“You go on tour with someone, you end up having some intimate conversations,” de la Peña noted, “Christian said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do something about a child with a parent who is incarcerated.’ I feel like he’d been moving towards doing something super-personal for a while.” The two were having coffee and talking before the event began. during their Carmela Full of Wishes tour. “Children share that sentence with their mother,” he pointed out, disclosing that the gender of Milo’s parent is not revealed until the end, so as to “play with expectations,” just as was done in Last Stop on Market Street, “where you don’t know where they’re going.” An important takeaway from Milo Imagines the World, de la Peña points out, is the “laziness of stereotypes: we make assumptions and it’s always so much more complicated” in actuality.īoth de la Peña and Robinson recalled in separate interviews that Milo Imagines the World was conceived almost two years ago in a Barnes & Noble café in Fairfax, Va. “In those prisons, 95% of the people were people of color, while 95% of the people at the literary festival were white,” he recalled.Īccording to de la Peña’s research, women are the fastest growing population incarcerated in U.S. “People of color.” The racial disparities between the prison population and the general population really hit him, he said, when he visited three Minnesota prisons to lead writing workshops while in the Twin Cities for Teen Lit Con in 2015. contains 4% of the world’s population, it also contains 25% of the world’s imprisoned people. I feel compelled to let kids who feel the shame I felt then know that they’re not alone: their experience matters.”ĭe la Peña pointed out that while the U.S. I recognize that my story is not that unique. It was difficult not all that long ago to talk about it. As a child, I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment. “Like Milo, I grew up with an incarcerated parent. “Milo’s story is my story,” Robinson said. He lived with his grandmother and took long subway rides through Los Angeles once a week to visit his mother in prison, because the family did not own a car. While Last Stop on Market Street was close to de la Peña’s heart, he told PW, because it was a tale inspired by childhood memories of his grandmother, Milo Imagines the World is equally close to Robinson’s heart because it was inspired by his childhood. To Milo’s surprise, the boy gets off at the same stop and waits in the same long line at the prison to visit his own parent. One day, he sees a well-dressed boy riding the subway, and draws him in a castle with a drawbridge. During the long ride, Milo studies the other subway riders and draws pictures of their lives as he imagines them. Once a week, he and his older sister take the subway to visit their incarcerated parent. But when the boy in the suit gets off on the same stop as Milo - walking the same path, going to the exact same place - Milo realizes that you can't really know anyone just by looking at them.In Milo Imagines the World, a budding young artist named Milo lives with his grandmother in New York City. And then there's the boy in the suit with the bright white sneakers Milo imagines him arriving home to a castle with a drawbridge and a butler. There's the wedding-dressed woman with a little dog peeking out of her handbag Milo imagines her in a grand cathedral ceremony. There's the whiskered man with the crossword puzzle Milo imagines him playing solitaire in a cluttered apartment full of pets. To pass the time, he studies the faces around him and makes pictures of their lives. Milo is on a long subway ride with his older sister. The team behind the Newbery Medal winner and Caldecott Honor book Last Stop on Market Street and the award-winning New York Times bestseller Carmela Full of Wishes once again delivers a poignant and timely picture book that's sure to become an instant classic. Reading Level: Grade K, Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5Īlso by this author: Last Stop on Market Street, Love Genres: Art, Criminal Justice, Family, Incarceration Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Peña When they walk down the electronics aisle at the department store./ When they cross into the fancy neighborhood.” Continue reading. For a boy wearing a suit and tie, Milo imagines “the clop clop clop of the horse-drawn carriage that will carry him to his castle.” For a trio of break-dancers who cavort in Milo’s train car and who, like him, aren’t white, he glumly foresees that “even after the performances are over, faces still follow their every move. To pass the time while his older sister is absorbed by her phone, Milo people-watches, using a notebook to record the places he imagines his fellow passengers going after they reach their stops.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |