David: I think the difference between this particular book and Sarah’s other five is essentially that there’s a real family involved here. In the other books the main characters are, they either physically leave home or in the case of The Gardner, the little girl is actually sent away from home because it’s the Depression and the family can’t even afford to feed their own children, and so she has to make a living elsewhere.
But in this case the girl is displaced from her home in Mexico and brought to a very foreign place. But she has her family with her. And that is something we both don’t know much about frankly in our own lives.
Sarah: We didn’t have that as children.
David: We didn’t have close family. But we both knew Abby. Abby when she came to our village and made this wonderful restaurant and transformed the village, as Sarah said
Sarah: Literally.
David: A village, a dying farm village, all of a sudden there were BMWs parked outside this restaurant and people coming from Chicago and Ann Arbor and up from Indiana because Abby had a reputation already. But she also, her family was there every Mexican holiday, every birthday, every Christmas they would come to the restaurant and Abby would bring us there.
Sarah: Always.
David: And she made us, she still does make us part of her family. And
Sarah: It’s been very powerful for me.
David: And that’s one of the reasons I think we like to go to Mexico too because that is such a family oriented country. The families are so close knit, little satellite circling the Earth and observing. they’re so caring. And so little Isobel is carried with her family to this place and she always has them around her in this book. And I tried to show that in some of the drawings.
Sarah: Oh, you did beautifully
Sarah: That she was surrounded by love and the warmth of her native country.
Sarah: You did show that beautifully.