>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Kahin Mohammad: Well, my name is Kahin Mohammad,
and I'm a program specialist here at the Library
of Congress's Young Reading Center.
And I want to thank you all for coming here today.
Oyster-Adams is a really big friend of ours
and we're appreciative of you coming out.
I also want to thank Tulane University,
Vanderbilt University class, also Center for the Book, and the Library
of Congress as well for hosting us today.
We're very, very pleased to have Duncan here to read his book
and also discuss with you all today a very important subject matter
and topic, and we'll hope you'll enjoy it.
So thank you.
And we'll have a question-answer session at the very end.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Hi, everybody.
Good morning.
Buenas dias.
So my name is Duncan Tonatiuh.
And I write and I illustrate children's books.
And so this is one of the books I've made.
And so what I thought I'd do is I will go over it quickly for those
of you that don't know the book, and then I want to show you a little bit
of the process of making the book.
Tell you a little bit more of why I wrote the book
and show you some other pictures.
And I want to make sure I give you guys time to ask questions.
Maybe I'll show you some of my other books if we have time.
Does that sound good?
>> Yes.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: So the other book is called
"Separate is Never Equal, Sylvia Mendez
and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation."
And this story is a true story.
It happened about 70 years ago.
And so it starts here and this is the first page and we see
that Sylvia, right, she's very sad,
and it's her first day at this new school.
But a boy, a white boy, points at her and says, you don't belong here,
go back to the Mexican school.
And so Sylvia doesn't want to talk with anybody that day.
And when she comes home from school, she tells her mom, mom,
I don't want to go to school that anymore, the kids are mean.
And her mom says, Sylvia, [foreign language].
What does that mean?
[foreign language].
Yeah, don't you know that is why we fought.
And so then Sylvia remembers all that had to happen
so that she could go to that school.
So she remembers how she moved from the city of Santa Ana in California
to the town of Westminster.
And in this town, her family was leasing a farm.
And in the farm they were going to grow asparagus, tomatoes, chilies.
And then because summer was almost over, Sylvia's aunt,
her aunt Soledad, drove Sylvia and her brothers
and also her cousin's Alice and Virginia to the local public school
so they could attend school when it started.
And they went there and Sylvia thought it was a really nice school.
It had those tall trees in the front.
There was a nice playground in the back.
And when she went in there, when they went in there, her aunt talked
to the secretary at the school, and she said,
I'm here to bring my daughters Alice and Virginia to the school
and also my niece Sylvia and my nephews, Gonzalo and Jerome.
And the secretary said, your daughters Alice
and Virginia can come to the school, but Sylvia and her brothers,
they cannot come to the school.
They have to go to the Mexican school.
And Sylvia was very confused when she said that.
She said, why do I have to go to a Mexican school?
I'm a US citizen.
I was born here in the United States.
My father's from Mexico but he became a US citizen.
My mom is from Puerto Rico which is a US territory.
So why do I have to go to a Mexican school?
And that she wondered if it was because of the color of her skin,
or because her last name was Mendez.
And so her aunt told her that, talked to the secretary, and said,
but we all live in this part of town,
all the students should be allowed to go school together.
And the secretary said, no.
The Mendez children have to go to the Mexican school.
So her aunt told her that and said, I won't be enrolling any
of the students at this school then.
And so she drove back to the farm and told Sylvia's father,
Gonzalo, what had happened.
And he said, oh, it must be a misunderstanding.
I'll go talk with the principal or the superintendent
or someone at the school.
So he talked with the superintendent,
a man named Mr. Atkinson.
But Mr. Atkinson said the same thing.
The Mendez children have to go to the Mexican school.
And Mr. Mendez asked, but why?
And Mr. Atkinson said, that's the way it's done.
The Mendez children have to go to the Mexican school.
So that fall, Sylvia and her brothers had
to go to the Mexican school.
And the school was on Olive Street, and everyone called that school
on Olive Street the Mexican school because that's
where all the children of Mexican parents
or all the Latino children were sent.
And the school was a clapboard shack.
It did not have any -- there was no playground.
The students had to eat their lunch outside
and it was next to a cow pasture.
And that fence that kept the cows
in the pasture had electricity running through it.
So if any of the kids touched it, they would receive a shock.
But the worst thing about the school was
that the teachers there didn't care about the students' education,
because they thought they would all drop
out by the time they were in eighth grade.
They thought that they would stop going to school
and they would just start working in the fields.
So they didn't really pay attention to their education.
And Sylvia's family didn't think that that was fair.
Her parents didn't think that was fair.
Sylvia didn't think that that was fair.
So her father decided to write a petition, write a letter,
saying that all children should be allowed to go to school together.
And he tried to get other parents that had children
in the Mexican school to sign it, but the other parents were scared
to sign it because they thought they would get
in trouble or lose their jobs.
Because their bosses were white.
So they didn't want to sign the petition.
But Sylvia's father didn't give up, and he kept talking to people.
And one day a truck driver that went to his farm to pick produce told him
about a man named Mr. Marcus.
And Mr. Marcus was a lawyer, and he had helped the people
of a nearby city, in the city of San Bernardino,
to desegregate the public pool.
Because at that time not only in the '40s --
this story takes place in the '40s.
Not only were schools divided but also other places, like parks,
public pools, movie theaters.
And children like Mexican American children
or African-American children,
Asian-American children were not allowed to use them
or were only allowed to use them on certain days or only certain parts.
And so Mr. Mendez decided that he was going to hire
that man Mr. Marcus even if he had to spend all his savings to do so.
So that he would help them desegregate the school and make it
so that all the Mexican American children go to school
with the other children, with white children.
And so Mr. Mendez and Mr. Marcus started traveling
to the different towns and cities in the county,
in a county named Orange County.
And they talked with other families.
Because it wasn't only Sylvia and her brothers that weren't allowed
to go -- that were sent to Mexican schools, but there were thousands
of children in the area that were sent to the Mexican schools.
And so while Sylvia's father traveled around trying
to get more families involved in the case, Sylvia's mother had
to do all the things that I Sylvia's father usually did.
Her mother, Felicitas, had to drive a tractor and take care of the farm
and do all the things that he usually did.
And Mr. Mendez was able to get different families involved
in the case, like the Strata family.
And Mr. Strata, he had fought in World War II for the US Army.
But when he came back, he saw that his children weren't allowed to go
to school, that they were sent to a separate school.
So he didn't think that that was fair.
So he decided to join the case.
And several more families of the different cities and towns
in Orange County joined the case.
And on March 2, 1945, the lawyer, Mr. Marcus, went to a courthouse
in Los Angeles and filed a lawsuit.
And so what that meant is that the different families
and different superintendents and teachers from the schools would come
to a room, a room like this or even larger than this.
And at the front, there would be a judge who would listen
and the different lawyers would ask people to come to the stand.
And so, for example, on the first day,
Mr. Marcus called to the stand Mr. Kent.
And Mr. Kent was in charge --
was the superintendent from one of the schools in the area.
And he asked him several questions.
He said, why do you send the Mexican-American children
to a different school?
And he said, oh, it's because they don't know how
to how to speak English.
And Sylvia was very upset when he said that because she knew how
to speak English perfectly well.
And no one had asked her or given her a test
to see if she spoke English.
So that was not true.
And then Mr. Marcus kept asking questions.
And then Mr. Kent started saying some very mean things, like that --
he said that the Mexican children always have problems.
They were always dirty.
They always have dirty hands, face, neck, and ears.
That they were inferior in their ability to behave and their ability
to learn and their ability to participate in the school.
And so the Mendez family was very upset when he said all those things.
But it was -- but those things that Mr. Kent said were things that a lot
of people at the time believed and had that same attitude.
And so the trial continued for several more days.
And so every day different people were asked to come up to the stand
and they were asked questions.
And so, for example, Sylvia's father came up to the stand
and Sylvia's mother and Mr. Atkinson from Sylvia's school.
And Sylvia herself was not called to the stand
because she was still young, she was like eight years old.
But a girl that was a little older, named Carol Torres,
was asked to come to the stand.
And she proved that she spoke English perfectly well
and that it was not true that she was being --
that the Mexican-American children were being sent
to a different school because of language.
And then they also asked questions to some college professors,
some education specialists,
that said that it was bad to divide children.
Because then it makes one group feel superior
and one group feel inferior, and that children should be allowed
to go to school all together.
And so the judge had to listen to all these things, right,
and then he had to decide who was right.
Whether the school board, the people from the schools were right,
or whether the families, like the Mendez family
and the other families involved in the case, were right.
And so he took almost a year to decide, but he decided
that the Mendez family and the other Mexican-American families were right
and that all children should go to school together.
And so the Mendez family was very happy,
and the news appeared in local newspapers.
But they didn't have much time to celebrate because the people
in charge of the schools appealed the case.
And what that means is they ask a different judge that has more power
to review the case, because they were hoping
that he would change the decision.
So this time, a judge in San Francisco, in Northern California --
because this was happening in Southern California --
had to review the case and had
to decide whether the Mendez family should win again
or whether the schools should win.
But this time while he was deciding, different organizations
that represented different kinds of people in different parts
of the United States started sending letters to the judge
so that he would favor the Mendez family.
And so, for example, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, the Japanese-American Citizens League,
the American-Jewish Congress,
and other organizations sent these letters.
And on April 15, 1947, the judge in the Court of Appeal
in San Francisco decided that the Mendez family should win again.
And that June, the Governor of California signed a law that said
that all children in California were allowed to go
to school together regardless of race, ethnicity, or language.
And so here is Sylvia, and it's her second day at the school.
And do you remember when we first started the story, right,
that's her first day at school.
And she remembers all of this, all the things that had to happen
so she could go to that school, to the Westminster school.
And so the second day at school, she doesn't listen to any of the kids
that say mean things to her.
And she realized that other kids want to be nice to her
and want to be her friend.
And by the end of the year, she makes a friend.
And by the end of the school year, she makes lots of friends of --
and she's friends with kids of different backgrounds and races.
And she's very proud to be attending that school
because her family fought very hard to make that happen.
And that's the end of the book.
Do you guys like it?
>> Yes.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: And like I said, this story, it's a true story.
So here's a picture of Sylvia when she was about 10 years old.
And this is a picture of Sylvia a few years ago, in 2011,
when she received a medal.
Do you see here that she has a medal, she received a medal
from President Obama for all her courage and all
that her family accomplished.
And here's a picture of Sylvia's father and Sylvia's mother
and that's a picture of the Westminster school
that she was not allowed to go to.
And that's the school on Olive Street
that everyone called the Mexican school that she had to go to.
Do you guys have any thoughts or questions so far?
Yeah.
>> Do you know Sylvia Mendez?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Yeah.
So I had the chance to meet Sylvia Mendez.
So this story I think is a very important story,
but not a lot of people know about it.
I didn't learn about it till recently.
I learned about it like three or four years ago.
And there's -- raise your hand if you've heard of Martin Luther King.
Okay, put your hands down.
Raise your hand if you've heard of Cesar Chavez.
Okay, a few of you.
Raise your hand if you've heard of Brown versus Board of Education.
Okay, just a couple of you.
So there's some civil rights leaders, right, there's people
that sometimes you learn in school, like Martin Luther King,
which most of you have heard about, that fought to bring justice
and equality in the United States so that people
of different races could live and have the same opportunities.
But there's a lot of other people that also fought for that
that you may not learn about or hear as often.
And so Sylvia's family is one of these cases.
And there's a similar case that happened seven years
after all this happened and involved a girl,
an African-American girl, that lived in Kansas.
That also like Sylvia, she was not allowed to go to the school,
to the public school, that was near her house,
but she had to go much farther away to a different school that was only
for African-American children.
And her family didn't think that this was fair and they fought
and eventually that helped make it so that all children
in the United States could go to school together.
And some of the people that were involved in that second case,
that's very famous and that some of you may learn about,
were first involved in this case, like the Governor of California.
He became a judge in that case.
And, for example, Thurgood Marshall, who was the lawyer in that case,
he sent letters for this case, for the Mendez case.
So going back to what you asked, I only learned
about this story a few years ago.
And I was at a book festival in Texas, and Sylvia Mendez was there.
And I had just learned about the case, so I had a chance to talk
with her and ask her questions.
And so a lot of things in the book come from talking with her directly.
And other things in the book come from doing research
and reading different books and reading different articles about it.
Do you have a question?
>> Is Sylvia Mendez still alive?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Yes.
So let me show you guys some other pictures.
How do I exit this, do you know?
Like make it small.
So let me show you some more pictures from the time period.
And I'll show you a picture of Sylvia nowadays.
Can you press down shift, please.
So here's a picture of Sylvia's parents,
a picture of Sylvia's mother.
And so, you know, I looked at these pictures and that's how --
for my drawings, I tried to --
hopefully they look a little bit like them.
That's the school that everyone called the Mexican school.
That's Sylvia's parents.
Sylvia's father.
Sylvia's father and mother.
That's Sylvia and her two brothers and a nanny.
That's her a few years ago.
That's her when she was 11 years old.
That's her aunt Soledad, that drove her to the school.
That is the Westminster school.
And that's a picture of Sylvia a few years ago when I met her
and when I had a chance to ask her questions.
So she's still alive, and she travels off to different parts
in the United States and talks about the case
and about education with different students.
She is -- I forget her rage now -- but she's going to turn 80 soon.
But she's a very active woman.
And she's very nice and very friendly.
Yes? Let me bring you the mic.
>> Are you the author and the illustrator?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Yes.
So I am the author and the illustrator.
And so I want to ask you guys a few questions about that.
Well, here I just want to show you this really quick.
So, like I said, I talked with Sylvia and that was one
of the ways that I wrote this story.
But I also learned when people go to court, there's a secretary,
there's someone that types everything that people say.
And so, for example, here, I was able to read transcripts
of all the things that were said during the case.
And you can see here what Mr. Marcus said, Mr. Holden who was the lawyer
for the school board, and all the different questions
and all the different things that they asked.
I read through that, and then after reading some of those things,
I used that for the story.
I included some of that in the story.
But if we go back here, I made drawings.
And I want to see if you guys notice anything -- let me go to --
do you guys see how when I made my drawings, they're always in profile?
What does that mean?
Profiles, they're always looking to the side.
We never see them looking with both eyes straight ahead.
And do you guys notice anything else that strikes you about the drawings?
Let's hear over here.
[inaudible response] I have pictures in the drawings, okay.
Anything else?
Over here.
[inaudible response] Well, let's go back to your question in a moment.
But does anybody else perceive anything different
or unusual about these drawings?
Over here.
[inaudible response].
Okay. Yeah, yeah, maybe like in this image, for example.
Let me find it.
Like here, right, their body is facing one way
but their head is facing another, kind of.
And does anybody notice anything interesting about their ears?
Their ears look a little bit like a number three or a letter E, right?
Does anybody -- why do you guys think I make my drawings like that?
Anybody want to take a guess?
Let's see, maybe over there.
Yeah. [inaudible] Okay, to make it more creative, that's part of it.
Anybody else?
Here. [inaudible] To make it more real.
All right, so let me show you some drawings that inspire my drawings.
And these are drawings that people made about 500 years ago.
So these drawings are drawings that the Mixtec people made.
And the Mixtec were an indigenous group from the South of Mexico.
And they would make their own books.
And in their books, they told their stories
about their kings and the warriors.
And you can see that in the drawings,
people are always in profile.
They're always looking to the side.
And the ears, you can see here,
that sometimes look a little bit like the number three.
And you can see that the hands are often kind of like this like
or like this or like that.
And so I looked at those things and I thought that this art
that people made hundreds of years ago was very interesting,
very creative.
And I kind of wanted to do something similar,
make drawings that are similar to those, but make them about stories
that are happening now or that happened in the recent past.
So we go back to the book, maybe you can see, you know, how the ears
or the eyes or here maybe the hands,
I try and do it similar to that style.
But then like you guys have noticed, then I also used pictures --
let's find a large image.
And I used different textures.
Have you guys ever made a collage?
Raise your hand if you've made a collage.
Okay, you can put your hands down.
So a collage is when you cut different types of paper
or maybe pictures from magazines or maybe different types of cloths,
and you glue it all together to make a new image.
So I do something like that but I do it in the computer.
And so I graph, for example, this brown paper, and that's one texture.
And then, for example, this here, her skirt is a different texture,
and, for example, her shoes.
Maybe I'll take a picture of something like a leather seat
and then I'll use part of that picture to make her shoes.
And that's how I make the illustrations.
[inaudible] Yes, so you can see the hair here.
So what that is -- I don't have my own computer here,
otherwise I'd show you how I do it.
But it's a picture, like I can take a picture of someone's hair
or I find a picture of someone's hair or a wig on the Internet,
and then I cut it out and glue it there, that's basically what I do.
But I do it in the computer so it's a little neater.
Because I'm kind of a messy, messy guy,
so I just use glue and scissors.
Other questions?
Let's see, over here?
Maybe they're going to pass you the microphone.
>> How do you make the pictures?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Well, how about I draw on a piece of paper, right,
just like a letter-size regular piece of paper.
I make a drawing with a pencil.
So let's say I draw Sylvia.
And then after I like the drawing, I go over it with a pen.
And after I draw with a pen, I use a machine called a scanner.
A scanner is a bit like a photocopy machine.
And you put it on top of the scanner.
And there's a cable connected to the computer and it goes [makes sounds].
And so then the drawing that I did on a piece of paper appears
on the screen, like on a computer screen.
And then on the computer screen, I put the different textures
and different colors on it.
But what I want to do now is show you how I make a book,
because it's related to what you asked.
How long do you guys think it takes to make a book?
[inaudible].
Any idea? How long do you think it takes me to make a book?
[inaudible] 30 what?
30 minutes?
Okay, let's see.
Someone else, over there?
>> Maybe a month or four weeks.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Okay, a month or four weeks.
Let's see, back there?
Yeah?
>> A year maybe.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: A year maybe.
Okay, so usually it takes me about six months,
sometimes closer to a year.
And so the first thing I do is, you know, I have an idea for a story,
I write it out, and then I send it to an editor.
An editor is a person kind of like a teacher, who reads it
and then gives me comments and says, oh, okay, this is very good,
but I'm not sure what's going on here, or I don't know
if the ending is very good or what happened in this part of the story.
So you know, so what I wrote, for example, here is in black.
And all these things in green are things
that he changed or had questions about.
So you can see that it never comes up perfect the first time.
I write it out and then the editor crosses out all sorts
of things and has questions.
And, you know, often in the side here he'll put questions,
like but what happened to Aunt Solidad or what did she do
after she took the kids to the school.
So you can see -- so that's the first part,
I write the story, and then I revise it.
I send it back and forth with this editor, like four or five times
at least, till we're both very happy with the story.
And then after that -- and so that usually takes me about two months,
sometimes more, till we're both very happy with the story.
And then after that, I make sketches for the entire book.
I draw just in black and white, the entire book.
So you can see there, that was my first idea for the cover.
And the cover changed.
And then here, you know, that's the first page in the book.
And here a different person, called an art director,
she or he gives me comments and says, oh, but maybe move this
because you forgot to include this.
Like maybe she should have lunch, a lunch bag or a backpack,
or maybe move the text a little bit because it won't fit.
You know, like here it says maybe I should move it up a little
because otherwise it's going to be too [inaudible].
Yeah, so I get a lot of these comments.
And so they've now changed the sketches many times also.
And that usually takes me like two or three months.
And then after that, after both the art director and I are happy
with the book, with the drawings,
then I put the different texture and color in the books.
Any other questions?
You have a question?
[inaudible].
Am I already happy with the book?
Yeah, I'm very happy with this book.
One reason why I decided -- I made this book for --
I had two big reasons to make this book.
So the first reason is that I think it's an important piece
of American history that not a lot of people know about.
I think it's an important story
that I think more people should learn about.
Because, like I said, sometimes kids in school learn
about important civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King
or Cesar Chavez, but there were also other people that also fought hard
to bring positive change, create positive change
in the United States, in America,
and not a lot of people know their stories.
So I thought that this story was important for that.
But the other reason is that, you know, because I'm an author
and illustrator and I write books, sometimes I get invited
to visit different schools in the United States
in different parts of the United States.
And sometimes I see that schools continue to be very divided.
Like sometimes if I go to a school that's in a poor neighborhood
or poor area, it's usually Latino children
and African-American children that go to that school.
And if I go to a school that's maybe in a suburb
where there's more money, it tends
to be mostly white children or Anglo children.
So a lot of the problems that Sylvia was having 70 years ago are still
kind of happening today.
So I thought that was another reason why I should write this book
and why maybe some of you will relate to this story.
You have a question?
>> Yeah. So how do you fit the texture onto the picture?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: So I do it in the computer
and then gets printed by a printer.
But when they print the book, they print thousands of copies.
So it actually gets printed by large, large machines
that print thousands of copies of the book and it gets bound.
So I don't do that myself personally,
it gets printed by machines.
And so it takes me like six months or a year to make the book, right.
But then after I finish the book, it takes like another six months
for the book to come out, because it gets printed
by those large machines, then it has to be shipped in boats or airplanes
or trucks, be sent to different stores, to different libraries.
And before the book comes out, they usually send some free copies
to different librarians or teachers or people that write for magazines
so that they will read the book and say, oh, it's a good book,
people should buy it, people should have it in their school library
or in their public library.
So from the time that I first have the idea for the book till the time
that someone is actually holding and reading the book,
it takes at least a year, sometimes more like a year and a half or two.
Yes, do you have a question?
>> Well, I think you guys remember
that Ms. Kleinman has been telling you all that I've been
on this award committee, right.
I've been telling you probably since last year.
And I think I've showed some of you some of the books
that we were reading and picking and thinking about carefully,
to see which books we were going
to decide got this very special gold award.
And if you see, my copy has one award.
But if you look at Duncan's copy, it has three awards.
Can you hold that up for them?
Okay, so these children have learned about book awards because I've kind
of been trying to explain to them what it's been
like to be on the committee.
And so another thing that happens besides sending books to schools
and libraries is, when a block is a very important book
for a particular group of people,
what group of people do you think this book is most important for?
Delara?
>> Mexicans.
>> Mexicans who live in Mexico?
>> No, the Mexicans who live in the United States.
>> Mexicans who live in the United States.
Only Mexicans?
What do you think, Millon?
>> I think it's for people who live around the world
that don't get good schools in the United States.
>> Do you mean people from all over the world who might not get
to go to the best schools?
>> Yeah, in the United States.
>> Okay, okay.
I don't want to take too much time away from the author, because I talk
to you guys all the time.
But I just want to say that one of the groups of people
that Duncan sent this book to were three different --
or probably his publisher -- three different award committees.
And all the award committees said, yes, this book deserves an award,
because it's such an important story, and it's beautiful.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: And so awards, I mean , it's very special
to receive an award, but it also helps the book a lot.
Because what happens, every year in the United States, there's thousands
of children's books that get made, right.
But only a few of them, only a small percentage, only a small amount,
talk about different minority groups,
talk about African-American children or Mexican-American children
or Asian-American children.
The amount of books that talk about those people is very small.
So an award like this helps it -- helps more people find these books
and shows that these books are good books and important books.
Because, you know, the United States is such a diverse country
with different types of people, that the books that get published
and get printed should also be -- should also reflect that.
>> I think you have time for three more questions.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Yes?
[ Inaudible Question ]
Yeah, there's the T-shirt I made with one of my drawings.
Most of the T-shirts I wear have my drawings on them.
But yeah, it's something that I've done for several of my books.
So I've done -- this is my fourth book that I've written
and illustrated, and I have five books now.
Because I have a new book that came out a couple weeks ago.
So I have five books that I've written and illustrated.
And sometimes I get invited by different --
to make the drawings for a different author
who writes a story and I make the pictures.
But I've done five that I've written and illustrated myself.
Yeah?
[ Inaudible Question ]
So what I do there -- so in that machine, a scanner,
sometimes I put something, right.
Sometimes I'll put like my sweater on it and then I'll see an image
of the texture of my sweater
on the computer screen, and then I'll use that.
Other things, for example, like the wheel of a tractor,
I can't put the wheel of a tractor on top of the scanner.
So I'll take a photograph myself or I'll go on the Internet
and I'll search pictures of wheels of tractors,
and I'll find one that I think will work.
And so by doing that, then I use a program called Photoshop,
in which I can kind of cut things and paste them in different areas,
and that's how I build my illustrations.
Here in red, yes?
>> When you were talking to Sylvia, when you wrote the book,
did you remember -- did she remember you, that your name was Duncan?
And that she had actually talked to you?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: Yeah.
So I learned about this story from my editor,
the person that's kind of like a teacher.
He was working with a different author on a book that relates
to that case that I told, Brown versus Board of Education.
And in there she mentioned the Mendez case, this other author.
And then he said, oh, I think he would be very interested in this,
because he knows I'm very interested in issues
that affect Mexican-American children and Latino children.
And so I said, oh, yeah, this sounds very interesting.
And I looked online and I found out more about it.
And then I happened to be in the same place
where Sylvia Mendez was going to be.
And so I got to meet her and talk to her,
and I told her I wanted to make a book.
There's a different book that's been made about Sylvia's story,
and there's been some documentaries.
There's a really great novel called "Sylvia and Aki,"
which is like for kids in middle school.
But I wanted to do a book for younger readers.
And so I told her and Sylvia said, oh,
it would be great if you'd do the book.
If you make the book, make sure I wear trenzas,
because I always wore trenzas like that when I was a little girl.
And so then I wrote the book,
and then when I finished writing the story, I actually visited her
in her home in California.
She lives in Fullerton, California, very close to where she grew up.
And I showed her the story, to make sure that everything was correct.
And those pictures that included at the back
of the book are pictures she showed me
and she gave me permission to include in the book.
And so this book has received several awards
and honorable mentions.
It received an award some months ago,
an honorable mention some months ago,
and Sylvia Mendez was able to come to that.
And so I've seen her a few times and I've had an opportunity to talk
with her, and she likes the book and she's happy with it.
Yes?
>> What is the fifth book called?
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: So let me show you really quickly some
of the other books.
I won't be able to read them to you
because I know we're running out of time.
>> We have I believe "Diego Rivera,"
and also "Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote."
So I can show you at least two others.
>> Duncan Tonatiuh: And so then I'll show you the latest one,
which is called "Funny Bones."
And so some books that I've made are fiction, right.
There stories that I make up with people that don't exist.
But other stories, like this book, "Separate is Never Equal,"
and like this book, "Funny Bones," are based --
are nonfiction, are based on true people.
So this is the story of a man named Posada, who was an artist.
And he made these drawings of these skeletons.
And so wanted to learn, why did he make these drawings
of skeletons riding bicycles and dancing and playing guitars.
So the book is a biography of him.
I went to a library and I learned about his life
and the different drawing techniques that he learned,
different things that happened.
And it's also about the Day of the Dead, because he made the drawings
for the Day of the Dead, which is a holiday.
Maybe a lot of you know about it,
that happens just right after Halloween.
And so in the book I talk about different Day
of the Dead traditions, like doing these paper cutouts
or like making these sugar skulls or decorating shrines
with marigold flowers and dead bread.
And then there's also this tradition of writing calaveras poems.
And they're poems that involve skeletons in some kind way.
So for example, this is a calaveras poem I wrote.
It says, "it was a warm afternoon in the middle of May.
Mr. Bones grabbed his hat and went walking that day.
When he noticed a beauty on the opposite street,
he ran towards her and kneeled at her feet.
You're the prettiest girl I've seen in my life.
Please marry me, please be my wife.
I am sorry, senor, but that cannot be.
You're handsome and all, but too skinny for me."
And so the poems are supposed to be silly and funny.
And Posada, he drew -- he made a lot of illustrations
for those kinds of poems.
So in the book, I put his illustrations and I ask questions
about why he drew those images and try to think
of why he made those images and ask questions
about why he may have done that.
And so that's the latest book I've done.
Yes?
[ Inaudible Question ]
Is anyone in the school [inaudible].
In this book, in "Separate is Never Equal"?
Well, the main character, Sylvia, she's still alive.
I forget exactly how old she is now,
but she's in her 70s, close to being 80.
And her brothers are still alive.
Her parents passed away some years ago.
And what happened is when Sylvia, after she went to the school, right.
After she went to that school with children of all races,
she went on to middle school, high school,
she went to college, and she became a nurse.
And she worked as a nurse for a long time, for almost 30 years.
But then her mother got sick, and so she stopped working
so she could take care of her mother.
And when her mother was very sick, she said, you know,
I'm so sad that no one knows about our story and all the things
that we did to make it
so that children could go to school together.
So Sylvia decided she was not going to work as a nurse anymore
and that instead she was going to start traveling and talking
with people about this case so more people would find out about it.
And in that room were she used to take care of her mom
when she was sick, now it's kind of her office.
And she has all these awards and all these different pictures
and recognitions for her effort, for her family's effort
and for her effort so that more people learn about this story
and to talk about education and equality.
>> Kahin Mohammad: All right, I want you guys to join me
in thanking Duncan Tonatiuh for making time to come here today.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.GOV.
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