 Good morning, Ileana, are we're good? All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to KidQuake. Before we get started, let's get our bodies ready to listen. So turn our voices off. We're going to keep our hands and feet to ourselves and get our watching eyes ready and our listening ears ready. We want to make sure that we can hear the authors and that our friends who are watching online can hear as well. So if you could help out with that and being a really attentive and great audience, that would be so great. So welcome. We're so glad that you're here. My name is Becca. I'm one of the co-producers for KidQuake. And we have today here our fabulous authors who will be introduced in a moment. Got to get back to my notes of what I was going to say to all of you. So we just want to, we have a few people to thank. So we want to thank the SAMASA Foundation and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development for sponsoring KidQuake. Thank you for folio books. They're selling books out in the lobby today and teachers for your information. Books today are 20% off for you. Just so you know that. Thank you to Books Inc. They lent us some space in their basement so we could store books there this year and those books that we have here today to give to all of you. So you'll be going home with some books today that your teachers will have or should have soon. And also we want to give, well thank you to our authors of course. And finally a big thank you to San Francisco Public Library for hosting us this year. We're super excited for KidQuake to be back in person. And with that I'm going to introduce and welcome our emcee today. Her name is Hilary and she's one of the librarians here at SFPL and she will be running our show. So welcome Hilary. All right, good morning. Welcome everybody. My name is Hilary and I'm a librarian here at the San Francisco Public Library. I have the best job in the world because I get to plan events and programs for kids just like you. And I get to do so with a lot of other wonderful talented librarians. So thank you so much for being here today. If you're like me, you love to read books. Raise your hand if you love to read books. Yes, I love to see that. So besides reading books, I love to learn about how authors write books. That's very interesting to me. And today you will meet some fabulous authors and hear about how they write their books, their process. And we hope it inspires you to become authors yourselves. So before we get started, we're gonna say a land acknowledgement together. And this is to show our gratitude for the first people that lived in what is now known as the San Francisco Bay Area. So this is a call and response so you can repeat after me and do the movements. So the first thing we're gonna say is here is the land and we're gonna touch the ground in front of us. Here is the land and here is the sky. Here are my friends and here am I. We stand together hand in hand and thank the Ramaytush Aloni, the traditional caretakers of this land. The land on which we like to play. We promise to look at after it every day. That was wonderful. Thank you. So before I introduce our first author, Becca had mentioned earlier that we're gonna be really great listeners for this presentation. One thing I like to do when I see a presentation is I like to put on my listening ears. I keep them in my pocket and then I put them on. Can you wiggle your listening ears? Thank you. And then another thing I like to do is calm my body. So I'll take a deep breath. If everyone could take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth and give yourself a big hug. All right, I can tell this is a great group of listeners. So our first author is Saina Wedlick. Saina originally hails from Nigeria but now makes her home in California. When not writing or working on special projects, Saina can be found exploring or spending time on the beach with her husband and children who each have several names. She also enjoys visiting bookstores and collecting postcards. Can everybody give a warm welcome to Saina? Thank you, Hilary. Hi everyone, I'm Saina Wedlick and I'm so excited to be here today. So thank you for having me. I'm going to talk to you today about my picture book called Naming Ceremony and I'm going to go over how I came up with the idea for this story and how I write my first drafts of my picture books. And before I get started, how many of you here like parties show hands? Well, that's fabulous because Naming Ceremony is a party. All right, so let's get started. So about me, I grew up in Nigeria. It's a country in West Africa. A national dish is called Jalaf rice. It's a stewed rice dish. It's absolutely delicious and we have it at every party. Birthday parties, weddings, naming ceremonies. Everyone loves Jalaf rice and I think if you don't like it, you might throw you out of the country but that's just how that works. And my favorite treat ever at Chocolate Chip Cookies. Anyone? Perfect. All right, we're going to get along great. So growing up, I always love books and I would always look for a super secret place to hide and read. And for me, that was under the dining table. We had this huge dining table with lace table cloth that dripped down the sides and I would crawl under the table and read for hours. I love, love, love postcards. I like to travel a lot. I get a lot of inspiration when I travel. And the smallest thing I can bring back for my travels is a postcard. It's small and it has a picture to remind me of the place I just visited. So it's perfect for me. And I love books. I have so many books and I'm going to take a poll here. How many people think I have less than 500 bucks? How many people think I have more than 500 bucks? I have over 700 bucks. I say over because I stopped counting around 700 and my poor husband, all my books are in cartons in our garage so we don't pack any cars in the garage. It's just full of books. And sometimes when someone mentions a book, I go, hmm, I have that book, but I don't know, it's somewhere in there. So I just have to go to the bookstore and buy a new one. It's not very good. Did I mention I love books? Here are some of the, lovely. Of course, if you give a mouse a cookie has to be on here. I love cookies. Didn't I say that already? So these are some of the favorite books that I like to read to my kids. And I'm so glad to hear that a lot of you here have read some of these authors. So that's wonderful. I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I read so many books screened up that I would ask myself questions like, are there really pixies at the bottom of the garden? I don't know. And if Lighton says they are, I grew up reading about magic faraway trees and super secret clubs. And I always knew that I wanted to create something special that other kids could enjoy. And I didn't always think that that would happen for me. But it did. And so I'm going to talk to you about how I come up with ideas and how I get through the first draft of my stories. So once I get the idea for a book, I think about the main character, the best person to tell this story. Once I have the main character, I try to think about the problem they're trying to solve. And I go over any difficulties they might have while solving this problem. I build in some tension to keep it exciting. And then after the problem is solved, we go over what is hopefully good consequences that result in a happy ending. And when I get to the part for a naming ceremony, I'll tell you about how I got the idea for this book and how I chose the main character. So ideas, where do I get my ideas? For me, my ideas come from my culture, my traditions and my own lived experiences. I like to draw stories from myself because that gets me excited and then I can stick with the story through completion. So traditions, my family has quite a few of those. The favorites right now are family movie nights. We have every Friday night. Anybody else have family movie nights? Yeah, this is a standard in my house even when it's not Friday night. We have midnight birthday songs, which means on your birthday at midnight, we wake you up. We get calls from Nigeria at exactly midnight. We get calls from England exactly midnight. Everyone's calling to say happy birthday. You get to wake up and just not go to bed. So that's a fun one in our house. Of course we have naming ceremonies which happens when a child is born. It's a rite of passage, all my kids went through this, I went through it. And summer camping trips. Currently in my house, summer camping trips are currently happening at theme parks thanks to my husband. I believe in two weekends, they're gonna be at Gilroy Gardens camping out there. So that's a fun one, my kids love that. So what is a naming ceremony? We talked about parties earlier on. A naming ceremony is basically a tradition that happens in a lot of West African countries and a bunch of countries across the world where when a child is born, family and friends come together to give the child a name. And that's essentially a party for the baby who's just a few days old. So what is a name? A name can be a blessing, a wish, a story. Your loved ones come together and you think of something special that they want you to have. And in Nigeria, many cultures have different traditions for how they name their children. In my culture, one of the more common ones is the first daughter is usually given the name of the grandmother. So it's not uncommon for a lot of cousins to all have the same names. There's also a tradition where if you're a twin, you get a special name, twins have special names, are there any twins in the audience? Oh, that's surprising, one. Usually. Well, I'm a twin, so there's that. Oh, there you go. So there are just really many different ways that babies can be named. You can be named by your birth order. You can be named by the day of the week. So usually when you say your name, the person across from you knows something about you before you even say something. They might be able to deduce that the other child that comes after a twin is born, maybe you're the second child in your family. So names have a lot of really special meanings. So now I'm going to take a moment to read naming ceremony to you. This story is the work of my heart. I had a lot of fun writing this story. I came up with this idea when my second child was born. When my second child was born, my son was just a year old. And I remember thinking, oh dear, I wonder what he would name his little sister if he could. And so I wanted to write this story, but obviously I couldn't write the story with the baby boy, one year old as the main character, which is why crafting the main character is important. The right person to tell the story. In this story, I wanted to write about sisterhood and I wanted to write about a character who was old enough to name their child. So here we go. Amira is excited. Today is her baby sister's naming ceremony. Mama puts a coral bracelet on baby sister's wrist. How do I pick a name for baby sister, Amira asks? Think of something meaningful that you would want her to have, a blessing, a wish, a story. Each of your names were carefully picked just for you, says Mama. Now baby sister will also get her own special names, says Amira. Yes, just as special as that little dimple in your cheek. Amira sits quietly for a minute. What name do you have for baby sister, she asks? You'll have to wait and see, says Mama. We will start as soon as the baby wakes up. When you wake up little one, I will have the perfect gift for you, Amira whispers. Amira strokes the red coral beads on baby sister's wrist and looks at her own coral beads. Mama also received one when she was a baby, ran my Nana too. Amira loves all her family's traditions. I wanna pause here before I go on to just talk about coral beads. They really come on in Nigeria and almost everyone wears them at really, really important events. This is a plain coral bead, very similar to the one that Amira and her baby sister have on. And this is a fancy one that's, I don't know, it's strong with gold. This was the one I wore at my wedding. So coral beads are, they can be as plain or as elaborate as you want them to be. Ding dong, guests. It is Grandma Nana with the cousins. The little twins Onizze and Oricha run past Amira laughing and giggling. I have a secret on this page that not very many people know. Onizze and Oricha are my daughter and my son's middle names given to them by my mother. So I use their names in this story. Amira takes a weave of the tree of Akara. What gift do you have for baby sister? Asks Amira with a mouthful of fried bean cake. Shakira says Grandma Nana. Shakira, surely baby sister has a lot to be thankful for. But what if baby sister doesn't like the name she peaks? So naming ceremony is a story about Amira and her desire to come up with a perfect name for her baby sister. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Can we give Saina some shine? Yay. All right. So we've got our next author. Jill-Ann Hoffman. Jill-Ann used to be an industrial engineer and now writes books for kids. She's the author of A River of Dust, the life-giving link between North Africa and the Amazon, which was a junior library guild gold selection. Jill-Ann has also written two board books, Happy Camper and the Honey Bear Hive and is busy writing more books about our amazing planet. She lives with her family in San Francisco. Can we give a round of applause to welcome Jill-Ann? Good morning. Not bad. Not bad. How about good morning? Awesome. You guys are great. My name is Jill-Ann Hoffman and I am here to talk to you about dust. Dust. That dust, that rust red river of dust that flies from North Africa across the Atlantic Ocean and lands in the Amazon rainforest in South America. And that dust carries very special ingredients that I'm not gonna tell you about because you need to read the book, but they carry that ingredients just like you carry your backpack and deliver things. I want to tell you where this book came from. It came from me, that kid there who's covered in dust. Yes, actually it started out as mud because I was busy building a dam with my brother across a creek in the farm in the Midwest. And I was covered in dust eventually. So I was five years old in that picture. Now let's fast forward another five years and I came home from elementary school and I turned on the TV and on the evening news was information about dust, dust flying from Africa across the ocean to the United States and landing in Illinois, which was where I lived. And I was so excited. I had so many questions like how much, where is it coming from? Exactly, what's it gonna do once it gets here? And I ran outside to see this dust. No, no, I'm sorry, that is not what I saw. That is the dust bowl from the United States in the 1930s. When we plowed the prairie and drought came through and then the winds came and blew all of that glorious topsoil away. But it did not look like that on the day that I went outside. It did not. And I was so disappointed. I had no answers and no one had any answers because scientists had not yet studied dust. That's right. I had to wait 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, almost 50 years. Before I got an email from NASA saying, Jill Lan, we have answers to your questions. We're on a first name basis. Yes, NASA said, we know how much dust, where it's coming from, when it's coming, we know everything there is to know about it. And I was just gobsmacked. And they know it because of these satellites. These are Earth observation satellites that are flying around the Earth at over 15,000 miles an hour. And while they're flying, they're taking measurements about Earth, land, water, temperatures, you name it. It's collecting information. And they've been collecting this information for a long time. And this is one of the reasons why we know that our planet is suffering from climate change. One of the reasons. But the very coolest part of this is that you see down there at the bottom, Calypso. This is a close-up of Calypso. Calypso is the one that measures dust. Well, it used to. It was put up in the atmosphere in 2006 and it was only supposed to last for three years, but instead it lasted for 17 years. Now, that's what I call an overachiever, right? That satellite was amazing. But sadly, sadly, about four weeks ago, I got another email from NASA. And NASA said, Julianne, we are so sorry. Calypso is no more. Calypso ran out of nuclear fuel and could no longer power its instruments, could no longer keep itself in its orbit and it has burned up in the atmosphere. And I was so sad. I can't tell you, I was crushed because I love this satellite. But I gotta tell you, NASA said, no worries, Jill. We've got it covered. We have now a new instrument on the International Space Station that is taking over for Calypso. So yes, we are still measuring dust and I was thrilled. But the coolest thing, the coolest thing that Calypso showed me was that you see all those zeros up there? The amount of dust that flies to the Amazon every year, 700,000 truckloads, semis, 18 wheelers, truckloads of dust make it there every year. And that means that if you were to lay all those trucks end to end across the United States from San Francisco to Washington DC, it'd go across and back and across and back. That is a lot of dust. And I said, whoa, I need to write a book about this. I need to share this information with you guys. And I'm gonna read it in a second, a few pages. But what I want you to do right now is close your eyes, close your eyes and think about someone you love, someone who doesn't live with you, someone who you miss, who might live in another country, in another state, a friend who may have moved away. How do you stay connected to that person? What do you do? Do you write emails, letters, send texts? What do you do? And now imagine being separated from someone you love for 250 million years because that is how long South America and Africa have been separated, 250 million years. And how do they stay connected? Dust, dust is the answer. Millions of years ago, no ocean lay between us. You and I were one. And then slowly, slowly, great forces tore us apart, creating seven continents surrounded by vast oceans. But I found a way to reach you, to sustain you, to help you flourish. See that dust? I am dust, the dust of North Africa. Not just any dust though. I am more than the grit in an eye, the smudge on a finger, the grime that swirls down a drain for I connect continents. Do you feel that dust knows that even though it's tiny, it is so important for our planet. It knows. I'm gonna let you guys read the rest with your teachers. And I wanna talk about the research that went behind this book. You see that stack of papers? That's only half the research that went into this book. I researched everything about, everything you can think of related to dust for five years before a publisher bought this book. And then after they bought it, I continued to do research because science always changes. Science always moves forward. And I spent the next three years while the book was in production, making sure that everything was accurate. And the writing and the revising, after the first couple of months of research, I wrote the story, but it wasn't very good. In fact, it was a little stinky. It really was not very good. So I revised it over and over and over again for five years until a publisher bought it. And then I revised it again because I had to keep going with the research, right? And making changes. I kept revising to make it better, to make it more accurate. So important to do that. But now let's talk about you guys. You guys have ideas. I want you to pick the ideas that you find interesting, that you have questions about that keep you awake at night. And I want you to use your imaginations if you wanna create fiction. I want you to use your imaginations beyond your wildest dreams to write stories. And know that your first draft is never gonna be perfect. It will never. It's gonna be stinky. It's gonna be a mess. It's gonna be all over the place. You gotta fix it. You gotta revise it. But the most important thing of all is to know that each one of you is unique. Each one of you has a different voice, can tell a different story. No two stories are the same. Your stories are important and the world is waiting to hear them. So get writing. Thank you, Jelaine, for that fantastic presentation. Can we give some appreciation by giving some snaps? Thank you. All right. So we have our final author today, Mira Sriram. Mira is the author of several picture books, including a gift for Amma, a South Asia Book Award winner and Dumbling Day featured in the New York Times. She likes to write about people and experiences less visible in children's books. Born and raised in India, Mira now lives in Berkeley, California. Can we give a round of applause to welcome Mira? Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Before I get started, can I wanna give myself and I want you to give yourself some shining dust, okay? So we get the wiggles out now. The shine and the dust combined, we get some shining dust. Okay, they're ready. My name is Mira and I'm a children's author. I write for kids like you and this is my most recent book, A Garden in My Hands. Before I get started with Garden in My Hands, I wanna talk a little bit about where did I grow up? Who am I? What do I do? What are the kind of stories I like to tell? All of that. So let's first get the embarrassing stuff out of the way. That's me, your age in elementary school, giving a speech in school, that's it's a birthday party and that's my family now in Berkeley. That's my husband and my two kids in college and high school. And these are some of the things I love. I love tea, chai, I love books, I love succulents because that's the only thing I can grow. I love hikes and that's my inspiration, author Jacqueline Woodson. Now, where do I live? Across the Bay in Berkeley, California. But that is where I grew up. I was not born in the United States. I was born in a very big bustling city called Chennai in the country called India all the way across the world on the biggest continent called Asia. So that's where I grew up and interestingly I grew up by the Bay as well called the Bay of Bengal. Now, what do I do? I write books for children like you and I mostly write picture books and these are some of my picture books but let me tell you a secret. Growing up, I did not think I would become a writer. I never in fact wanted to be a writer. I loved science and I grew up to become an engineer designing chips for electronic companies. So why did I choose to become a writer? So growing up in India, I did not have access to picture books. I had not read a single picture book. Now, fast forward, I'm here in California and I'm a mother and I have my daughter now and we go to the library to the children's section and we bring back a stack of picture books and that's when I fell in love with picture books. I was completely blown away by how transformative the stories were, the gorgeous illustrations, the aesthetics, all of it. And then we started reading more and more and more picture books, unicorns, fairies, dinosaurs, pets, all of that. In fact, that was my number one parenting tool, picture books. That's pretty much how I raised my kids and I like to call or we like to call books like window books. What are window books now? Window books were what my family read first, right? All the picture books that open up the world to us about people that did not look like us, about life in the United States, experiences that I had never had, foods that I had never eaten, which was great. Window books are so important because they open up new worlds to us. But what I missed was mirror books for my family. Now what is a mirror book? You look at yourself in the pages of the book. So stories that reflected the kind of experiences that my family was having, right? About people and families that came from a different country to America. What about the families that were speaking languages besides English at home? What about people that look like me or kids that look like my own kids? Be it the color of our skin or the color of our hair. So I started noticing that our stories were missing in the books that we were reading. And this bothered me so much that I decided to quit my job as an engineer and start telling our stories. But that was not easy. It was a long bumpy road. I did not know how to write picture books because I was an engineer before. So it first started with dreaming, of course. Daydreaming a lot. Imagining myself being an author. Imagining that my books were in bookstores. Imagining that I was standing in front of a big crowd of kids talking about my stories. So that's where it started, right? Daydreaming. And then I had to learn because dreaming wasn't enough. Dreaming wasn't gonna put my stories out. So then what did learning mean? I had to read books that taught me how to write. I had to meet people who wanted to write and tell stories just like myself. I had to attend conferences and workshops and classes. And it took many, many, many years. And I started writing one day. That is working, right? I had to learn, I had to keep dreaming and I had to work. And without even me realizing, I was growing as a writer. So every time I get an idea now, I make a note. I start a draft. So that's like a very rough idea of the story or it's the story, but in very like, like with lots of mistakes, lots of errors. It's not the way I wanna tell it in the beginning. It's just a rough draft in the beginning. And then I start revising. So revising is a very important stage. That's the stage the story really takes form and shape, right? I'm fixing all my errors. I'm making changes. The story has some, you know, the story arc keeps changing here and there. So I sort of figure out the story myself, the plot myself. And then polishing is when I really iron it out down to spellings, punctuations, all of it. And now I have what I call a manuscript ready. And then I work with artists who draw all these beautiful pictures in the picture book. I work with an editor who wants to bring the book out. So we collaborate, we work together, we team up because honestly it takes a village to bring a picture book out into the world. And that's my first book that came out called the Yellow Suitcase out in the world today. So what I learned and I wanna share today is that start dreaming and dream big. Imagine yourself doing the thing that you love most. And after daydreaming, working, work hard. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to trip, pick yourself up. It's okay to have failures, but keep at it and never, never, ever give up until your dream comes true. So today I'm here to talk about a garden in my hands, my most recent book, which celebrates traditions and family stories. And it's a story about henna. Who knows what henna is? Yeah? Okay, right there, you can see it. That's henna. So henna is a plant, right? It has shrub, it's a shrub. It has leaves and branches and roots and all of that. And if you plug the leaves and add some water and put it in a blender and grind it into a paste, you can fill it into a cone like this, just like you're icing and you can decorate your body parts. Primarily your hands, your palm or your feet, you can draw pretty designs. And what you do is you stay with it. Now the trick here, the secret here is that the longer you stay, the brighter the shade is gonna turn out. So here you can see, I don't know if you all can see, that's henna, right? So this story is about henna, which is a very popular custom or a tradition in many cultures and communities around the world. And this story was inspired by my own life experience of having henna done as a child. So that's my mother, that's my daughter. My mom is doing henna for my daughter. Again, that's me and my daughters, having henna done in our hands. And every time my mom did henna, when I was growing up over summer, she would share family stories. She would talk and laugh and all that. And now I pass it on to my own daughter, right? We love henna, we get henna done together and we celebrate family stories. So in this story, there's a little girl who gets henna done by a mom. There's a wedding coming up and the mom is doing henna and sharing family stories and memories from her own past and childhood. And now the girl wants to keep her henna safe because it's just not pretty designs anymore. She's carrying a garden of stories and memories in her palm. And she stays up all night. She doesn't want to smudge a story. She doesn't want to lose a story. And in the end, she attends the wedding with henna. How did it turn out? How bright was it? How beautiful was it? You need to read the story to find out. That's a garden in my hands, which celebrates traditions because traditions are very, very important. They connect us to our roots. Now, when I smell henna, it takes me back to my mom. It takes me back to the summer nights in India. It takes me back to my family. And I now share the tradition with my own daughter. Who will probably one day pass it on to someone she loves? So henna, a garden in my hands celebrates traditions and it celebrates stories because family stories tell us where we come from. It tells us about our roots. Who are we? Why are we here? And then our stories also are very, very, very powerful. So garden in my hands celebrates stories and traditions and henna. And hopefully you'll get to read it one day. Thank you so much for having me. All right, thank you so much. Can we give a final round of applause to Saina Jalan and Mira for sharing their incredible story? So as we wrap up our time together, I just wanna say thank you so much for coming today. I wanna thank our authors for being here today and sharing these wonderful stories. And thank you for coming to the San Francisco Public Library. I'm gonna pass the mic back to Becca who's gonna give some instructions on leaving. But thank you again, thanks. Thank you, Hilary. Can we have one more big round of applause for San Francisco Public Library? Yeah, we're so grateful to SFPL for hosting us and so much gratitude to our fabulous authors who are here today. And thank you all. You all were such a great audience. Thank you so much. And we're hoping that you feel inspired to go back to your homes, to your schools and to keep reading and to keep writing and telling your own stories because you definitely have them and we want to hear them. So first we're going to have our authors leave so that they can get back to the tables out there and sign books if you have them. And so we'll have them go out. And then once they're outside, we can have classes start to leave. We'll start from the back and the ushers will help you. So the back classes, the classes sitting in the back will exit first and then closer towards the front of the auditorium. Thank you again.