Cousins in the Time of Magic: Latino History, Fantasy and Storytelling with Emma Otheguy

Step into a world where time traveling fantasy meets action-packed history with a joyous celebration of Latinx culture. Join us as author Emma Otheguy unveils the hidden threads connecting Cinco de Mayo and the American Civil War through her magical storytelling in Cousins in the Time of Magic. The book is out 2/25/25, but you can send a text or subscribe to my website this week for a chance to win a copy. 

Emma Otheguy, who holds a PhD in history, shares her insights on how fantasy can illuminate lesser-known historical events and cultural ties, emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives in children's literature. Discover how her portrayal of three distinct cousins offers a multifaceted view of Latino identity, challenging stereotypes and reshaping traditional narratives. Emma's journey from educator to author highlights her dedication to inspiring young readers with diverse stories, fostering a deeper connection to history and culture.

Timestamps and Chapters:

01:01: Cinco De Mayo and the US Civil War 

Dive into the historical connections between Cinco de Mayo and the American Civil War. Learn about Emma's inspiration for her novel and the importance of educating young readers about these intertwined events.

9:00: Exploring the Importance of Cultural Authenticity in Children's Literature

How do balloons Cousins in the Time of Magicconnect to STEM/STEAM and other cultural narratives like the Wizard of Oz? Discover how her portrayal of three distinct cousins offers a multifaceted view of Latino identity, challenging stereotypes and reshaping traditional narratives.

18:25 Becoming a Writer 

We discover Emma's adventures in Learning from teacher to PhD to award-winning author. She shares her passion for crafting stories that educate young readers about Latino history and culture.

26:12 Connecting Stories and Building Hope:

We discuss the challenges and joys of writing for different age groups and how Emma's work fosters hope and understanding among young readers.

Links:

• Emma Otheguy's Website
• Purchase Cousins in the Time of Magic 
• Follow Emma on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

00:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
On today's Adventures in Learning podcast, we are going to dive deep with Emma Otheguy, who is the author of Cousins in the Time of Magic, which is out this week. She's also written picture books, such as A Sled for Gabo and Martina has Too Many Tias. She's written a bilingual picture book, Marti's Song for Freedom, and she's also written several middle grade novels: Sylvia Acosta makes a Scene, Silver Meadows Summer, and she wrote the Madre de Aguas of Cuba with Adam Gidwitz as part of the Unicorn Rescue Society series. I am so excited to talk culture and history with her today and at the end, if you drop me an email, I will enter you to win my advanced reader copy of Cousins in the Time of Magic. So what are you waiting for? Let's dig in. So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I have to tell you I am so excited because I have an advanced copy of Cousins in the Time of Magic and I have gulped it down.

00:57
This book changed the way that I viewed history, and it made me a little mad at the end too, because I realized there was so much of history that I didn't learn properly as a kid. I had no idea that Cinco de Mayo and the Civil War were connected in any way, and we have the author of this magical book here with us today. Emma Otheguy is joining us and we're going to talk all things history and culture and, I hope, to introduce you to some of the school programs she does as well. So, Emma, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm so happy to be here.

01:34
So, Cousins in the Time of Magic, I loved this book. I thought you did such a good job of connecting sort of fantasy and that magical time travel element with real, well-grounded history. I mean, the back of the book is filled with what's real, what isn't, with your sources, with resources. I mean, any teacher looking to really offer strong history has it in here. Plus, there were some STEM things. So can you talk about the inspiration for this book and why it was so important to write this story?

02:08 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
The inspiration behind this is that Cinco de Mayo is widely known and celebrated in the United States, but very few people know the reasons for that celebration, and so one of the reasons that we celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the United States is because the Mexican victory in the Battle of Puebla this is when Mexicans won against a French emperor, napoleon III, who was trying to recolonize Mexico was really important for people living in the United States. When I talk to kids, I'm at school visits and I'm talking to them about these big events. I tell them think about it this way Mexico was already free, it was already independent. It was already independent. It had been a colony. They had had a war for independence, they had a legislature and a Supreme Court and a president. They had a democratic government. And then Napoleon III has this idea that he's going to march into Mexico and recolonize Mexico. And do you think that he would have just stopped there? He would have recolonized Mexico and we in the United States would have been able to continue living freely in the sort of democracy that we have now. And kids of course say oh no, if I were an emperor, I would have you know, I would try to get all the territory. I can Kids understand that, and so part of this book really started with the idea of let's explain to kids why Cinco de Mayo matters for us, for all of us living in the United States, why it has meaning for all of us, and that's how I started writing the book.

03:36
And then the Civil War, which was happening at the same time. So Cinco de Mayo, it's a date right, it means the 5th of May. It commemorates a battle in which the Mexicans won against the French on May 5th 1862. The Civil War was happening at the same time in the United States and these events were actually related. The Confederacy, for example, wanted the French to be their ally, so they were rooting for the French to win. They loved the idea of having an ally on their southern border.

04:06
Some Confederates even thought that they might want to have a European monarch sort of ruling, a Confederate States of America. So there was this vision on the part of the Confederacy that was pro-imperialism, pro-europe and fundamentally anti-democratic, and so it would have had these really negative implications for the union if the Mexicans had not been successful at Cinco de Mayo. There's all this great stuff I came across in the research for the book, much of which didn't make it into the actual book because there was so much of it. But, for example, already in the lame duck period after Lincoln was elected, the Mexican diplomat went to Springfield, illinois, to meet with Lincoln because there was already this fear of incursions to democracy that were happening in both the United States and Mexico and there was this idea that the union needed Mexico to be strong and free in order to protect that freedom in the United States.

05:13 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That makes sense and you know you brought in all kinds of really fascinating history in terms of the South, in terms of ballooning, in terms of the ironclads. Can you talk about how you decided sort of which elements to connect, as you were sending the kids on their way to Mexico, and the battle that took place?

05:35 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
Yeah. So I went back and forth a lot structurally for this book about whether the kids should go to Mexico or whether the kids should stay in the United States and sort of see how the events in Mexico were influencing what was happening in the United States in a kind of passive way, and ultimately I decided that they really had to go to Mexico. And for me that kind of had a lot of symbolic meaning of the way we talk about history and the perspectives that we take. And I wanted almost to flip it upside down. I wanted to give kids the opportunity to see these events from the perspective of the United States and then to see the same day again from the perspective of Mexico. And this is where fantasy comes in, because that would be really hard to do in realistic fiction, even realistic historical fiction, because how would they be in the United States and Mexico on basically the same day? And the answer is well, it's magic. They traveled back in time magically and now they get into a hydrogen balloon and travel magically to Mexico, magically to Mexico.

06:48
But to write that magic scene where they travel from the United States to Mexico in a hydrogen balloon, I actually did a ton of research on the technology of hydrogen balloons and this is why I'm so excited to talk to you from a STEM, steam perspective, because all of their modes of travel, really I had to learn a lot about technologies that don't exist anymore. So I had to learn. You know, how do you make a hydrogen balloon move in one direction or another? How do you make it go up or down? How do you fill the silk balloon? What is the netting that's on top of it made of? How do you tether it to the ground? How did?

07:23
During the US Civil War, the Union used hydrogen balloons for intelligence. So how did they get telegrams and intelligence all the way down to the ground from all the way up in the air in a hydrogen balloon? So I learned about a lot of this nitty gritty stuff to write the book, and some of those sources that I use, as you've mentioned, are in the bibliography. So for adults, I have some information. I actually have an entire book on hydrogen balloons for adults in the bibliography. But then for kids, there's actually some really good stuff written about these old technologies.

08:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I found myself with the balloons, in particular pop culture connection. I was thinking what a cool way to connect it to Wicked, for example, which is in the cultural zeitgeist right now. And you know, in the next section you get the Wizard of Oz getting out in his balloon. Sorry, spoiler alert.

08:18 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
I think that that's such a nice reference, because part of what I wanted to do with Cousins in the Time of Magic is, as I've said, is to turn the perspective on its head to almost subvert the way we might traditionally think about the canon of children's books, and I wanted it to have a feel that was classic and timeless and magical, while also telling a history that I think is very important. And so the balloon, the hot air balloon, the hydrogen balloon, whatever specifics of that technology you're using is so iconic in American culture, particularly in children's literature. I mean, when I think of a hydrogen balloon, the first thing I think of is the Wizard of Oz. I think that's the first thing most people think of. And so there's using that technology, using the balloon, but having the balloon go to Mexico instead of go to Oz.

09:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yes.

09:24 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
I was trying to create a new perspective on what is American children's literature, and what stories should it be telling?

09:30 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I really that resonated with me as I was reading it and I thought particularly the three cousins, and I loved the secondary characters that came into their lives as well. But with the three cousins, you managed to create three kids with very different identities, very different points of view, and so I thought one of the things that's powerful about that is, within your book, you're doing more than sharing a single story. You were sharing so many different ways of being, and so if you're Latino, if you're Latina, you have something different to look at. You know, not everybody is the same, and I love the fact that it wasn't one size fits all in the way that you created your characters.

10:12 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
Yes, and that was really important to me and I spent a lot of time working on it, because we, you know, we talk a lot about the danger of a single story and that is, I think, for Latinos in the United States. We're constantly dealing with the danger of a single story. We're dealing with it in the sense of we're dealing with negative stereotypes, sometimes what feels like an avalanche of negative stereotypes of Latinos as being, you know, potentially dangerous or criminal in some way. That can be really, I think, damaging and overwhelming, and it's a very present stereotype. But then, when we think about one of the things I also encourage people to think about when they're thinking about Latinos is that, just like in the United States, latinos all look different ways.

11:00
You have Latinos who are Black, who are Asian, who are white, who are indigenous. You're going to find that very broad range of backgrounds in the Latino community, just like you would in the United States, because this is, after all, the Americas. These are colonized places, these are places where people come from many different parts of the world, and so you, you see these, this big range, and so, by having three cousins, I tried to present three Latino kids who a look totally different, which is also very common in Latino families. You know, we all, you know you could line up siblings and everybody looks kind of different, certainly cousins and who all are different. You know they have different national backgrounds because you know their other parent, all come from different countries in Latin America. They have different interests, different levels of like. You know one of them is super mischievous, one of them is super social, one of them is kind of bookish and I wanted kids to see that. Look, latino is inclusive, includes a lot of different people and a lot of different types of people.

12:14 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I thought you succeeded so well with that. Do you have a copy of the book, and is there a page or two that you'd like to share with us?

12:24 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
I would love to share a page or two. This is chapter one, the Discovery. Jorge wasn't supposed to see the sword. The only reason he did see it was because he was climbing the garage roof. Cooper Toombor had dared him to scale the back and do a handstand on top. The side of the roof was steep and sloped like a mountain, but Jorge never refused a dare. His cousins, camila and Siggy, were inside, so Jorge figured he would have some privacy to try out the stunt.

12:54
Jorge was the youngest of the three cousins and they were all at their aunt Sia's house, like every Monday after school. The Sia was loving but perpetually distracted. Camila liked to act all motherly toward Jorge, even though she was only a year older. This sometimes posed a problem for Jorge, who was interested in dares. The more dangerous the better. But right now Camila was reading one of her animal books and Siggy, the oldest of the three, was recording a video. It usually took Siggy a bunch of takes before he would upload anything. Not that he had that many followers, jorge thought with a smirk. As for his aunt Sia, she was history's worst babysitter, which was what Jorge loved about her. She gave them plenty of snacks, hugs that were slightly too tight and free reign of her house and yard. She was inside gabbing with a friend on the phone, and Jorge didn't think she would be out to check on him anytime soon.

13:47
Jorge took a running leap, managed to hoist his body onto the gutter and began the slow crawl to the top of the garage. It wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. The uneven shingles provided some footholds and while it wasn't exactly a walk in the park, it wasn't impossible either. He reached the top, sweaty and triumphant. He plucked some caught pink flowers from the bougainvillea that grew along the side of the garage proof that he'd been up there and shoved them in his pocket. He looked around wondering where Cooper had gone. He had expected Cooper to stick around and heckle him. He did not expect to see a diamond-encrusted sword. That's the very beginning of the book and that sword is kind of what sets this whole story in motion.

14:32 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Absolutely, and those flowers are important later too.

14:39 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
Yes, the bougainvillea is important too as well, so kids will definitely be rewarded for reading some of those details carefully.

14:44 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I loved that first line Like it absolutely captured my attention and made me want to keep going. So with your history background, you kind of, at the end, you've left it open for additional adventures for the cousins. What other areas of history do you wish that we knew about that could be potential playgrounds for them?

15:04 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
Yeah, I am the I'm working on another Cousins in the Time of Magic idea right now in which the kids travel back to the 20th century. So I did a 19th century book that's this book and then I'm working on one where they travel back into the 19th century the first Cousins in the Time of Magic. This book is it's all about. You know, it's about important kind of military historical events like the Civil War and Cinco de Mayo that had these really formative effects on Mexico and the United States. The second book, the book I'm working on right now, it's about the impact of Latinos on our intellectual culture, on our book culture, and and it's really exciting actually, I'm really enjoying working on it and doing the research for it.

15:59 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, I can't wait to see more of that. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to get to know Emma Ategi a little bit better and we're going to find out about her adventures in learning and some of the cool things she's doing in schools right now. Emma, I love to ask all of my guests this question Tell us a little bit about your adventures in learning. How did you go from teaching Spanish in schools, being a history professor or studying history to becoming a writer, and an award-winning writer at that, who has written across all genres?

16:37 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
basically, yeah, so I had a very unusual path, as you have just outlined. I was always interested in children's books. I took fiction writing courses in college, donna Jo Napoli, the children's author courses in college. Donna Jo Napoli, the children's author, was one of my undergraduate professors and so I had some training and some experience and knew that I had this love of writing and love of writing fiction especially. But I went to graduate school in history.

17:04
I thought I was going to be a history professor and it wasn't that I didn't like studying history when I got to graduate school but I was often frustrated by what felt like an inability to get the history that I was learning and writing about and immersing myself in to go anywhere. It all kind of stayed within, like the graduate program that I was in I really miss because I had been teaching previously. I really miss being around kids and talking to kids and I miss that, that public facing, you know, that opportunity to share my ideas widely. And so children's books became children's books became the perfect thing in many ways. They were an outlet, a chance for me to write fiction, to write things that were fun, things that felt like they were just for me, which when you're writing a dissertation, which can be a really long slog, can feel really overwhelming, and so writing something for children was a really nice escape for me.

18:10
Writing something for children was a really nice escape for me. It also gave me that opportunity to say, hey, this is really important history. The history of Latinos in the United States, the history of Latin America. These are histories that I think kids need to know about. I mean, I tell kids the countries of Latin America are our closest neighbors.

18:30
Over a quarter of kids in the United States have roots in Latin America and we don't teach it that much. We have some education in these areas, but when I started writing children's books, I really got to talk to a lot of kids directly, because I do school visits, and then indirectly, thousands and thousands of other kids get to read my books, who I never get to meet because they get to read my books, you know, from bookstores or their school library or a public library. And so I got to have a much bigger impact and I never ended up becoming a history professor. I defended my dissertation successfully, but you know, I thought I was going to take like a year to figure things out and write a book, and that was several years ago, and here we are.

19:20 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I can totally relate to that. I got my dissertation a long time ago or did my dissertation? Got my doctorate a long time ago and you know I'm teaching adjunct but I never went that route of the publisher parish. I found that what I wanted to do with it was share that love of children's literature with teachers and kids, and it's been a different way of getting it out there. So I completely can resonate with your story. Yeah, yeah, so you offer some of the most amazing courses or talks to kids in schools. I was reading over your list on your website thinking I want to take these. Can you maybe just kind of, for our audience, talk, talk us through some of the things that if they wanted to bring you to a school, you might do?

20:07 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
Yeah.

20:07
Well the first thing is that I really love kids and I I think that to be a children's author, you have to really love kids. Not everybody does, but I really love talking to kids. I try to remember that for the kids that I'm speaking to, having an author visit is such a special thing, and I try to bring that energy to them when I talk to them, and so really it starts with that. It starts with making it a special event, because I also like to think about what does it mean to be a lifelong reader? What does it mean to be somebody who feels identified with books, who feels at home with books, who loves books, and I like to hear authors talk. I like to go to my independent bookstore and go to an author event. I like to know when my favorite authors have new books coming out. I think that is part of being a reader, and so I want a school visit to be kids' first taste of feeling like they're a part of the conversation, that they are a part of book culture, that this is something that they have a stake in and that has meaning for them. So and part of that definitely comes from the teacher or librarian who's organizing the event. If they can really get kids excited, and then I'm excited, and then we're all excited to be there, we can really get a lot done. And I, when I do my talks, we do a lot of Q&A. So, depending on how big the group is, there is a lot of back and forth and it's always interesting to me because one of the first things I do, especially like I just did a school visit for Cousins in the Time of Magic yesterday I talked to several hundred kids in three different schools. The book isn't even out yet, so those are some of the first ones who get to hear about the book, and the first thing I'm kind of doing is figuring out what they know. You know, what do they know about the 19th century? What do they know about the history of the United States? Do they even do they know what Latin America is or where it is? And so sometimes the first, the beginning of the conversation is just is Latin America one country or many countries? And and that's where we start what languages are spoken in Latin America? Sometimes kids can put together that you know Spanish is spoken in Latin America, but then we get into well, this is also a country where other Rome or a part of the world where other romance languages are spoken. This is a place where indigenous languages are spoken, so I like to build a common knowledge together with the kids and then we get into the story and I do a read aloud and they get to see illustrations.

22:50
I usually bring my writing notebooks and that is always super fun if a kid asks me about the writing process and I can actually take out my notebook and show it to them. I, of course, you know, went to school at a time when I was taught to write in cursive. So even though I have I mean, I have truly terrible handwriting, but the kids see my notebooks and to them it looks like they're looking at some historical document because it's all in like my terrible, barely legible cursive that. But you know, that's how I learned to write and, um, not how they have largely learned to write. So that's really nice. And even sometimes they see like the um. I love to show them a page in my notebook where there's just like tons of doodling and I didn't actually write anything, because they I like to show them that experience of you know, sometimes you sit down to work on something and it's difficult and you don't get anything done, and that's part of writing and that's part of being a writer.

23:50 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think that's so cool. What's the most interesting or unusual question a kid's ever asked you?

23:58 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
The most interesting or unusual question a kid has ever asked me. I've gotten a lot of really interesting ones. Here's one that you'll like for a historical question. I once had a kid. I was presenting my first book, which is Marti's Song for Freedom. It's a picture book biography of Jose Marti, who was Cuba's one of the leaders of Cuba's independence movement, as well as a poet who lived in New York City for most of his adult life and whose poetry is very widely known in the Spanish speaking world. And so I gave this whole presentation, told kids why Jose Marti was somebody who I thought they should know about and I thought that knowing his poetry would be so important for them. And a kid raised his hand and said if you met Jose Marti right now, what would you say or what would you ask him? And I really, you know, I really had to think about it like I was. Like I, it just was such a such a interesting question it is, and what did you tell him?

25:04
yeah, that's a good question.

25:05
What did I respond? I think I responded thinking about um and it's one of the things that has always drawn me to Jose Matisse's story is that, unlike many of the other architects of Cuban independence and of independence movements around the world, he was not a military man, he was not a general, he never fought in a war until the Cuban War for Independence, where he died. He was a poet and a journalist and a journalist, and so that has always been really interesting to me and I think so important for all of us to know about is for all of us to understand the role of the written word, the role of journalism in a free society and the centrality of writing and of art to living in a free society as opposed to living in an oppressive, colonial regime like José Martí lived in. And so my question for him, I think, would be how did he bring those two things together? You know, how did you make this beautiful poetry that's about nature and trees and waterfalls and use that to motivate people to care about independence?

26:24 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
movements? That's a really good question. You know you also write early readers. You've got this beautiful series and they're the books that I wish I had had when my own kids were little, because I was always trying to find books that went beyond. You know, much as I loved Henry and Mudge, that went beyond Henry and Mudge and provided more interesting stories and a taste of the world beyond what they would see every day. Can you describe how it's different writing an early reader and sort of what prompted these compared to, say, writing Cousins in the Time of Magic?

26:58 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
I mean, of course, writing an early reader and writing realistic fiction is just much less research intensive in that for Cousins in the Time of Magic, you know, if you look at the back matter of Cousins in the Time of Magic, you're going to see the volume of research that I had to do. I mean, I had to read dozens and dozens and dozens of books. I traveled to Mexico to see the historical sites related to Cinco de Mayo. I also went to Virginia and I drove from Richmond all the way out to Fort Monroe and then back again and visited, like every little tiny historical site along the way, of which there are many, many, yes, so I went to all of we, my husband and I got that a visitor's.

27:37
Raina Ramos is a reflection of the community where I live now. So I live in western Queens in New York City. Um, this is one of the most diverse counties, the most diverse places in the world. Many, many different languages are spoken here. There are many different world religions.

28:14
Um, just uh, just so many different people, and if you go to my kids school, for example, you would, you'll just meet so many people from so many different parts of the world and it's wonderful and you rarely see that in an early reader there is kind of an early reader script that that is suburban and you know, I grew up in the suburbs, so it's it's no, it's not to knock the suburbs at all, um, but I was just trying to offer something that would look real to my own children, to kids in the community in which I live, and so Raina Ramos really becomes that character and she's sweet and fun and vivacious and she really, really wants to be good. But she is this headlong second grader who gets into all sorts of messes in spite of herself, which is something I love about early elementary school students fight of herself, which I I is something I love about early elementary school students is they. They have that desire to um, it's just so many best intentions and so so much chaos all at the same time and so.

29:24
I brought all of that to Reina and in some ways, similar to the cousins, I also tried to show a real range of Latino characters, um, so that when kids see Reina's friends who are Latino, they all look different. The illustrator did a wonderful job kind of representing different, just different types of Latino families, different types of families in general, and so it was just a really fun book to write. That being said, I don't want to give the impression that writing an early reader is easy, because the challenge of an early reader becomes you have to do more with less. I I don't know who said this, and it's such a great line. I wish I could find out who said it and attribute it to them. So if you know, diane, um, don't hesitate to jump in.

30:14
But I once heard a writer say that writing a children's book is like writing a shorter book, is like trying to knit a sweater with less yarn oh I like that.

30:24
It's so difficult, and so in an early reader, one of the things I love about um I Can Read, which is the imprint at Harper Harper Collins that publishes these early readers, is that if you look at what I consider a great I can read book, you'll see that on every single page you can really see whatever is happening in the plot and you can see the characters internal emotional experience and you're seeing that on every page, with very simple sentences and vocabulary, and that is is it's. It's such an important building block to becoming a reader to me because for me as a writer, when I'm writing fiction, I think the purpose really is to connect whatever you want to call it the action plot, the external plot, the exciting part of the adventure to that internal emotional experience.

31:22
Fiction is our one chance where we really get to see what's going on inside someone's head and what's happening in the outside world at the same time. And that's true if you're reading War and Peace, and that's true if you're reading War and Peace, and that's true if you're reading Reina Ramos. And I hope that by. I hope that when kids read an early reader, they have that opportunity to to identify so strongly with a character because they're seeing the way events impact internal experience, um, kind of a putting like a lot of dressing on something that's very simple but it's so hard to do, and I spent a lot of time looking at early reader books that I love and actually tracking that, like actually tracking what happens on this page. What is the character's emotion? How do I know what the character's emotion is? And the people I think are really masters at writing. Early readers can do that very effectively and it's not easy. What you've succeeded?

32:18 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
in doing with Reina Ramos is you've done that while providing a story that can serve as a window and mirror for so many kids, so that's a real contribution as well. So last question for today, but I certainly hope to have you back on the show, because I think we've got so many things we could keep talking about. I love to finish with this one. I think this question is probably more important than ever is what brings you hope today?

33:00 - Emma Otheguy (Guest)
What brings me hope today? What brings me hope today? I'll answer in a way that is related to the book but is honest. So yesterday, like I said, I talked to, I visited three schools. I talked to a lot of kids and I talked to them about cousins in the time of magic and we talked about all of the history that I just explained. They walked away knowing what is the US Civil War, what the Cinco de Mayo commemorate, why does Cinco de Mayo matter to people living in the United States? They walked away with an image of three Latino kids that I think defy stereotypes and that celebrate the individuality of each kid. And then I said to them I said to them history teaches us that we solve our problems when we work with and not against our neighbors.

34:10
And I know that a lot happens in the school day for kids. I know that they hear a lot, read a lot, a lot happens. But I just hope that, since an author visit is such a special event and since so many of the teachers and librarians that I worked with are following up by actually reading Cousins in the Time of Magic with the kids, I just have this hope that at least some of those kids, or at least one of those kids, remember me. They remember. If they don't remember me, at least they remember Jorge Segui and Camila, the cousins in Cousins in the Time of Magic, and that it becomes a part of them and that they carry that understanding of Latin people of Latin America with them forward into the world and remember it, especially when they're confronted with negative stereotypes and negative thinking. I don't know if that brings me hope or if that is what I hope for.

35:15 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Sometimes it's a little bit of both. Emma, thank you so much for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast. Happy book birthday to Cousins in the Time of Magic and folks. It's out this week. You want to go get it!  Thanks so much, diane.