Authors Panel: Emma Otheguy

Emma Otheguy is an award-winning author of several books for children, including the I Can Read series Reina Ramos, the picture books A Sled for Gabo and Martina Has Too Many Tías, the bilingual picture book Martí’s Song for Freedom, and the middle-grade novels Sofía Acosta Makes a Scene and Silver Meadows Summer. She is the author of the Carmen Sandiego novel Secrets of the Silver Lion and co-author, with Adam Gidwitz, of The Unicorn Rescue Society: The Madre de Aguas of Cuba.

Screenshot of Emma Otheguy presenting in the panel,
with a slide showing four covers of her Reina Ramos early readers.

As part of the Authentic Voices in Early Readers Authors Panel, Emma Otheguy introduces her Early Readers series, Reina Ramos in this way: 

"Reina is a child who loves to dance, and is full of energy. She wants to be good - she loves her mom and her abuela - but whose headlong energy gets her in trouble... But [it's] always resolved with a lot of heart!

Emma shares that good early readers stack the deck in favor of the child who is starting to read on their own, and like Frog and Toad, "they sacrifice nothing in terms of literary product." 

Great takeaway insight: 

"A great early reader is one where on every single page of the book you can see the main character's emotions changing based on the action of the story." 

Emma explains that you need to link narrative (the action plot) with the character's internal emotional experience.

The short version of Emma's journey to getting the Reina Ramos series published: Emma wrote a proposal and manuscript, but the timing wasn't right. But a year later, when an editor was looking for an early reader series and asked Emma's agent if they had someone who could do that, the timing was right, and Emma had already put in the hard work—and so got the opportunity!

One of the reasons Emma was so passionate to write an early reader with a Latina character was having Spanish right there along with the English.

"Multi-lingualism is not inherently stranger or other or harder... it's something that is so normal, and so a part of childhood everywhere, that it should be in this part of literature for children that is accessible, that is widely available." 

Reinforcing that, Emma shares that 16% of kids in the United States speak Spanish at home, and one-quarter of kids in the US today are Latino. 

There's much more conversation, with great tips(!), stories about breaking into the business, insights, and an engaging Q&A. 

An inspiring and helpful panel!