Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 69

girlie or pathetic.” The translators didn’t have a context for “said Shohei,” which I gather must be a very American turn of phrase. My second novel, Tofu And T. Rex (Little Brown, 2005), is the story of a girl who is a vegan who goes to live with her cousin’s family, who own a German delicatessen and butcher shop. I tend to think of Ninjas as my “Japanese” book and Tofu as my “German” book. Tofu is a companion to Ninjas, and it’s told in alternating points of view, switching between Freddie Murchison-Kowalski, German-Polish American, and her cousin, Hans-Peter Yamada, who is JapaneseGerman-Polish American. Although ethnicity is not thematically important, elements of it are important in allowing the pair to bridge the gap between vegan and wurst-o-phile. They live in Chicago in a neighborhood based on the one I grew up in, which has a street (Lincoln Avenue) filled with German shops, delis, apothecaries, and the like. For research, Cynthia and I went back up there and took pictures. Delicatessen Kowalski is based on Delicatessen Meyer, a Chicago institution, which hasn’t changed at all since I was a kid. It’s still clean enough to eat off the floor and staffed by old German and Polish ladies wearing crisp white jackets. Tofu came about almost by accident. I had finished up Ninjas, and I was going through old notes and jotting new ideas, but nothing was really exciting enough to spend the time to write a novel about. Somewhere along the line, though, I began playing around with comic opposites (e.g., The Odd Couple) and decided you could not get more opposite than a sausage maker and a vegan. The idea was intrinsically funny, had a built-in conflict, and a lot of possibilities. Another idea I had been playing with involved applications to “elite” schools – having applied to and attended several universities in that category, believe me, the comic possibilities there are endless. I hadn’t initially intended to write a companion to Ninjas, but as I was trying to develop my vegan character, I realized I already had one, in Freddie, who has a minor role in Ninjas. Once I had Freddie as a character, it was inevitable that the school which would be the subject of application horror would be the Peshtigo School, and that the person applying would be Freddie’s cousin, Hans-Peter. One of the biggest challenges was that I am not a vegan and I do not make sausage for pleasure. I also wanted Freddie to remain a vegan at the end of the novel and I wanted Hans-Peter to remain a committed carnivore at the end of the novel. (I really, really, hate novels where the character’s epiphany is along the lines of “Why, yes, [insert: cousin, friend, Mom], you were right all along. I am so much more enlightened now that I’ve learned the lesson you’ve been trying to teach me.”) Both characters were so strong, no one would have believed it anyway. This meant, though, that I had to find a way for them to both change and grow while being true to themselves. Consequently, the novel became more a story of family conflict than “political” conflict, and the extent to which family matters. I spent a lot of time researching both veganism and sausage-making (and believe me, sausage makers are just as passionate about wurst as vegans are about their cause.) I sampled a certain amount of sausage made by different techniques and I also spent a week on a vegan diet. This fall, Cynthia and I have the first book on which we collaborated as co-authors, a funny picture book called Santa Knows, about a boy who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus (and in fact spends considerable time trying to debunk Santa) until he’s kidnapped by the Jolly Old Elf himself. We both have many happy memories of Christmas and family, so it was easy to get into the holiday spirit. CONCLUSION Each of these authors has shared generously of their lives and stories as writers of books for young people. And each has a unique perspective to share. However, no author should be held accountable for speaking on behalf of her/his entire culture with any single book. Let us be careful 69

Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color