In Little Rebels, author-illustrator Yuyi Morales draws on her Mexican heritage to inspire young readers to work together to be friends to the Earth and its beings. Due from Holiday House’s Neal Porter Books on September 2, Little Rebels joins this Caldecott Honoree and six-time Pura Belpré Medalist’s robust picture book canon, which includes Viva Frida, Dreamers, and Bright Star. A Spanish edition of Little Rebels, Peques rebeldes, will be released simultaneously.
The picture book, whose cover is revealed here, introduces three imaginative, inquisitive children who play together outdoors in good times and work together in times of trouble. When the river dries up and a bird friend becomes trapped in the riverbed, these young trailblazers call on ancestors to show them what to do.
Born and raised in Xalapa, Mexico, Morales resided for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area before returning to her hometown to live. There she found the inspiration for Little Rebels. Decades after playing at the edge of the Farallón Lagoon as a child, Morales was shocked and saddened to discover that the once-pristine lagoon had dried up.
Viewing the destroyed body of water, Morales recalled, “began a process of awareness that was new to me. In Mexico and other countries of Latin America, powerful foreign investors often seek sites where natural and human resources can be exploited for companies’ benefit, leaving the local communities tragically stripped of their natural resources.”
The sight of the dry lagoon affected Morales emotionally—provoking “an intense sadness and hopelessness in my chest”—and stirred her creatively. “I wondered how I or anyone could ever begin to change something as enormous as the death of a lagoon,” she said. “And I imagined how children must feel the same sadness as they wonder, being young and little, how they could ever change and heal all the things they hear about or experience in this big world. I very much wanted to find an answer to such difficult questions, and Little Rebels began growing in my heart.”
As in her earlier work, Morales interwove Mexican culture and folklore in the text and illustrations for Little Rebels. “Now that I am back in Mexico, I am surrounded by living inspiration at every moment!” she said. “The book’s creatures, children, and plants all embody the life and energy I am immersed in.” Mexican motifs that Morales incorporated in the book include the jaguar-people sculptures made by ancient Indigenous people of Mesoamerica; Xóchipilli, the Flower Prince of Aztec mythology; and the healing power of son jarocho music, which is the folk music of Veracruz, her birth state.
Neal Porter, who has been working with Morales since he published Little Night at Roaring Brook in 2006, praised her ability to modify her art style to suit the narrative at hand. “Working with Yuyi is always an adventure, and it’s always thrilling to see how she finds new techniques to enrich and enhance the story she is telling,” he said. “In addition to being an author and artist, Yuyi is an activist, and her fearlessness has become more apparent in books like Dreamers and Bright Star. Little Rebels takes this one step further—it is an invitation to young readers to take a stand at a time of great strife and divisiveness.”
A Cover That Tells a Tale
It was important to Morales to incorporate images integral to Mexican culture into her cover art for Little Rebels. “On the cover we see the little Olmec Head rebel making a hand-claw and showing smiling fangs as an act of self-care and joy,” she explained. “The flower child makes a dancing move with his hands in the style of ‘voguing,’ the rebel ballroom dance. The third child plays the smallest jarana [a guitar-like instrument]—called chaquiste, which is the name of an almost invisible Mexican mosquito with the most powerful sting. As the children stand in wild mushrooms and pumpkin flowers, they circle Kek, the always curious baby crane bird at the center of the story. And Luna the dog, constantly watching and taking care of those she loves, observes the scene with caution.”
Though designing the cover art for Little Rebels was clearly a mission close to her heart, Morales admitted that she finds that “creating the cover is one of the most difficult tasks of making a book.” She added, “I have such great expectations for the cover to spark the curiosity of readers and entrance them into opening the book. I always want the reader to feel delighted by surrounding them with the colors of the cover, the boldness of the image, and a sense of celebration that I hope to always infuse in my work. Most importantly, I strive to make readers feel the story is about them, too.”
Jennifer Brown, creative director of Neal Porter Books, said that the making of the Little Rebels cover “was a very collaborative” team effort by Morales, Porter, editorial director Taylor Norman, and herself.
“Yuyi had the initial jacket idea, and then we went back and forth from sketches to the finish,” Browne said. “Yuyi created the title type using unconventional colors as a way to draw the reader’s eye to the book. All the flowers and growing things are large, helping to emphasize the fun, magical world that Yuyi has created. Although she is exploring environmental loss, she has managed to project hope and a way forward for children growing up in an uncertain world.”
Morales underscored how that is a core goal of Little Rebels—though the journey has been somewhat troublesome. “One of the most difficult things in my process of making this book has been finding reassurance when I see the state of our world,” she noted. “In my despair I wonder how any of us, especially those who are rather little, could ever change things that hurt and that are so overwhelming and enormous. With Little Rebels I hope that children will feel inspired to honor and trust their littleness, and that with their inherent wisdom and sense of justice, they will find ways to get together with other little creatures, not necessarily to change the world, but to bring about actions—perhaps even tiny ones—of awareness, creativity, and care for each other and the territory they live in.”
Little Rebels by Yuyi Morales. Holiday House/Porter, $18.99 Sept. 2 ISBN 978-0-8234-4754-1.
