Lee and Low editor, Jessica Echeverria recently asked me to be a part of the Confetti Kids series. And it was just starting, and she was telling me about the concept, which is about five kids of all different races and backgrounds living in New York City. And it was about kind of doing like an early reader series, you know, positive adventures with the kids. And I thought it was really sweet, and I said of course I’d love to be involved. I wrote the books Lily’s New Home, Want to Play?, and The Perfect Gift. What’s fun about the books is that each kid has his or her own personality. You know, you have Lily, who’s the new kid on the block. She just moved to New York, and she kind of finds her voice with protesting, and also, she loves to read, she loves to go to the library, you know, she’s just a very active proactive kid. I would say, and Henry is our musician. You know, he can’t get music out of his head.
We have Pablo who is the quiet bookworm, you know. His sisters are too loud. They’re always – he’s like quiet, I’m trying to read. He just loves books. And Mei is a little bit of the artist and a little bit of a writer herself, and I would say Padma, I wonder if she’s a budding chef ’cause, you know, there’s one book where for the block party she wants to bring an Indian dish to the block party, and so she learns a lot about food and stuff like that.
So, it’s very sweet. And what I love about the book too is that all five kids, they’re always there for each other, you know. They play, they care about each other, and I think it’s such a great example of showing kids from all different backgrounds hanging out together. And I think that we celebrate a diverse group of kids that stand in solidarity, telling five and six and seven and eight-year-olds you can all be together on a playground and love each other and care for each other. So, we instill those values early in our children, and that will lead to such great solidarity in the future.
