The Picture Book Blogettes: First Fridays with Maya Gonzalez

Becoming a Children's Book Publisher: Crafting Socially Relevant Children’s Books as a Way of Life

I surprised my own self recently when I wrote:

“I fell in love with creating books. As an artist & writer, as an educator and especially as a parent, I found them to be the perfect vehicle to support our children and pass on to them important lessons about social justice and a strong sense of self.”

It’s the “fell in love” part that surprised me. I never put it like that before, but it’s true. I have a deep heart feeling about creating children’s books. It’s a feeling so large it takes me just beyond my ability to verbalize. It has a lot in common with falling madly in love and staying there. That’s how I know making children’s books is one of my favorite mediums.

I have worked with children’s book publishers for many years, and for the time being, still do, but I do not personally consider myself a children’s book illustrator/author.  I am and always have been an artist. So that’s how I relate to book making.

I am deep into process. After many years of creating art, design and words for books with fantastic editors Dana Goldberg and engaging publishers like Harriet Rohmer, my partner and I suddenly decided to open our own press—basically because we realized we could. We saw the immense potential present in creating books by and for the people with technology close at hand. Using relatively, easily accessible platforms, like Print-on-Demand, together with the abilities we each had, we understood that we could affordably create kickass books.

Much like art, we didn’t really have a choice. We began making books. We just had to. Claiming Face, Gender Now, I See Peace.

Being publishers gave us total creative power. Sometimes as artists and authors, our vision is more far reaching than traditional publishing and current trends allow. But with this kind of independent publishing muscle, we have the freedom to dream as big as we want! We can revision, switch up, freee the whole game; publishing-wise, social-wise, political-wise, spiritual-wise, you name it! We can literally change the face of history through books like never before!

So that’s exactly what we decided to do. We decided to change history. OK, well, not technically, but sort of.

Our current project is called EVERYBODY’S HISTORY: the people. united. It’s our most ambitious project yet.

Here’s the official spiel:

EVERYBODY’S HISTORY is a revolutionary new series for ages 9-12 that transforms the way we tell history. The series begins with our first three heroes, Harriet Tubman, We’Wha and Charley Parkhurst . Chosen with an eye on social justice, mixed with a fierce sense of fun and the intention to expand our vision to be more inclusive of all communities, each book explores the life and times of the characters through story, anecdotes, quirky facts, art, and unique activities. Books come grouped in three, interconnected through themes for deeper exploration. Our first set is unified by the Civil War era, gender expression and race. Everything about these books allows for a different kind of commentary on history for our kids and a different kind of engagement and relevance to current events.

Projects like these are acts of mad love. We educated ourselves about publishing and crowd funding to support our BIG DREAMS and now we’re learning more about outreach. There’s a lot to this level of artistic responsibility. We’ve had to seriously look at what’s important to us. Clearly, at this stage, it’s not the money. It is about books like these being available and STAYING available. It’s about being free. It’s about knowing that we can do anything. It’s about showing our kids and other talented and amazing book makers that the sky’s the limit right now! We can dream as BIG as we want!

We can CHANGE HISTORY!

If you are interested in becoming an independent publisher yourself, here's a 23 page packet from Reflection Press's Radical and Relevant Children’s Books Mini-conference:
http://www.reflectionpress.com/radicalbooks

Maya Gonzalez is largely self-taught. She has illustrated over 20 award-winning multicultural children’s books and written 3 with, not an end in sight! Her fine art has shown internationally and appears in numerous books about the contemporary Chicano Art Movement including on the cover of Living Chicana Theory and Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture and Education considered to be "the Bible of Chicano/a art." Ridiculously creative, she’s probably making art as you read this or thinking about making art if she’s driving a car or using the stove. And one of her ultimate passions is inspiring others to create books, because she believes that creating children's books has the potential to be one of the most radical things you can do!

If you'd like to know more about Maya, you can visit her children's book website, her fine art website, or learn more about her work inspiring others to join her in changing the world at www.schoolofthefreemind.com or www.reflectionpress.com.