[Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] hi I'm Heather Marie montia and you are watching PBS books thank you for joining us PBS books in collaboration with wnet is pleased to host this conversation with award-winning writer Clarabelle Ortega author of The Golden Frog games a sequel to witchlings we are so excited tonight because tonight long shows are 2023 partnership with the Library of Congress to promote their National Book Festival let's take a moment to hear from the librarian of Congress Dr Carla Hayden I'm Carla Hayden Library of Congress and I want to give a thank you to PBS folks for supporting the national Book Festival hope you can join us in Washington and online for this year's Festival on Saturday August the 12th well if you live in the New York metropolitan area then don't miss the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival it is on Saturday August 12th from 9 A.M to 8 P.M the festival is free and open to everyone it is a quick quick drive maybe not so quick but it is a drive or a train ride away on the excela for a complete schedule of the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival you can go to loc.gov bookfest but if you can't be there in person do not worry you can stream two of the main stages live from the comfort of your own home and curate your own experience well now through August 31st PBS books and PBS stations will host a series of 10 virtual events with 11 authors they will also be available on demand on PBS books and the national Book Festival website well today's conversation features Clarabelle Ortega to discuss her work and involvement in the festival her latest book The Golden Frog games continues the stories of three protagonists on adventures in a magical world let's welcome in Clarabelle Hi claireville how are you I'm good how are you so I'm great it is so great to have you here I actually want to read a little bit and share with people a little bit about your background so if you can just hold on one second because you are this outstanding um writer you are a New York Times best-selling and award-winning author who writes middle grade and young adult fantasy novels inspired by your Dominican heritage Clarabelle co-hosts the bad author book club podcast which is wonderful and is a contributing author for Marvel Ortega's work has been featured in BuzzFeed bustle and and deadline her debut middle grade novel Ghost Squad is being adapted into a feature film Ortega's graphic novel frizzy illustrated by Rose Usama won the 2023 Pura bull pray children's author award which is amazing congratulations and Ortega's new sequel to witchlings is what we're discussing today it's the golden frog games and it'll be featured in the 2023 National Book Festival welcome Clarabelle thank you so much well we're so excited to have you here and it's so wonderful to be able to discuss your books your work I mean it is I feel like you've just had a debut novel success after success in a very short period of time and I just want to congratulate you and say we're so happy for you and so thrilled to have you on PBS books oh thank you so much it has been a short but sort of like not so short Journey because that's just sort of what people see right and I was also a pandemic debut my first book came out in April of 2020 so that was an experience I'm sure that was a bit of a challenge because I know at PBS books are we're completely changed during the pandemic and so it must have been were you doing virtual interviews during that period yeah I actually had to have my book launch virtually I was one of the very first virtual book launches because very beginning of April that's when sort of everything really started obviously all the bookstores were closed and I tried to make it as fun and interactive as I could and it turned out really great I partnered with a independent bookstore in New York City Books of Wonder um to uh be the Bookseller of the event and I tried to make it feel as in-person as possible luckily I already had sort of an online community at that time because I documented documented pretty much my entire writing and Publishing Journey up to that point um so I was in a good position given that everything was a little different than what I planned for completely well that is it's amazing to hear that and then to see you here with with accolades and and your journey and hopefully we'll get to hear more about your journey so for those people who have not yet read witchlings can you briefly describe the story The obviously we need to know a little bit about the story of nicklings before we get to the the Frog the golden frog games sure uh so the first witchlings book was really inspired by a question and that question was what would happen if the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter put you nowhere and I really wanted to explore what it meant to feel left out especially as a diaspora writer it's something that plays a big role in my life and in my writing and I wanted to explore that through the lens of magic um so in witchlings the three main characters seven Salazar Thorne LaRue and Valley pepperhorn are all sorted as spares in their town of Raven skill and being a spare means you don't belong anywhere you are a leftover in order for them to not lose their magic they need to defeat a legendary wolf-like monster called the night Beast or they'll be turned into a trio of toads um before the time runs out that they have to solve the impossible task uh so it's um definitely an adventure there's a lot of Whimsy and sort of like quirky magic um but it's also about community and World building and the importance of sticking together um and there are a lot of more serious issues tackled throughout the series as well so the golden frog games it continues your magical world of Witchcraft and Adventure as you alluded to what inspired you to write the sequel and what is the main the main plot sure so witchlings was always planned to be a series there's actually three books planned right now for publication and for more that I'm working on um the golden frog games I love magical competitions and I knew that I wanted at least one of the books to revolve around a magical competition what happens in book two is another one of the witchlings thorn LaRue who is an expert at costura Magic which is basically fashion magic becomes the youngest and only spared to ever compete in the golden frog games except her fellow Champions which are what the competitors are called start being turned into stone and because of the witchlings are not very well liked in the town they start getting blamed for everything they need to figure out who is behind this stonification hex as it's called in the book uh before Thorn is the next victim so I was really impressed with how you've developed these characters right they're characters that they're quirky but you fall in love with them and each has its strengths and its weaknesses um each has its successes and failures could you talk a little bit about seven Valley and Thorne sure so I came up with seven first actually the idea for witchlings on aside from the question that I mentioned before came to me in a really weird way which is that the first line of the book sort of just appeared in my mind which is very lucky I was like thank you brain I don't have no longer happen again um but the the idea of this character seven who was a 12 year old witch who's already sort of really confident in what she wanted and really good at um school and at Magic um but then sort of got that ripped away from her I wanted to start off with a character who was a girl and who's confident in herself and her abilities and then put her through challenges to make her realize that she actually doesn't have everything figured out and in order to do that I introduced these other two characters that would um challenge her in really specific ways for so for Thorne um she's dealing with her own Secrets um when she enters the story she's a little bit too bubbly and excited for seven a liking and then Valley is um her bully and has been her bully for years so she is thrown into this precarious situation with a new girl in town who kind of gets on her nerves and her lifelong bully and seven needs to sort of work with them in order to solve this impossible task so um I created the three witch links to sort of challenge each other help each other grow but they're also a reflection of who I am and who I've been in different points of my life as well um so they I they're very close to my heart because of that um and they are very different and I thought that I love Ensemble casts and sort of when characters bring their own special magic and ability to a team well I also enjoyed learning about the Family Impact right and each of them in their own way they have they still well they're a coven they also have a really strong connection and support from members of their family can you talk a little bit about the importance of of family sure so I'm Dominican American and um I tried to write things that are reflective of my own sort of life and upbringing and for me it would um sorry I have a little dog so you might hear him making noise from time to time um so for me it was really a reflection of my own upbringing and my own family and um I wouldn't be writing honestly if I didn't write about sort of like a family that was very involved in what was going on I wanted someone to have really supportive uh parents but also to sort of show the conflicts that can happen and families like valleys home life is not uh the greatest Thorn is dealing with grief in her own family so while I wanted to show us that sort of like supportive side and show parents being very much present in a middle grade story I also wanted to show that families aren't perfect and that bad things can happen um but that you could still have a support system and family can look a lot of different ways um and friendship can really sometimes be a stand-in for that when family doesn't uh it things in your family aren't exactly working out so it's interesting you you mentioned or focused a lot of that on friendship because I think friendship and the power of community are really two of the focal themes in this book there are moments when friendships in fact are fractured but still the friends come through for one another and it happened a few times so I was wondering if you could reflect on one of your favorite stories that exemplifies that so I don't know about you but when I was 12 I had a lot of friendship drama in my life um sort of like this cool revolved around um around that and aside from like my schoolwork and wanting to do really well like friendships and relationships were really important to me and friendship breakups were so devastating and I think can still be so devastating well into adulthood and I kind of wish I I had read more books with friendship breakups in them or difficult friendships that have sort of challenges thrown into them as a child to sort of realize like oh it's it's okay to have conflicts with my friends like having a fight doesn't necessarily mean I have to hate them forever and when we meet seven uh she actually has a best friend named Poppy and their dream was to be in this really powerful coven together called House Hyacinth and a little bit of a spoiler but poppy ends up getting into house Hyacinth and seven is obviously spare um so sometimes those friendship breakups can come from us growing in different directions which is such a common thing to happen when you're growing up and you change you move you you're so many things about you can can grow and be different from when you met a friend and I sort of wanted to show what that looked like um and not make it sort of uh to about two girls hating each other just because I wanted it to be about two friends who grew apart nobody's really at fault maybe they both made mistakes because they don't necessarily know how to navigate something like a friendship breakup but it's such a real thing for me and it was such a huge deal for me as a as a kid so I really wanted to talk about not just the importance of friendship but that friendship is complicated and it can be messy and that is okay and it's totally normal well I think that it's for for me as a reader but also knowing the target is middle grade it was really wonderful to see that because I do think that that drama right there's so much there's so much drama especially in middle school years and for someone to be able to be like okay well I can be in drama with a friend but still be there for that friend right and that happened a lot and and not a lot but often um and it was this through line that that I hope makes young people as they read your books and I'm sure will think about their friendships and what it means so let's talk about you and your Dominican heritage and how it may be influenced or impacted your story so I don't know that I ever sort of set out to say okay I'm definitely going to write about my Dominican culture and Heritage but it's such a big part of my upbringing that when I talk about um a kid when I'm writing about a kid it just sort of comes naturally to me to write about it through the perspective of a young Dominican American child um so I talk about my favorite foods um if you've read anything from coast Squad to the witch link series to frizzy there's always mention of food I talk about music and I also talk about the dynamic between family members one of the reasons why Seven's family is so supportive and there is because that was my experience I come from a very very large family and there's a lot of sort of leaning on one another during difficult times and I wanted seven to have that support system at home even if sort of the world outside was against her all the time so let's talk about some of your favorite Dominican Foods because as someone who I'm married to someone who's Dominican my kids are Dominican I I found this to be really fun because I felt like you almost had like like hidden breadcrumbs throughout for a reader for a Dominican reader Who would know you know and and it doesn't Stand Out necessarily to someone else but but they're there so do you want to discuss some of some of the little treats or gems you left for the readers sure um so as I mentioned I do talk a lot about uh food my very favorite food in the whole world not just Dominican food is something called Tres goldpes so um it's mangu you have fried cheese you have uh Sachi Chon which is like a fried summer sausage um and then fried eggs with usually some sauteed onions on top um usually have it for breakfast I would eat it all day long if I could um I definitely mentioned that in the books um also all the spells in the witchlink series are in finish and Spanish is my first language and going to school visits and you know having siblings who spoke no English until they were much older than I was when I first started speaking English I sort of knew what it felt like and have seen what it feels like to not understand what's going on in the classroom or to be even left out of the classroom and I wanted those moments the Spells being in Spanish those moments of sort of Dominican um culture for kids who spoke Spanish to read that and feel like they got something that maybe their classmates wouldn't um I wanted them to feel maybe like the smartest kid in the room for once um and give them that chance and have sort of like a dialogue with them that was like a special language just between us because I know what it feels like to not speak uh the language and be in this classroom and be really confused and lost and scared um and a lot of kids have mentioned that they love the spells in Spanish so that makes me really happy it's almost like giving them a superpower and we've always said that my kids were raised bilingual and we always tell them you have a superpower right you can speak you can speak and read in both languages so I I as I was reading I definitely thought um the reader would have a superpower of thing in Spanish and I I love that you created that for for Spanish speakers um so you have also touched another place that I really love which is Librarians so in your your 12 towns Librarians like Miss Dewey and Amber they have a very special role um and and are revered can you talk a little bit about that sure um so in the world of the 12 towns Librarians are the only witches that are allowed to have familiars so they will have these magical animals that are sort of their companions um Miss Stewie has a hummingbird made of light um called Almanac and Ambert as you mentioned actually has a squirrel named tidbit who we meet a little bit more in the third book actually um Librarians actually play a huge role in the world of the 12 towns that has yet to be discovered and will be talked about and delved into more in witchlings three and not skip too far away from the book but did you have a librarian in your life that had a particular influence on you yes I've had many Librarians I mean for me I grew up in the South Bronx and I grew up going to the Hunts Point library and then later on to the library in sort of the sound view area um and libraries were really my safe space I wasn't necessarily allowed to play outside too long um just because of the neighborhoods that I grew up in but going to the library was okay and I was forever asking the Librarians for recommendations and talking to them all the time and I've always loved to read I've always loved to write um so in you know the South Bronx in a place where I wasn't necessarily always allowed to be on my own and do things as a kid and explore sort of my world the library was my safe space to do that and introduced me to so many books and and things that I love till this day it's wonderful um Witchcraft and Magic are Central to your your stories um what research did you do to draw and create this this magical system and then also if you could talk about archaic Magic sure so I I'm a former reporter so I love to do any sort of research and deep diving into um the world of my books before I get started witchlings does take place in a secondary world so everything from the technology to the system of measurement to something that I sort of like had to make up um there was a lot of like brainstorming a lot of reading about the places where the books were set because actually Raven skill is based on Peak Skill New York and the 12 towns are based on the river towns along the Hudson River so there was a lot of geographical inspiration so I read a lot about um I read a lot about the um about that about um sort of New York and the river towns and I use that to help Inspire um a lot of the witchlings world and in terms of Witchcraft I sort of use the basis of magic for most of the magic um like I said I use a lot of Spanish um but I I didn't delve too much into sort of like real witchcraft if that makes any sense um only because I didn't want it to get too scary for the kids get to have a little bit of balance there right um and uh but yeah it was it was just a lot of sort of like researching the geography of where the river towns were based on um and then also uh just a lot of brainstorming and making things sort of like as funny and Whimsical and interesting as I could I loved weird books growing up so I was like how can I make this weirder so like for Edgar Allan toad for example um he's a toad right um and he's in the book first of all got to give him a great name it's a pun but he also has a mustache because that'll just like level it up a little bit um so I I tried to take things from our world and sort of reset them with magic and meet them a little bit more Whimsical and fun and funny so those of you who are not from the the New York City metro area the Hudson river goes north from New York City and you have river towns on the Hudson River overlooking the Palisades and I recognized as you were talking about uh fairy town and it was something on the Hudson like Hastings on right like oh my goodness like so I felt very familiar as as I was reading it and I'm sure people in the New York City metropolitan area and we'll we'll recognize it as well and I I do think that's fun and it's it's there is so much history I mean Washington Irving um is that his hometown was there Irvington right so um you must have learned a lot I feel like there's such ghost stories and witch stuff that that you hear as you um go up the up the Hudson So speaking of scary things that happen in the book um you have seven is often reading a story she's often reading Delphinium larkspurs diary can you discuss sure so a little bit of a spoiler if you haven't read book one you put your earmuffs on but um seven uh it discovers that she is going to be a town Uncle which is I mean she can speak to animals and she finds this hidden diary um from the switch called Delphinium Larkspur um hundreds of years ago and she was able to do the same thing um except that she could speak to monsters monsters as they're called in the 12 towns and seven is able to do the same and she is keeping that a secret because Delphinium was sentenced to death for being able to do this it was considered unnatural and so seven is really afraid she's not sure what to do and um she found the story and she's sort of like reading through it to see what the switch's Fate was um and there's a lot of uh sort of talk of what it needs to be a monster be monstrous in this series and I wanted to talk about how sometimes the people are the things that are ascribed monstrosity aren't necessarily the bad people in this world um and that goes back to a little bit what I was talking about before with being like a diaspora writer um so seven makes this connection between her and this sort of ancient witch and this magic that she's not sure what's happening um within her at the same time there's this archaic magic right this like really old and sort of evil magic that's erupting in the 12 towns and sevens wondering if somehow she's responsible or if she's connected to it in any way well I'd like to reset the conversation for those of you out there who are just joining us I'm Heather Marie montia you are watching PBS books and it is my pleasure here today to be presenting our first conversation for the Library of Congress National Book Festival I'm here in collaboration with w-n-e-t and we are talking to award-winning author Clarabelle Ortega she's discussing her latest book which is the golden frog games uh and it is a sequel in the witchlings series back to the conversation Okay so we've talked about a lot but how could we not talk about raccoons um I love the raccoons um but raccoons are not always friendly animals I mean and you allude to that so can we talk a little bit why raccoons the names the names of the raccoons and they're they stand up for they help her too like can we seven that is um can we talk about the raccoons sure um so I think reckons are really funny and adorable but as you said they're not always friendly um so um they can be quite dangerous actually um and so in the 12 challenge uh raccoons are one of the few animals that are both animals and monsters so they're half and half they can live in the curse Forest but they can also live among witches and because of that and because of Seven sort of broken Magic right where she can talk to animals but also to monstros they were sort of the perfect sidekick for her on aside from Edgar Allan toad who you know I can't get them too many lines because he's old and tired um but the raccoons were a perfect little troop she has 10 of them that follow her everywhere and sort of like clap for whatever she does and says um and um I just had so much fun with them I wanted to really bring some levity also to the book because we do talk about a lot of heavy top topics and seven is going through so much there's so much changing in her world and with her magic and she's so stressed out and afraid that I felt like I needed to give her something that would also help her and boost her up and that would lighten the mood when things got a little heavy in the book as well um and then I just named them after food because food is a big motivator in my life fellow foodie so you've created this incredibly complex and magical worlds you have the 12 towns and they're competing but you've really created a magical Community where three tweens are grappling with societal issues can we talk about some of these issues and what is your goal in including these issues sure so one of the main things if you've read witchlings is this sort of a classism that's going on right so obviously spares are sorted um as The Outsiders of their world sort of built into their magic and on the surface Raven's skill in the world of this 12 challenge looks like this really magical Whimsical beautiful fun funny place but right there in the very beginning there's already this like terrible Insidious part of their magic and culture and people don't really question it because it's just tradition and it's just how things work um and it doesn't start to be questioned until things start to unravel and one of the really obvious sort of like markers of this difference and in this conversation is the place called The Hill um in Raven skill which is basically where all the wealthiest witches live and when I describe the hill I talk about how the roads are wider and the the air is warmer and sweeter and everything just sort of looks brighter and well maintained and all of that takes magic to maintain and seven sort of wonders why there are some witches in their town that have so little and then there's this excess on the hill um and I'm obviously talking about a lot of real world issues and sort of uh economic disparity and um how I see those divides growing in our world and how I see workers being mistreated and not peed as well um I'm really excited about all the unions um that are forming and striking and uh witchlings is real really a reflection of that I'm really of a reflection of what's going on in our world today and a lot of people I think see like the very cute pastel covers and don't realize um sort of How deep the issues really get but I think um in book two and especially going into book three they will realize very quickly how how serious um the things they're dealing with are well I even thought you discussed um it almost seemed like a social program right you had beautiful housing for spares but in one case some of the spares housing had been burned but yet it still looked beautiful on the outside but it was a spell it had been damaged and not fixed and I and I think that there are social programs that very much from the outside they look great uh in society but when you actually experience or learn about the ins and outs of those social programs they're not as shiny and as successful as as a lot of the people had intended yeah seven discusses uh with her Mentor I believe it's the grand who was talk who said that when she first came into Power she wanted to make a big change um to get rid of spares and it was she was like shut down immediately and told that was not allowed can you talk talk a little bit about that because I thought that for me in the book that really stuck at stuck out as someone who like I also ambig into social change and empowerment and I was like yes like we often when we start we have these grandiose ideas and now can you talk about it I think that's part of why I love writing for middle grade kids right because if you're at that age where you still you you realize the things that are happening around you but you still have so much hope for what you can do for the world and um the power that you have just through wanting to make things better um and I really wanted to show that there was a leader in their Town who had thought about these things and who realized that it was unjust um I didn't want seven to be sort of like gaslit by everybody around her like so feel you're just you know you're not as you know magical as everybody else like like no this is a this is an actual problem and people want to fix it but we just can't it's built in It's A system that was designed this way and it's so much harder to change things when everybody around you is telling you that it's impossible right um so I wanted the grand to really be a good leader or at least try her best to be and not just someone who like pawns everything off on the children to solve which I feel is so unfair and happens sometimes in um narratives involving in children um I I think the adults should be trying to do their part even if they're falling short but at least they're trying and I feel like that's uh that's very realistic to our world um and I just wanted to sort of like talk about all the frustrations that I had and talk about them through this lens of magic where it wasn't going to be overwhelming uh for me to revisit over and over again and also for kids to read you know they don't want to be preached down to but they very much know what's happening around them and I think that they see that reflection when they read the book okay let's discuss your process um you are obviously incredibly creative I almost I in in a way I wondered if you had created a big illustration of your world or circles or Venn diagrams because it is incredibly complex do you have a creative habit do you draw in this process are you how do you go about your creating your worlds um so my creative process doesn't ever just look one way I think it depends on the book uh one thing that I always always always do is I make a playlist um usually before I start writing and I'm updating it as I write uh that's what sort of gives me the feel for for the book and for what the characters are going through and I'll go sort of um chapter by chapter and usually have like a song or two for each one um and then I usually release the playlist once the book is out um so that's a really important part of my process I do have a a story Bible that has sort of all of the monsters and the Spells and the locations and the characters because it is so much to get um to sort of keep up with sometimes the reader will ask me about something in book one and I'm like I do not remember because I wrote that so long ago I booked two I was turning in book two the week book one came out so I'm always sort of like one step ahead of the reader and thinking about the next thing and the next thing so keeping everything organized is really really important for me um I use scrivener to write in in case there's any writers watching it really helps me with my process my editing process and keeping everything sort of neat in one place um and like I said it's different for each book I take a lot of walks I will say that because whenever I get stuck or I feel like I have writer's block that's sort of like my go-to thing I I take a break first before I try to force myself to write through something um but I usually start with like I said the playlist and then I will write a big synopsis maybe like 10 15 pages and then what I'll do is I'll break that down into a chapter by chapter outline so every chapter has its own maybe one page outline of everything that happens including sometimes tidbits of um dialogue here and there and then I go in and I just draft and uh I hope for the best so a typical day though do you wake up every day at a certain time and you start writing or does it all depend you do you write seven days a week is it I try to take weekends off unless I am on like a really tight deadline and try to really protect my rest time as well um I think it can be really easy to get caught up in that I'm just gonna write this much until the next you know book or until this next thing happens and that becomes a habit it forms bad habits of you never resting and just like always working and you have to have things to pull from in your life in order to be creative you have to live um so I try to really protect that time um I usually wake up and go to the gym first um I do lifting that helps me with a lot of the stress associated with publishing um and then I usually like to get to my desk around 10 or 10 30 right for a couple hours do some admin and then write some more until the evening it doesn't always go like that sometimes I'm playing Nintendo switch for a couple of hours sometimes I have to do more admin or meetings or interviews um it depends on the day but that would be sort of like a typical day in my writing life so when you think about the writing for for the frog game the golden frog games is there a special or most enjoyable or meaningful moment that stands out in your brain um there are a lot of moments some of them I don't know if I should talk about because they're like I would want the reader to experience it for themselves um but one of the moments that I love the most is the description of sort of like the Rivalry um and the fight between Goose house and House of stars um in which they're fighting to throw the big uh frog ball at the end of the golden frog games and Goose house decides to try to plant explosive magic in uh house of stars um house in so that they'll be disqualified but they get caught because one of the explosive Magics goes off which is very Goose house of them um and I just love the interaction between the covens being able to show the covens more going into moth house and meeting all sort of like the goth witches was really fun for me to write um I think it's really funny and and cute and fun and I just love describing their different personalities and Aesthetics behind each of the houses um I loved that part of the of the golden frog games for sure have any Dominican writers or uh Latina writers who have impacted you influence you and your work um yeah I would definitely say um Elizabeth acevedos has been like a really big inspiration for me I'm watching her sort of rise and success uh made me feel really I'm hopeful um also Julian Randall um it's a great uh new middle grade author as well um and yeah there are so many more of us than there used to be even like 10 years ago being published five years ago being published I'm so super excited for the future of Dominican writers um in kidlet and you know beyond and Latin writers in general I feel like there's so much more room for our stories and so many people who want to read our stories so we've heard a little bit about what's up and coming for witchlings you said there's one more coming out next year maybe fall of 2024 yes and then are there more in the works too and and yeah what's on the horizon overall for you that's an easy question sure so there hasn't been anything uh like formally contracted yet but I am I have four more books planned in the series so there would be seven total and it sort of follows everything that happens after the third book which is uh very dramatic that's all I will say um I also am working on another graphic novel which I am describing as The Sims meets Jumanji sounds like fun yes you reveal the illustrator you're working with for that not yet okay all right well we'll wait for the announcement we'll wait for the announcements yeah all right so the reason you're on today's show is because you are you are going to the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival is this your first visit to the Library of Congress National Book Festival it is are you excited I mean excited I'm so excited um I think you know like we've discussed libraries are so important um so for me it's so it's such an honor to be part of this and to be invited and to be able to talk about the witchlings among so many amazing people so I'm really really excited about it it goes by so fast so my one bit of advice is schedule every place you want to go as soon as they release the schedule um and it I will say I went in 2019 for the first time and I was like oh my gosh these are my people like why haven't I come here before it's an incredible experience and I hope viewers that are watching if you can make it to the Library of Congress National Book Festival this year on August 12th go because you will have an amazing time okay um I want I always like to give authors a chance to any last takeaways or things you'd like to share with the audience um you've been so incredible such an incredible guest sharing so much of your work and your creativity with us today oh thank you so much um I mean I would just say uh you know to people reading um especially to any witchlings fans you know thank you for sure for supporting this series um and for anyone sort of struggling right now there's a lot going on in our world I think books can be an incredible place to turn um to sort of see our world reflected back on at us and to see that things can get better um and also we can just Escape somewhere like Raven's skill when we need to I love that those are great words to to end on clear about thank you so much for for your creativity for writing this amazing book that takes readers on an incredible magical journey um it's really a ton of fun um and really kept me on the at the edge of my seat wondering and hoping that you know our our three um favorite spares are make it through and are saying but it's so much fun so thank you for for taking the time and for writing it's a gift to to all of us and especially I think for for um young people who are Spanish writers I hope Spanish speakers rather I hope that there are more Dominican writers who are able to share their craft and and their thoughts and their ideas with with everyone because it's it's it's a fun adventure so thank you thank you thank you so much I appreciate it well we need to close the program and um I just want to remind everyone that if you can make it to the Library of Congress National Book Festival on August 12th from 9 A.M to 8pm please go it's going to be lots of fun if you can't make it though go to loc.gov bookfest and you can curate your own experience now through August 31st PBS books and PBS stations Across the Nation will host a series of 10 virtual events with 11 authors and that is also available on the PBS books website as well as the national Book Festival website well I would be remiss if I did not thank Library Partners out there more than 1800 strong as well as numerous PBS stations who share this important content with all of you but most importantly I'd like to thank all of you for joining us and for being here a special shout out and a word a token of appreciation for wnet for sharing this with everyone in the New York City metropolitan area well until next time I'm Heather Marie montia and happy reading thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]