The Rio de Janeiro author of children’s books in the United States, Ana Crespo, is launching a project called Lia & Luís: Who Has More? which won the Mathical Book Prize from the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in the PreK category.
The story is about twins Lia and Luís, who try to figure out who has more snacks – Luís, with his bag of cheese puffs, or Lia, with two chicken coxinhas. The book, illustrated by Giovana Medeiros and published by Charlesbridge, comes in hardcover and also in the economical paperback format and is available through any bookstore in the United States, and can also be found in libraries.
Ana moved to the United States at 23 to pursue a master’s degree in Ohio. She shares that as a child, she did not enjoy reading. “I think part of the reason is that I didn’t have much freedom to choose the books. I associated books with schoolwork, and between doing schoolwork and going to the beach, I preferred going to the beach. So I would say that my writing career began when I finally fell in love with reading, and that happened here in the United States, on the floor of a library in Indiana, reading to my daughter who was only one year old. It was from there that I started to consider the possibility of writing.
The idea of promoting Brazilian culture came when Ana felt a need to find books in English with Brazilian characters. She saw many books with Latino characters, but they all referenced the Spanish language. Very rarely did she find a book with any information about Brazil, and when she did, it was usually a book about Pelé.
Seven years later, the writer had her second child and decided to start writing. “Since I had stopped working at that time, I decided to write stories. At first, the ideas were always linked to my childhood, so the themes of the stories were always Brazilian. However, my most recent book, ‘Lia & Luís: Who has More?’, was the first based on a theme determined by the publisher.
Charlesbridge, in Massachusetts, was looking for stories with very specific mathematical themes and characters from different cultures that are not sufficiently represented in American children’s literature.
Her inspiration was a question her parents used to ask: “What weighs more, a kilogram of lead or a kilogram of cotton?” She replaced lead with chicken coxinhas and cotton with cheese puffs, creating a story with a very Brazilian flavor that leads children to compare different measurements while trying to figure out who has more.
However, the process of becoming a successful Brazilian writer in the U.S. is not easy. Ana shares that her career was launched thanks to a society in the U.S. called the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which is the largest organization dedicated to the education and training of people interested in becoming children’s writers and illustrators, from baby books to teen books.
“That’s where I met my first editor, who read the manuscript of ‘The Sock Thief: a Soccer Story’. At these events, you have the option to have your work critiqued by a professional in the field, and during that critique, she made several recommendations on how to improve the story. This book was illustrated by an Argentine named Nana Gonzalez and published by Albert Whitman in 2015. If I hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, perhaps this book would never have been published and my writing career would not have been launched,” she recounts her experience.
As we cannot avoid the topic of the coronavirus crisis, the writer mentions that in her latest project, the crisis hindered things a bit, as the events planned for the launch had to be canceled, such as conferences in schools for children. But on the other hand, this new reality opened some doors, such as online events, reaching a larger audience, and also allowing her to interact virtually with bookstores in areas with a much larger population of Brazilian immigrants than where she lives. Other books by the author:
• The Sock Thief: a Soccer Story (published by Albert Whitman and illustrated by Nana Gonzalez): based on the stories her father told her about his childhood. He and his uncle would steal thin socks from their grandmother and stuff the socks with newspaper to make sock balls. Then, they would use the balls to play street soccer. Besides words in Portuguese, the animals in this book also “speak” Portuguese. That is, the sounds they make are the sounds we attribute to animals in Portuguese. For example, instead of barking “woof, woof,” the dog in the book barks “au, au, au.”
• Hello, Tree (published by Little, Brown for Young Readers and illustrated by Dow Phumi Huck): the book was inspired by the forest fire in the Black Forest, Colorado. The book, narrated from the perspective of a pine tree, tells the story of the relationship between a girl and the pine tree, and what happens when fire threatens to destroy this “friendship.” The book is a love letter to nature.
VIVIANE FAVER
Journalist
vfaver@gmail.com