Alma and How She Got Her Name

Alma and How She Got Her Name
by Juana Martinez-Neal (Author / Illustrator)

Booktalk: If you ask her, Alma Sofia Esperanza José Pura Candela has way too many names: six! Just think of how hard it is to fit them all on the back of a little photo. How did such a small person wind up with such a large name? Alma turns to Daddy for an answer . . .

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Guest Post by Juana Martinez-Neal

Juana Martinez-Neal is the daughter and granddaughter of painters. She started her story in Lima, Peru, and then moved to the United States. The winner of a 2018 Pura Belpré Illustrator Award for La Princesa and the Pea by Susan Middleton Elya, Juana Martinez-Neal is still writing the story of her life, with the help of her husband and three children, in Arizona.

Q. Describe your writing process.
A. A mess. An organized confusion.

I’m a visual person so images always come first. Those first images feel very much like scenes in a play, but I have to discover who I am working with in the book. So I always begin a new book by working on character sketches.

For Alma, I had 4 different versions of Alma and her dad before I settled on the characters that appear in the book that just published in April. As I drew, each one of them felt right in different ways, but not completely right. When I drew Alma as she is now, she felt real! Alma felt like she was an actual little girl!

Once I had the main characters I began to sketch a full spread and write many drafts of the manuscript. Then, I go back to sketching, editing the manuscript, and more sketching. I tend to switch between writing and drawing if I feel stuck. But if I’m really, really stuck then I stop completely and that’s when Stefanie, my literary agent, comes to the rescue. We talk on the phone about what the story and then characters and brainstorm many ideas together. Without her, Alma would have been left as an unfinished idea of a book.

Q: Tell us about your latest book.
A. My latest book is Alma and How She Got Her Name which just released on April 10 from Candlewick Press. I also wrote the Spanish edition, Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre, which was released simultaneously.

The book is a conversation between Alma and her dad when she asks him why is her name so long. In their conversation, she is introduced to important people in her family who came before her and consequently she is named after — except for the name Alma. She is the one and only Alma, and she will get to tell her own story.

Alma is about discovering your family and finding your place in your family and in the world. It is about valuing heritage and having pride in where you come from.

It is my hope that Alma starts many conversations about names, family and countries of origin, and that these discussions help children take pride in their own names and where they come from!

Thanks for sharing your new book, Juana!

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