Inspiration, Identity, and HOME: A Journey with Newbery Medalist Matt de la Peña

What if the definition of Home extended beyond walls and roofs to embrace connection to nature and each other? We explore this question with Newbery medalist Matt de la Peña, author of beloved books like Last Stop on Market Street and Carmela Full of Wishes. Matt opens up about his creative process and how real-life experiences influence his writing. 

Matt shares how personal anecdotes find their way into his work (think Patchwork with Corrina Luyken). Student questions lead us to explore how the universal magic of picture books can captivate everyone from preschoolers to adults.

We deep dive into Love to Home (with Loren Long). Recent events like the fires in Los Angeles or the pandemic can act as disruptors, prompting a reevaluation of what truly constitutes a home. We talk about ways the writing process can take unexpected turns that lead to fresh discoveries and themes like reconnecting with nature. We also explore the themes of identity and resilience, especially for those standing on society's fringes. 

Chapters:

• 1:05: Inspiration and Writing for Audiences of All Ages
• 2:21: Patchworkand autobiographical seasonings
• 5:16: Carmela Full of Wishesinspiration and a love letter to the Mexican side of Matt's identity
• 7:22: From Love to Home
• 15:14: What is Home?
• 21:41:  Challenges to books and conversations
• 28:20: On the outside looking in: seeing things from a different perspective
• 31:48: Matt gives us a sneak peek at Home
• 37:28: Finding hope in challenging times

Links:

• Matt De La Pena's Website
• Purchase Matt's books
• Connect with Matt on Instagram, Facebook, and BlueSky

Transcript

00:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I am thrilled to have  on with us today. As a STEM teacher, I have used his works in so many different ways, from building connections, making patchwork quilts, to working with kids to talk about community, as we have worked with Last Stop on Market Street and Carmela Full of Wishes. I've talked about connections using love, and today we're going to talk about Home. Matt, welcome to the show. 

00:31 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Thanks so much for having me, Diane. 

00:33 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I am so excited to have you. Your work has formed such a. It's been important to the body of what I do when I work with teachers because there's always so much heart in it. I actually wanted to start with a question that a seventh grader gave me who loves your books, and I thought it was a good question. They wanted to know where does your inspiration come from? And second part of the question from Mariah was how is it different writing for seventh graders than for picture book readers? 

01:05 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Hmm, okay, so where does my inspiration come from? Mostly real life. I always say the greatest you know inspiration is the experiences you've had. Like, I think sometimes I don't even know if I'm writing, making up stories or just plagiarizing the world, so it's stuff that's happened to me. It's things that have happened to family members or friends that they've allowed me to explore. So that's where the stories come from. 

01:34
In terms of the difference, I like the idea of every time I come up with a new story, I think of it as, like this is a football play and now I have to figure out who's the best running back to hand it to, or, you know, who can execute this play. So that that means that sometimes it's better for like, fewer words and more of a like a poem format, and sometimes I want to write something longer where I can kind of like go down little alleys and make mistakes, and then it's going to end up being a novel. So I don't think there's a huge difference in terms of my mindset. It's just I feel like this is a better place to put this story. 

02:21 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, I like that and I was thinking about that in terms of patchwork, which. 

02:26
I've got behind me. I had Corinna Luyken on the show a while back when the book came out and we were talking about the book and she was sort of speculating which parts were more Matt. And she talked about the girl who gives her sandwich, that she or cookie that she could totally visualize you being the kid who shared your cookie, that you were that kind. I was wondering is that autobiographical? Was the book autobiographical? Are there parts that are more you than others? 

02:59 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, definitely the basketball one. Basketball one. You know the kid who's obsessed with the game of basketball and then somehow like shifts to a similar rhythm he finds in poetry. So that one's very, very much me. But I have to be honest, like all of those started from me. You know, I guess in that way it's kind of like a selfish approach, and then once you get it on the page, then you have to revise it into its best form and you sort of end up divorcing yourself from it. But yeah, I think all of those little vignettes they started with me. And then one other thing I'll say about patchwork. 

03:42
Sometimes I feel like I write YA picture books, if that makes sense. So you know, we always have this idea that, oh, it's a picture book format, there are pictures on every page. Therefore, let's turn to the second and third graders, which, by the way, you know, that's fine. This is the way it works. But for me, when I'm writing it, I definitely am not just thinking about a certain age, for better or worse. So sometimes when I read a picture book, I like want to read it to college students more than anyone else, or even parents. And then other times I write a picture book like Carmela, where I can't wait to read it to second graders. 

04:27 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, yeah, no, that makes total sense. And, honestly, with patchwork, the audience that I found has responded so strongly to it have been teachers. When I take it out and I read it to them and I actually have them create a patchwork, using post it notes, of their preschool self or their past self, their current self and then their dream or aspirational self, and they structure a quilt together of all of those selves. But I use it with college students as well because they can connect to it. But books like Last Stop on Market Street or Carmela Full of Wishes, those really resonate across audiences. It's not just the littles. 

05:05
It really carries up. In fact, one of the seventh graders, Zion, wanted to ask you the question why did you write Carmela Full of Wishes? That one really resonated for them in seventh grade. 

05:16 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, Carmela is probably my favorite picture book that I've been a part of. Even though technically you're not supposed to have favorites, there's just something special about that book and it actually started as a line that I heard at a school when I was visiting. So I was there for the full day, had to do three presentations, and then during lunch I just hung out with the teacher that was like my host, and there was one kid who had gotten in trouble as predominantly Mexican American community and he wasn't allowed to play soccer during lunch and he was very bummed because he loves soccer. So he was standing next to the teacher too. And it just so happened that the school was next to this field and it was a very windy day and there were dandelions on this field and the wind was whipping so quickly it was picking up some dandelion spores. They were floating over the soccer field and this boy, he said this line that blew me away and you know I'm sure you know, Diane that sometimes kids say the most poetic things, sometimes accidentally. And he said look, miss, the sky is full of wishes. And I was like, oh my God, like that's an incredible line I have to figure out. How could that become a picture book. 

06:36
So I started with that kernel and then I sort of built around it, but then I'm also in that book. It's very much me honoring the Mexican side of my background. I'm half Mexican, half white and I thought a lot about, you know, growing up next to the border, being around a lot of kids who are from mixed status families where one parent is a citizen, one is undocumented citizen, one is undocumented, and you know there's that experience in my family history. So I wanted to kind of explore that and thinking about what is a wish when you have this sort of background. Does it change? Is it similar in many ways? And so I just kind of wanted to see what happened as I explored that. 

07:22 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. So that kind of inspiration sometimes it comes from kids, sometimes it comes from real life you and Loren Long had done Love and you've currently got Home coming out. What was the inspiration behind those two books? 

07:40 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
So Love was the first one, and I remember there was one moment in love that started the whole book. There's a family huddled around a TV and it's something that's making them anxious is on the screen and the grandmother's holding up her pothole covered hand because a little girl has just come out of bed to see what the commotion is about. But she thinks that this is a little too old for you. You should stay where you are. That is where the book began from, and I think you know I was a brand new parent and I was trying to figure out how to navigate, like watching TV news, and you know it's all like everybody hates everyone else and the left hates the right, the right hits the left, et cetera, et cetera. How do you go from that weird anxious feeling you get from watching the news to going into your new daughter's bedroom and reading her a book and trying to tell her that the world is beautiful? So I was like I just wish there was a tool that could, like allow me to just infuse love on every page. And so that's where the book started. And then, when it got over to Loren, Loren's a very collaborative partner, so when we work on a book together. We talk about every line and where did it come from? Never prescriptive about the pictures. Of course he's going to do that, but he wants to talk about where everything came from. And what were you thinking? And then he ended up showing me some sketches, and I remember we had this massive decision with love, where there was a boy under the piano and his parents had just been fighting, and it's a scary moment. 

09:27
And I remember the first sketch Loren showed me. It was something much softer. It was the death of a pet, and you know, it was like everyone was huddled around while they were saying a few words about the pet, and he was like what do you think about this? And I was like, oh, it's beautiful. And then I said but what would you do in this vignette if you could do anything you want? And then he immediately thought alcoholism has harmed so many members of my family. Do you think we could really do that in a picture book, though? And I said probably not, but let's try. Not, but let's try, because it just felt true. And then you have to. You have to calibrate how loud that part of the story is going to be, so if it's in a YA, you turn it up a little bit, but if it's in a picture book you turn it way down, but it's still there in the background. What led Loren to that? That image? So that was love. We always wanted to explore another idea. Sorry, I'm kind of filibustering here. 

10:28 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You can filibuster away. I'm enjoying this. 

10:31 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, there's one other thing I feel like. When I write a picture book, I write two different kinds. There's the character-driven book and there's the concept-driven book. So love, obviously, would be the concept book. So we wanted to do another concept-type book book and we're wrapping our head around what word, you know, what idea do we want to explore? And then the pandemic hit and I'm in San Diego, he's in Cincinnati, and I'm thinking, gosh, you know, it's so strange being, you know, kind of in our house all the time and I was trying to like understand what this concept of home meant for me now, that it didn't mean to me maybe a year ago, and so that is where the book Home began, and I was watching like nature reclaim some spaces that humans had been dominating and I was like, oh, that's so interesting. So I guess you could say home was born out of love. But again, it was made clear to me that this is what needed to be explored during the pandemic. 

11:40 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that and it makes me remember. During the pandemic you did a whole series of newsletters for teachers and parents and for me, when I was at home, those letters sustained me and they really they gave me hope and sort of a sense of what it meant to be at home with your family and how could you step out and make a difference for other people. So I just wanted to honor you for that. 

12:05 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Thank you that was huge. 

12:08 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So that happened during the pandemic, but it's taken four years for Home to come out. 

12:13 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yes. 

12:14 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
What was the process like for creating Home during that time? You know the idea was born of the pandemic but obviously a lot of life has gone under the bridge since then. 

12:23 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah. So this is what I love about books, and this is kind of going back to something I said earlier you start in one place and then, as you're exploring the book, it becomes something new, and there's a great line that I think is attributed to playwriting, but the idea is always leave a door open in your scene, because you never know who's going to walk through. So I think, as a writer, you have to like balance. Here's the design that I envision, but here's the open door allowing, you know, things to happen along the way that change everything. So for me, that's what happened and I was thinking a lot about, you know, this idea that we, as humans, like we've been led to believe what we need to do is dominate the earth to make space for ourselves and our creations and our you know our stories or or politics, but as we've been doing that, you know, over over time, we've divorced ourself from the earth and I think to me this whole book is about a reintegration, or at least a proposed reintegration. 

13:40
So at the beginning of the book, everything that has to do with home is attached to industry. You know, like the parent is reading a book to her child at the very beginning of the story. But it's over the sound of the freeway, the humming of the freeway coming in through the open window. Or the grandfather is fishing on a houseboat, but there's in the distance there's the hum or the blowing horn of the barge. So everything is connected to industry and over the course of time, a kid starts to think well, ambition is what it's about. It's, you know, building our human things. 

14:24
But then, like love, there's a disruption in the middle where somebody learns how you can lose a home. And now you have to kind of recalibrate what home means to you now. And so ultimately, you know it's a turn toward nature and seeing just the awesome ocean. You know, I live in San Diego now and one of the things I loved to do with my son and my daughter is, during the pandemic, we'd go down to the ocean and we'd look at it and I'd be like, look at this, this ocean has seen it all. It's so much bigger than us, like it does the same thing every day. It like slowly moves in and slowly moves out as the tides change. And so I was just thinking like nature is the wisest you know, entity we can turn to during things like that. 

15:14 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I've been thinking about that a lot lately. One of the things the pandemic brought for me was the idea of daily nature walks. That's great. There's a grove of trees near us and it's sort of the same feeling as the ocean. It's realizing that my span of life I'm like a wildflower compared to the life of the tree. How much time has that tree sent? And what would happen if we joined the tree in the slow lane? 

15:39 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
I love that. I love that. That's a great idea. By the way, do you leave your phone at home while you take the walk? 

15:45 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I've tried. I find I like to hear, like I've been using Merlin to try to identify the birds. Oh, I love that. So what I do is I keep the phone in my pocket until I hear something. I'll use the phone to be able to identify the bird. And now I'm finding I don't need it as much because my ear has become attuned to that's a woodpecker or that's a cardinal, but it took sort of that transition. So it's sort of a little bit. I've been calling it disconnecting in order to connect. I love it. 

16:15 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
By the way, that's a picture book. Join the tree in the slow lane. That's a picture book. 

16:20 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I might steal that one. 

16:22 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, you don't have to steal it, you came up with it. 

16:24 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's true. I'm writing it down so I don't forget. 

16:27 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, definitely. 

16:29 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
But yeah, I have found that that's so important and I was thinking about the concept of home, as you were talking, with the fires that recently happened in. Los Angeles. 

16:41 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Talk about a recalibration for what home means, and I think we're finding that just across the country. 

16:45 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I mean I know my daughter is living, I've got one daughter living in New York, one in Richmond, and they're sort of re-experiencing what does it mean to build home? And it's more than your tiny apartment. It's the people around you, it's the nature, it's places to connect. 

17:03 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, you know, what's scary is when fiction sort of predicts future events, cause that that happens all the time, like in books I read in books I've written. I have two YA novels that are about a pandemic and when COVID hit I was just like, oh my God, I was doing the research for this, you know, for a year. And here we are and it's literally all the things I read about and put in the book. And then home, you know, I got my first physical copy. The book comes out in March, but they send the authors a copy early and I got my copy and I was reading through it and then home is lost and then it says thick black smoke may blanket the sky. And I was just looking at this you know this text and going, oh my gosh, that's so strange. But then again, is it that strange? We've seen this uptick in fires that are getting closer and closer to more dense areas. So maybe it's a predictive line or maybe it's just reading the tea leaves. 

18:31 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right, and hopefully it's as a cautionary tale, a reminder that we still have time to change. Yeah, you know, and systemically, there's a lot of change that needs to happen. But we can also do it on our individual lives, on our community levels, and work from the ground up. It's sort of the seeds. 

18:51 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, I totally agree. 

18:53 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I would assume and I'm making a big assumption here, but I would assume having a son and a daughter has shifted sort of the way that you look at books and look at writing, look at the world. 

19:03 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely, in so many different ways. One of my favorite ways it's shifted is a lot of my friends are writers and you know they're annoying. You know these writers, they can be annoying, but then you read their work to your children and you go oh, you actually are pretty cool. I just loved watching my kids wake up to the world through books and like to me, the most important thing you have to be as an author is humble, because this equation doesn't center the author, right, it's. You know. 

19:42
I remember there was a, there was a campaign, a Twitter campaign, way back in the day. Somebody said you know, YA is too dark. And then somebody countered that with, YA saves lives. And I remember like this was going wild on Twitter and stuff. You know back in the day when that would happen. And and then I remember thinking, well, ya isn't too dark. I think that's too far. But I also think YA saves us too far too, because what's really happening? There is a young reader, a young person is saving themselves, while maybe using your book as a tool, you know, but if it wasn't your book, they'd find, hopefully, another tool. 

20:24
So I love the humility of just understanding your book as a vehicle to conversations between a parent and a child teacher in a classroom, or maybe just two friends, and if you can be humble like that, then I think you can recognize how valuable great literature is, and I think I've seen that with my children. So that's the most important part. But also I'm right next to them and they sort of put my own career into perspective, because I think I will always say I'm a parent first, you know, and an author second, whereas maybe 11 years ago I would have said, oh well, my whole life is wrapped around in stories, that's all I am, that's all I can be, most important thing in the world to me. But also I'm right next to their psychology and I'm watching them work through things. I'm watching reactions that are surprising to me and trying to think through where that came from and what I. What I love most about books is when they explore not just what happens but why it happened or who this character is in this context. 

21:41 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. You know, I think it was when you won the Newbery. When you did your acceptance speech, you said something that has really resonated with my college students. I teach teachers and librarians. 

21:54 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
And. 

21:55 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think it was during that particular speech that you talked about the reason we should be stocking our libraries with diverse books. You know that. How many wizards have we seen in our day to day life. 

22:06
Yeah, and that particular line has had such a huge impact on librarians and teachers for the last almost 10 years. Oh, that's amazing. You know, and I hear it every semester from people who are like you know, I hadn't thought about it that way, but he's right. You know, we have these fantasy books, but our kids deserve to see each other and to be able to see themselves and each other, to learn and grow and, as you said, have the books as tools. 

22:36 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. 

22:37 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
There are opportunities for conversation and it feels like today we're sort of at this tipping point in America where people are afraid to have the conversations. 

22:48 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, and. 

22:50 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I'm wondering what you would say to calm communities that are caught up in that right now. 

22:57 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Cause. 

22:57 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I know you've been involved in or your books have been involved in some of that, in some of the bannings. 

23:04 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, you know, I think one of the best things about writing for young people is you're writing for an audience that's still grappling with what they think, what they believe, who they want to be, whereas if you write for adults which is another amazing thing to do but you're writing for an audience that sort of wants to find a book that reinforces what they already believe, you know. So, like a lot of adult readers, we read to reinforce our current ideology. We read to say, oh yeah, that's what I think too. Yeah, see, I knew that, you know. But I wish more people would consider reading things that challenged their ideas and maybe it'll reinforce your ideology even more because you tested it. 

24:03
Um, so to me, I love this idea of, like, going outside of your close little group to explore ideas, to challenge your own ideas. So there's that, and then you get to the bandings and that is so just rooted in fear it's. It's like we have this belief system and any book that comes along that shows us another idea we've got to keep it away, or else maybe that might grow in our little safe space. And that's what you see in my mind. I thought, okay, I'm probably going to get some challenge, challenges based on, like, this idea of critical race theory, because I kind of had been caught in the up in that before, which, by the way, I actively never want to be a part of any group. I don't want to be easily defined that way. 

24:53 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right. 

24:54 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
But so that's what I was expecting. And then when it started to get challenged and it wasn't about that, it was about, you know, there's a one little illustration about a same-sex couple and it's just very quiet. The text does not suggest this, but it's just in one illustration and that became the challenge and you just go wow, that's so interesting to watch the psychology of the book challenge. You see that it's just getting picked up in the momentum of a political ideology. And I wrote a book called Superman Dawnbreaker about Superman when he was a teen, and I saw that happen with that too, only in a racial category. 

25:39
And so I just, you're right, we don't have these conversations because everyone is so scared to make a mistake. But I think the mistake they're scared of making might offend their in-group. They're not scared to go after, know, go after the out group, but they're scared to offend the in group, and that is to me super unhealthy. I think the in group is the place where you should be in the lab with your ideas, kind of experiment, you know. Get challenged by your in group so that it can become stronger and more what you hope to you know, more the purest form of what you're hoping to have your opinion be. I think the in-group should be the lab, not the censor. 

26:30 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That makes a lot of sense, and often I think we get caught up in the echo chamber of our in-group as well. And so if we're not willing to test ideas outside of that and to engage in conversations that aren't so fear-driven, we lose so much. I mean, that was one little piece of Milo and it really discounts all the other really critical parts about that book because we talked about windows and mirrors. 

27:00
There are so few books that show a child with a parent who's in prison and show a loving relationship in the way that your book did. It feels like you're tossing out the baby over a very small detail that you could have a conversation about. If your belief system is different than what you see, have a conversation with your children about it. 

27:22 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, you know, in that illustration. By the way, I'm aware of the calibration part, right. So when I wrote a note for Christian Robinson, the illustrator, I just said, well, maybe when he re-envisions who this wedding dress woman was going off to marry, maybe he considers, you know, a same sex couple. But that's me calibrating it, because I didn't put it in the text because then it'd be too loud and it's like, oh, this, this sort of like, is too bright for everything else in the book. So you have to kind of like dim that part and you know you hope it's the correct calibration. But then again it just depends on who's reading it and what they want to do with it. 

28:01 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I found, you know, for me again, with a love of the city and you know, having grown up around cities, it was a very accurate depiction of the things that you're going to see on a subway or you know, it's life, it's who's in our community and shouldn't be discounting anybody. 

28:19 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, it's just reflective. 

28:20 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's totally reflective. You know I had read you had talked about. Often you write on the outside of an in group or you feel like you're observing things that way and I was wondering does it still feel that way? You know, you said this a few years back. 

28:36 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yes, I, I actually haven't. I haven't heard this idea in so long. So it's what a gift to be able to go back to this idea Like I. I believe in, you know, the power of own voices, but I think sometimes in an own voice category it's somebody who's closer to the margins, who sometimes can see it in a new way or see it objectively. So you know me obviously being a mixed race kid. I think about it from the point of view of race and I've always felt like very on the margins of the Mexican side of my culture, but also very on the margins of the white side of my makeup. But it allows me to sort of study it from an objective point of view. But also, you know, from somebody who was a college athlete. That's how I got to college, became the first in my family, thanks to a sport. My definition, self-definition, was basketball all the way up until I was probably 22, 23. That's all I was, that's how people saw me too. 

29:48
And then kind of sticking a toe in the world of the arts. You know, first just writing some poems and some stories in undergrad, then going to graduate school for creative writing and feeling like I was kind of on the outside of it, because I wasn't the artsy person. I was like this athlete who's kind of trying to come into this space and then, of course, publishing my own books, but never feeling like totally on the inside. It like allows me to kind of see, you know, the industry of children's books in a unique way. You know some people their whole life. This is what they wanted to do. They're on the very center of it and they'll see it one way. But me over here on the margins, I just see it a slightly different way and to me it's a gift, it's a total gift, to be like near the margins of a group. 

30:40 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I feel like that's good news for all of us, because I think it's very seldom that anybody is totally in the center. 

30:49 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, you're right. 

30:51 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You're kind of always on the outside of something. 

30:53 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
So true. 

30:54 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And if you can view it as a superpower and an ability to see and to bridge and connect, that could help bring change. 

31:02 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
You know what? No-transcript yeah, 100%. 

31:35 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And if you don't, then I think that that's your own version of imposter syndrome. 

31:39 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, and if you don't, some people better pull you aside. 

31:44 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Exactly, it's time for a conversation. 

31:46 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. 

31:48 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I wanted to ask do you have a copy of Home with you, and is there a page you'd like to share with us? 

31:54 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, you know, it's interesting because I could share my screen. I just don't have a physical copy, would you? 

31:59 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
want me to do it? That would be great. Let me make sure you are a co-host. Oh, I would love to share a page. 

32:07 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
That's awesome, cause I would love to be able to show that to folks. So nobody has seen this. 

32:10 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I'm so excited. I have not seen it yet. I don't have my 

32:31
 this. 

32:34 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Okay, so you know what, I'll share my screen and I'll take you through just a couple of things. Is that okay? Like maybe two or three. 

32:42 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You can do as much as you want. 

32:44 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Okay, I'll start with the cover. So obviously this is Loren Long, and I love working with Loren because I think he's an incredible artist but a beautiful human being and he's one of my favorite people in kids' books. This cover actually says so much, because in a book called Home, the cover has no house, there's no physical structure, and so that's very intentional about what you're getting into. This is a book that is challenging that notion of the house as home. Okay, let me give you a couple of my favorite images. Okay, so this is a big one. 

33:27
Now, here we have the disruption that is similar flow or structure as love, where there's a disruption that challenges your understanding of home. But a day may come when you learn how a home can be lost. Hurricane rains flood your streets or a thick black smoke blankets the sky, or Papa's garment factory closes down, and we see you know the devastation in this community. We see this tree has been just kind of ripped in half and obviously the home is greatly damaged. But we also see people trying to do something to help the situation. Right, we have first responders, but we also have this very important note here of the family together, physically holding each other together, and the little puppy there is to me, one of my, I guess, the most profound moments for me as as a, as a writer, and seeing the illustration, because we're going to come back to this at the end, one of the things Loren did, you know, that I think is really important is is you know, I guess you could see it on this page so, through the back window of an old truck, you watch the only home you've ever known grow smaller and smaller behind you, and here we have this little girl looking at her home in her mind, mentally saying goodbye to this place that she thinks is home. This is the only concept she has of home. She's looking out. 

35:04
We also have the parents devastated because they couldn't afford to keep living here, because maybe somebody lost their job, and they're thinking their own thoughts looking out their windows, right, so everyone is, their gaze is somewhere different. But what especially the child doesn't understand is that if you look at the structure, the physical, negative space here of the picture, she's in a what looks like almost the shape of a home, which is her parents, and so they are her support system, they are her structure of her life, they are her home. So, even though she's driving away from the house, she's leaving with her life. They are her home. So, even though she's driving away from the house, she's leaving with her home, and so that, to me, is a profound picture. I'll just show you one more, because I wanted to get going. 

35:55 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I'm enjoying this. 

35:57 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Well, near the end, we have this turn to the earth, but I wanted to get back to to the earth, um, but I wanted to get back to this, okay, so I'm just going to read you the last couple pages, if that's okay. So please do home. It's the thump, thump, thump of your own human heart as you stand in a forest of redwoods or wade into a glass covered lake. So this reminds me of your, your hike through the, the trees that have been there so long, in the slow lane. It's the thump, thump, thump of the earth's sentimental song, inviting you into the harmony of things, promising that all life is one life and when the winds do come, they will carry you home. 

36:40
And now we have a revisiting of that one image where the house was destroyed. Now they've rebuilt and you can see the neighborhood. We've pulled back and we can see the neighborhood around there. They're rebuilding and this is a sign of human resilience. But what I love is they've integrated a symbol of the power of the earth, and they kept that tree that's been sheared by the wind intact. They left it there. They didn't take it out and replace it. They left it, and for me that's like a symbol of an integration between earth and human. So, instead of living against the earth, they're living alongside the earth and I think, like to me, that's hopefully the message of the book. 

37:28 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think that's so powerful and I cannot wait to get my hands on Home. So, families, teachers, if you're listening, pre-order it now. You're going to really want it. I'll make sure there are links in the show notes. And, Matt, I'm going to close with the final question that I like to ask everybody. Sure, what currently brings you hope? 

37:51 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
I would say young people. I just, you know, I was in Greenville, south Carolina, recently and I just I love seeing kids from different communities that are different from the one where I was the week before, because in this case I was in Walnut Creek Walnut Creek, northern California town but I'm in Greenville and this is South Carolina, and I'm saying I'm from California, and they're so excited to tell me about their town, you know, and what's happening in their communities, and what coffee shop I should go check out and what restaurant, oh, you've got to check out. This one bridge. And their excitement and their pride in their community to me gives me so much hope. 

38:40
I think sometimes we as adults, we lock in on the news and the roller coaster of the headlines and it's like there's all this anxiety attached to every new thing that's happening every day. And what gives me hope is I go to Greenville, south Carolina, and they're not concerned with that. The young people in the community. They just want to tell me about their neighborhood and their pet, you know, or their sibling who's sick and not at school today, and they have to bring the homework to them. So I think to me it's young people. And then I also have to add. Just loving my family, like is, is the thing that gives me the hope. Like every time I take a long walk, I'm always thinking about God. I'm so lucky to have this family, these children, and I get to watch them grow up. 

39:29 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's wonderful, and thank you for sharing them with us occasionally on Instagram. I love your daughter's book reviews. Those have been so much fun to follow because, again, as you said, she keeps it real when she tells you what she thinks, and I love that. Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast today. It has been such a pleasure to host you. 

39:51 - Matt de la Peña  (Guest)
Thank you so much and say hi to all your students for me. 

39:54 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I will.