’re squirrels!” However, the point of view does shift from book to book. The main challenge, she said, has been thinking up new puns for each series title.
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street author Karina Yan Glaser was surprised at how her standalone family story set in Harlem continued to expand with the support of her publisher. By book seven, the finale, she said, “I felt proud of how I’d developed my characters. I really wanted to be respectful of readers’ kinship with them.” More recently, Yan Glaser wrote a book in the Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class, a collaborative series created by Kate Messner, which features installments from 17 other authors, including fellow panelist Rhuday-Perkovich.
Otheguy, author of the Reina Ramos series, wrapped up the discussion with words of encouragement for the writers in the audience. “There’s something in every book for every reader,” she said, “and it’s our job as authors to find it.”
