as small as a world and as large as alone, i recently rediscovered the young wizards series...

11:23am August 31, 2014

Anonymous asked: i recently rediscovered the young wizards series in my childhood room and i just wanted to say thank you! the books had such an impact on me growing up! and having dorky hispanic tweens become heroes really spoke to me, because i had never seen myself represented that way in any media, much less in books that i loved. im working with a few kids to improve reading skills, and young wizards is high up on the list of recommended reading. i hope the books speak to them as much as they have to me!

dduane:

I hope so too!

It’s strange, but on this issue at least I seem to have gotten a little ahead of the curve (so to speak). Some years back I was having lunch with the writer and film producer Lin Oliver (who founded the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), and over the course of lunch while we were discussing the Young Wizards series, Lin said to me, “What was it that made you make Kit Hispanic?” And all I could do was shake my head. I grew up in a New York suburb that by my teens was full of people of color — in fact, in mine there were a whole lot more PoCs than white people — so why wouldn’t somebody in the book be Hispanic? I couldn’t get what would seem unusual about it.

Representation has of course now — rightly — become a much bigger deal in the public consciousness. But it’s satisfying to (at this end of time) be seen to have been in there sort of at the cutting edge. Or a cutting edge anyway.