The summer before I became a teacher I took a class on how to teach writing to children. During the class, we talked about how important it is for children to see people like themselves in the books they read. I thought about what it was like when I was growing up. I never read a book where the main character was like me. I was short. My family did not have much money. I was half Mexican and half Irish/Cherokee. I read a lot so I knew if there had been a book with people like me in it, I would have found it.
I thought about how many books had been written since I was a kid. There were a lot more books and those books had lots of different kinds of people, people of different shapes, religions, abilities and races. I was happy about that. But, I still had not seen a book with somebody like me in it.
I knew that kids like me, with mixed heritages would probably love to read a book where the main character dealt with some of the same problems or questions they had. I also knew that kids who did not come from mixed heritages might want to read a book about someone different, just like I loved reading books about people who were different from me. I wished there was a book like that so that I could share it with my students. Then a little voice inside my head asked, “Why don’t you write it?”
So I did.