Here he in his Mexican wrestler mask—which I understand he wears all the time, even when he showers, like all good luchadores—and modeling our original design.
The other scrawny masked kid, I don’t know him, although he looks like my son. Hmmmm…
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Mario the Luchador
My brother visited me from Mexico
Yuyi.
Two hands, callused feet.
Mother of a skyscraper.
Fears abduction by extraterrestrials.
Would like to move things with her mind.
Resident of the library forest.
Morales
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4 comments:
Yuyi: I love the shirt. Will they be for sale sometime? Hey, aside from writing a few books myself (The Jumping Tree, Finding Our Way, and The Whole Sky Full of Books, by way of introduction), I'm also an assistant professor in the College of Education at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where my students last semester absolutely loved LITTLE NIGHT. As did I. Just thought I'd send word.
Rene, nice to meet you! I am going to look for your book The Whole Sky Full of Stars.
Thank you for letting me knows that your students enjoyed Little Night. I enjoyed making it too; working out the palette was a big challenge.
When Mario and I started working in the t-shirt, we didn’t know whether we would actually print it for sale, but perhaps we will. I’ll let you know if we do it.
By the way, I love your cat’s name!
Yuyi
Yuyi: muchisimas gracias por tu respuesta. And, heartfelt and sincere congratulations on the Belpre, aunque mi libro mas favorito tuyo is Little Night, and I understand that the theme has to be Latino but boy, Little Night is a technically better book, and the color connection to Just a Minute, though seemingly opposite, is fantastic. I don't have the books in front of me, but I recall a reminder of a certain color from the previous book at the beginning of this more recent one. Abrazos, Rene.
Rene, it is great to know that Little Night has caring supporters, because I love this book something bad. I have special connection to it because I consider that it made me grow as an artist. It practically forced me! There were times while I was painting it, when I doubted I would ever manage to make this book work. I struggled with trying to work with the dark values while still creating colorful and luminous illustrations. It made me sweat! At the time I felt like I was seeing all my weaknesses as a painter, but at the end I felt like I had acquired new strengths. Yet it took me all the way to the last touches and the last minutes of work to finally create something that I was very proud of.
In the other hand Los Gatos Black was a pleasure from the beginning. Although I also wanted this book to be luminous and magical, darkness was the main element here—which I liked a lot. Also, this book gave me the perfect opportunity to play with my childhood fears, something I would have never been able to even joke about when I was little. You see, I used to be an easily scared child.
The other thing I enjoyed doing in Los Gatos Black was creating back stories and bringing out to the parade a menagerie of monsters straight from my school days, from the Mexican history, and from the Latino popular culture. In that sense, this is a very rich book. I am just glad that the Pura Belpre committee was able to recognize that this book is filled with surprise!
Take care, Rene,
Yuyi
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