Goldy Luck's Arduous Path from Vision to Reality

As Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas’ publication date finally arrives on Jan. 7, 2014, after a lengthy and arduous nine-year journey, I can’t help but reflect on the path this book has taken from my original vision to the final product, and the many hands it has passed through and how each has helped shape the book in some significant way.

The journey began about a dozen (or so) years ago, when I learned about fractured fairy tales at a writing conference. I was intrigued by the idea of re-writing a familiar tale from a different perspective or culture. After checking out some books at the library, I played around with a few fairy tales. Something about the Goldilocks story had always stuck with me. Here was a little girl breaking and entering into the three bears’ home, destroying their stuff, and leaving a mess never to be heard from again. How rude! And what kind of message does this story give kids? I wanted to re-write this story with a more compassionate protagonist and a more satisfying ending.

My first few attempts told the story from Papa Bear’s perspective (I believe it was called “Papa Bear’s Good Deed”). The story began from the moment Goldilocks ran away, leaving her hat behind, and Papa Bear’s journey to find Goldy and return the hat to her—and all the people he inadvertently frightened along the way (because he was a bear) even though he had set out to do a good deed. It went on for about 2,000 words. Yeah, not even close to publishable. And, it didn’t have the unique angle I was looking for or the resolution that I felt was missing from the original story.

Then, a title and a “what if” question popped into my head. What if Goldilocks wasn’t a little girl with blonde ringlets, but Chinese? I asked my aunt to help me come up with a Chinese name that sounded phonetically similar to Goldilocks and hence, the first seeds of  a story called “Go Dil Lok and the Three Chans” began to germinate. But I wanted the book to be about more than just Goldy having a different ethnic background. I wanted the story to also offer some insights to Chinese traditions and culture. So, Go Dil Lok began her fictional life in a skyrise apartment in Hong Kong (where I had spent my adolescent years), preparing to celebrate the biggest and most colorful Chinese festival of the year, Chinese New Year.

In its nine-year route to publication, this story passed through the hands of my writing group, The Ukiah Writers Salon (multiple times), and five different editors from two publishing houses who have all contributed greatly to shaping the book. This meant changing the name from the hard to pronounce Go Dil Lok to Goldy Luck (“Luck” serving the double purpose of being a Chinese last name as well as mirroring the theme of good luck in the book) and relocating Goldy from an international location to an American one (which one editor felt kids in the US can better relate to.)

In my attempts to give the mundane beds and chairs a modern twist, earlier versions of the book included an aquarium (Goldy smudged the glass), an oriental rug (she spilled fish flakes all over it) and a computer game (Goldy beat Little Chan’s record). And a greatly detailed Chinese New Year parade with lion dancers. I thought it’d make for really fun illustrations, but another editor wisely suggested I simplify the story and revert back to the original three bowls/chairs/bed structure. 

Still, I wanted a slightly different spin. Enter my uncle’s massage chair and my parents’ Tempurpedic electric bed (as a writer, I never know what every day event or thing creeps into a story!). The really fun part was implanting the traditions and rituals of the New Year (receiving “lucky” red envelopes, eating turnip cakes) into the story and thinking up ways to make Goldy’s experiences more culturally relevant (“She felt like stuffing in a pork bun,” “The mattress felt as hard as a week-old almond cookie”)

Finally, illustrator Grace Zong added her fabulous artistic touch, and brought Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas to vibrant life.  So, how many people did it take to make this children’s book? One writer, five editors, four readers in a writing group, one agent, one illustrator, one publisher, not to mention the cast of people behind the scenes from the art director to the marketing personnel. Yes, an entire village. Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but publishing is not. And I am truly grateful to my Charlesbridge village for making my vision become a reality. 

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Posted by Natasha Yim, author of Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas, releasing January 7, 2014.

Multiculturalism within Latinos

I lived for over a decade in Somerville, the next town up from Cambridge, in Boston, Massachusetts. There was no "T"--as we called the subway--in Davis Square when I moved there, and for the first couple of years I rode a bus to Harvard to catch the train to downtown Boston. I remember hiding behind a book while I studied the world around me. In each ride I could count Greeks, Irish, Polish, Portuguese, and Italians sharing with me the early morning and whatever temperature was in season. I thought I would miss that when I moved to San Francisco; not the weather, mind you, but the fact that there were restaurants, street celebrations, and friends from all over the world that gave daily meaning to the word multiculturalism.

How far from reality that thought was! What I encountered in California was equally diverse, but this time within the Latino culture. Just a few weeks ago in celebration of spring, some forty friends descended to our house and at some point we formed a circle to acknowledge friendship and humor in the passing of time. In that circle there were at least fifteen different representations of the word "Latino," not only from the country of origin but also from ethnicity, language, and cultural evolution.

Not even our friends from the same country, Mexico, have the same first language or culture. Some of the fifty indigenous languages that are still alive in Mexico have crossed the border and fortunately survive in the realm of intimate everyday life. All of us had one language in common, English, and many two, when adding Spanish. A few three, counting the regional first languages we were born in, but the great evidence was how the mix of Latinos within the Latino community have evolved. My Salvadorian friend Vicky has married José from Mexico. Victor from Honduras has married Emilia from Panama. And my Cuban friend Diana is about to get married to a Venezuelan. I could of course continue mentioning the even larger mix that I see in the third generation. Latinos are expanding their horizons, as did all other immigrants before. 

When Alma Flor proposed the idea of writing our latest book, Yes! We Are Latinos, I immediately understood the importance of a gallery of portraits that would reflect the reality that surrounds us. Co-authorship is something we have been practicing for two decades. "It doubles the thought, the passion, and the craft," we tell people who ask how does “it” work. This particular book has been both a challenge and a pleasure. Alma Flor had hundreds of students in her doctoral program at the University of San Francisco who brought their roots to class to expose, dissect, study, comprehend, and embrace the identity hidden in their names. Many were Latinos. We joined them in a project in Teotitlán del Valle, near Oaxaca, during a summer that resulted in a profound experience for all of us. The seeds of those conversations, encounters, and friendships grew in the form of words that make up Yes! We Are Latinos.

One topic that kept coming into conversations among friends and students was the need that we all felt to share the journey, to tell each other where we came from, and how that came to be. The history of our individual immigration became the question of the social and political circumstances that motivated some and forced others to leave their countries of origin to come to the United States. In the case of Alma Flor and myself, we both are first generation immigrants. Others in our circles are second, third, or too far back to remember. We realized that it was common to many of us the need to know more about each other’s history, and I agreed with Alma Flor that we needed to leave a record of all of this, to provide knowledge of the past, and a foundation for this new social group called Latinos to continue on the path towards a broader identity. In the words of the last profile in the book, our character named Román puts into words our sentiment: 

And, looking at these walls inside the tower,
written by Frederico Vigil
I realize the strength of my heritage,
the contradictions of our history,
the battles won and lost
within our hearts.
We have been mixing for centuries.
Mixing our blood, and our faiths.
Mixing traditions, music, and dance.
Mixing our languages, our literatures.
Mixing us into a greater reality,
a larger identity.
One that now calls us Latino.
Yes! We are Latinos. 


Pienso en sus palabras, las de Frederico Vigil
y mirando estas paredes
me doy cuenta de la fuerza de mi herencia,
las contradicciones de nuestra historia,
las batallas perdidas y ganadas
dentro del corazón.
Hemos estado cruzando nuestras vidas durante siglos.
Mezclado nuestra sangre y nuestra fe.
Mezclando tradiciones, música y baile.
Mezclando nuestras lenguas y nuestra literatura.
Una mezcla hacia una realidad más amplia,
una identidad mayor.
Una que ahora nos llama latina, latino. 
¡Sí! ¡Somos latinos!



Posted by F. Isabel Campoy, co-author of Yes! We Are Latinos, which releases August 1, 2013. 


Headed to ALA at the end of the month? Mark your calendars! On Sunday, June 30th at 1:00 PM, Isabel and Alma Flor Ada, along with author Judy Goldman and Teresa Mlawer, translator and expert on Spanish and bilingual titles, will discuss the trends and needs in the Spanish/Bilingual and Latino Interest marketplace. Click here to learn more about this special ALA Book Buzz program.

Seeing All of Us in Diverse Children's Books

This past March I sat around a table with a group of women, discussing my latest picture book, A Path of Stars, the story of the relationship between a young Cambodian American girl named Dara and her grandmother, a survivor of the "Killing Fields." The group happened to be inmates at the local women's prison, participants in a wonderful reading and writing program led by author Monica Wood (When We Were the Kennedys); I was the visiting author-illustrator. 

Going around the circle, each participant--mostly white women raised in Maine--shared a response to the book. No one said, "I really liked this opportunity to learn about another culture," though I'm sure they did absorb new information. Instead, what I heard again and again was, "I really loved this book because it reminded me of my relationship with my grandmother."

In the course of the conversation, we discovered another connection between the characters in my book and the women. Like Dara's grandmother, they were survivors.

A scene from A Path of Stars; Dara and her grandmother

So often, "multicultural" books are relegated to the purpose of examining differences, such as during Black History Month. What if books with diverse characters and cultures--like the ones in the previous post--were seen as being about, and necessary to, all of us?

Face research for Dara in A Path of Stars

In 1998, I traveled with a black South African friend to southern Africa, as preparation for illustrating a nonfiction book, Africa is Not a Country by Margy Burns Knight and Mark Melnicove. I wasn't planning to do any specific research so much as to look for some sense of connection, some insight that would inform my attempts to portray the diverse range of African cultures, none of which I belonged to and all of which I knew little about. I expected the countries I would be visiting--Swaziland and Zimbabwe as well as South Africa--would be the most culturally different of anything I'd ever seen, the equivalent of traveling to the moon.

That wasn't my experience. As I shopped open air markets in Capetown, walked the dusty paths of my friend's hometown neighborhood of Dube in Soweto, and bought food from street vendors in Durban, instead of a sense of curiosity at the exotic, my response was recognition. Despite the different colors of the landscape and the different customs of people's lives, I kept seeing things that seemed somehow familiar. It took me days to realize that I was reminded of the neighborhoods I'd grown up in in 1960s South Korea, of the ways in which daily life--from brushing teeth to bathing to baby care--was communal and took place in plain sight in the streets and alleyways. In the streets of southern Africa, I saw my own story. 

This was the insight that I brought back with me from my trip, the touchstone I held onto as I went through the lengthy process of research, consulting, collaboration, and critique, to create accurate and respectful images. It taught me that after all the essential work, there's another aspect to authentic representation that can't be found in the data. If we are to truly connect across all our differences, we have to let our hearts respond, and we have to trust those responses as true expressions of our common humanity.

I don't leap over differences to get to commonalities. As I'm researching and creating, I'm focused on the particular details of what defines human uniqueness, in groups and in individuals. The details of difference matter, and have meaning. I keep remembering how little I know, what blinders I'm wearing, that I often can't even imagine what questions to ask. I assume I will make many mistakes. I seek lots of input from primary source experts, people with lived experience, to help me see what I can't see.

But the North Star towards which I am navigating is the core belonging of each of us to one human community. In the images we communicate of "other people"--through the words and pictures we create as writers and illustrators, and the books we share with children as educators and parents--the sweet spot is lively, particular human being. To see, and reach for, our own selves reflected there. Anything less is not enough for our children. 

Ultimately, authentic diversity isn't about getting it "right." It's about getting each other. 


Posted by Anne Sibley O'Brien, author and illustrator of several books for young readers, including A Path of Stars. Anne blogged for Unabridged about the process of creating A Path of Stars here.

Meet Anne during Children's Book Week! 

In partnership with Primary Source and Charlesbridge, Anne Sibley O'Brien will be discussing race, ethnicity, and diversity in children's books. 

Her program, entitled "From the Heart: Illustrating Across Race and Culture," will take place on Tuesday, May 14th from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Watertown Public Library, 123 Main Street, Watertown, MA. 

A reception and book signing will follow at the Charlesbridge Original Illustration Gallery 

at 85 Main Street, Watertown, MA (two doors down). Free and open to the public! 

Kindly RSVP to trademarketing@charlesbridge.com. 

For more information about this event, please click here.