Well, the children like to ask me how old I am.
You're not going to start with that one, are you?
I don't know.
Yes.
Thank you for your presentation.
That was very informative.
Thank you.
I was wondering, when you do your research,
do you take copious notes on everything you read?
Or you just kind of try to remember it.
No, I take copious notes, and I'm super low tech.
I like the giant index cards, the biggest size
of index cards.
I love to just scribble all over those.
And I prefer to have my own copies of research materials
whenever possible and actually save
my notes in the book on the page where
I took them so that I can--
the note is just a reminder to go back and reread
that page in greater detail.
As I said-- low tech.
I was wondering, when was the last time you visited Cuba,
and if it was as an adult, how was that visit different
from being there as a child?
I've been back many times since 1991,
which is when the Cuban government, after the fall
of the Soviet Union, started allowing non-Soviet bloc
Western tourism to come in.
The Pan American Games in 1991 is really
when Cuba started welcoming outsiders,
and I've been back many times.
The legal ways of going to Cuba--
there's four legal ways, and I've
done them all, which is legal family visit,
journalist's permit, humanitarian aid.
And I've not done conferences.
I've done three of the four, but for most of you,
conferences would probably be the most common way
that people do go.
So whether it's teachers conferences
or librarians conferences or so forth,
those avenues are more open than they were 20 years ago.
But for me, going back is extremely emotional every time.
I love to go back.
It's also emotionally exhausting.
I love to visit relatives.
I can't give them everything they ask for or expect,
so there are always mixed feelings.
And yet I would rather go than not go,
and I have taken my grown children
back so that they could also meet the relatives.
Yes.
In The Surrender Tree, where they put the English first
and then the Spanish at the back,
I was a little frustrated for me because I
wanted to see it side by side.
I'm sorry.
And I know that Spanish is longer.
It is.
And is that why the publishers did that?
It is why, because you can't keep the matching pages.
The Spanish is going to be more flowery and more roundabout,
and eventually, they won't match.
You can only do that with short individual poems
but not with a long story.
But as an extension of that, I wonder, will more of your books
be translated, and are they available for purchase in Cuba?
Oh no, they're not available.
There's no format for American publishers
to sell books in Cuba.
I mean, the trade embargo would not allow that.
But I wish that they were all in Spanish,
but it's very difficult to get books translated into Spanish.
It's very difficult to get bilingual books published
in the United States at this time.
Most of the publication of bilingual books
is very simple picture books for very young children,
and most of the translation of books into Spanish
is only after they've been runaway bestsellers in English.
So Hunger Games will be in Spanish but not
most Latino-themed books.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So thank you.
I think we have time for one more question.
There's one over there.
Last week, I read The Surrender Tree,
and I also read a book called Shadows Cast
by Stars by Catherine Knutsson.
And interestingly, both of these protagonists
were medicinal herbalists, female medicinal herbalists,
and I thought that was wonderful.
I wish I had had that to read as a child.
I love both of those books.
And I was wondering if you are familiar with other books that
deal with this issue for young people, that talk about--
because I thought maybe because of your past with the botany.
Huh, I'm going to have to think about that.
Offhand, I can't think of--
maybe some of the thing--
are there any good books about Sacagawea?
Because she was an herbalist and certainly
used plants with Lewis and Clark's expedition.
I don't know of one, but maybe.
I don't know of any other Latino-themed ones,
but it was an important tradition.
There's some adult books probably.
I'm going to have to think about that one.
That's a good question.
It's really a part of women's history that made women healers
[? be ?] [? women ?] but also that they lived out
in the sticks, which could make them seem antisocial.
And that could just be stretched to, you're a witch.
So it's an important aspect of women's history.
Thank you for your questions, and thank you, Margarita.
[INAUDIBLE]
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much.
Please stick around to check out our book selection
if you're interested, and thank you for coming.