美国国家公共电台 NPR 'My Papi Has A Motorcycle' Pays Loving Tribute To A California Childhood（在线收听）

'My Papi Has A Motorcycle' Pays Loving Tribute To A California Childhood

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

In "My Papi Has A Motorcycle," a little girl named Daisy Ramona waits for her dad to come home so they can ride around their city, Corona, Calif., on the back of his motorcycle. They pass a tortilla shop, a raspados shop, her grandparents' house and her dad's construction site. The book is illustrated by Zeke Pena and written by Isabel Quintero. It's a love letter to the city and her father.

ISABEL QUINTERO: When I was a kid, my dad would get home from work and he'd put me on the back of his motorcycle and he would drive me around the neighborhood I grew up in, in Corona. And, you know, it was the '80s, so there were no helmets. In the book, obviously there's helmets. But it was a different time. And I really was holding onto that memory and it was so special to me, that relationship between myself and my dad.

FADEL: This summer, we've been asking authors and illustrators how they work together to bring stories to life. They often don't, but illustrator Zeke Pena says his collaboration with Quintero is represented on every page of the book.

ZEKE PENA: She even was like cool enough to go drive in her car around the neighborhood that she grew up in so I could, you know, physically see the space and see the turns of the corners, see the trees, the way the homes are built, kind of those things. This shows through in the story, right? Like, there's really specific things that are from Isabel's memory, you know, and I sneak some things from my own memory in there a little bit as a kid. But there's the specificity and that's what, for me, makes the story so strong is that Isabel has this, like, this personal experience and we're trying to tap into that and illustrate that and kind of create that spark for other readers, young and old.

QUINTERO: When I was a kid in Corona, there was a tortilleria. In the book it's Tortilleria Estrella, and in real life, it was Tortilleria Don Leon. And those things are pretty specific to where I was at, but I think other people can connect to living in a community where you walk to places like a tortilleria or to Joy's Market. Zeke did such an amazing job with that market that so many people have told me like, I know that market. That markets in my neighborhood, you know, with the pinatas outside and the little gumball machines and the carniceria inside the store. So it is very specific, but it's also, you know, a story that especially Latinx kids in other parts of the country can enjoy or can relate to.

PENA: For me, in the book it's, like, that first page. Daisy Ramona's working on the motorcycle, and she's working with this toolbox. And that was like my dad. Like, that's kind of really what I got from my dad was, you know, learning how to work with my hands, learning how to work hard and stuff. But I think that with Isabel and I it's nice because a lot of our backgrounds as people who identify as Latinx or, you know, identify as Chicanx or Chicanos, there's this really, like, narrow definition of what that is. But the nice thing with my collaboration with Isabel is that we span, like, a spectrum of that, right? Like, it's a spectrum. There's many different people who identify that way who come from different backgrounds and it doesn't necessarily look just one way. And I hope that, you know, the youth reading our book walk away with a validation of their own story and where their own family comes from and their heritage and their right to it, you know, their right to express that as they wish.

QUINTERO: Going off the toolbox, you know, my dad also works with his hands. And so that scene, that spread where Daisy Ramona gets to the worksite with her dad is probably one of my favorite scenes in the book because Zeke was able to capture, like, so much emotion of what it's like for a kid like myself - like, when I was a kid, going to work with my dad, and that happiness and that joy of getting to see where my dad worked, you know, hearing the sound of the music, the music in Spanish in the background and the men yelling at each other and cracking jokes. And so when I opened to that spread, I cried because you don't see a lot of celebration of working-class people in children's books, especially not, you know, working-class brown men. And I know there will be a lot of children who'll be able to say, oh, like, that's my dad.

FADEL: We couldn't ignore that while we were talking about Isabel Quintero's love letter to her city and her people, Zeke Pena is from El Paso, and earlier this month, his city suffered an enormous loss - a mass shooting that targeted the Latinx community and took the lives of 22 people.

PENA: It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to see these people suffering, to see my people suffering, our community. You know, who am I? You know, who am I to be commenting on it, you know. I do have friends and family that were affected by it and, you know, my love goes out to those people and also my action goes out to those people, right? That's something that we're all going to have to live with for the rest of our lives and we're going to hopefully do something to change it.

FADEL: That was illustrator Zeke Pena and author Isabel Quintero. Their latest book is "My Papi Has A Motorcycle."

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