Teacher Tells Her Story in 2 Languages

It’s the same these days wherever Amada Irma Perez goes.

At teacher seminars and book fairs, people line up to ask her to sign copies of her newly published children’s book and heap praise on its bilingual story of a Mexican American girl who more than anything wants a room of her own.

But they also want to know how the south Oxnard schoolteacher broke into the literary ranks, especially into a genre where Latino authors and original dual-language stories are still almost as rare as first-edition classics.

“Pursue it because it’s what you feel inside, because it’s what you must do for yourself and for your culture,” she told a first-grade teacher and prospective author who posed the question at a recent book signing in Long Beach.

“Children need books they can relate to, where they can see themselves in the characters,” she said. “Do your homework, write your story and then send it off and see what happens.”

What has happened to Perez is like something out of a fairy tale.

Based on her own experience of growing up poor and in crowded housing, her book, “My Very Own Room,” was picked up last year by San Francisco-based publisher Children’s Book Press and released this month in bookstores nationwide.

It is the first offering by the 49-year-old Ventura mother of two, a veteran public school teacher who wrote the book in her journal over five days during a 1998 UC Santa Barbara writing workshop.

And it has boosted her into a select club of authors who write stories for and about Latino children, a fraternity larger now than it has ever been but still underrepresented on library shelves and bookstore displays.

Of the 5,000 children’s books written last year nationwide, only 64 new titles were by and about Latinos, according to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That total has steadily declined since 1994, when there were 90 new Latino titles.

As a wave of anti-immigrant and anti-bilingual education sentiment continues to wash over California, Perez said she is dedicated to writing stories that her students at Mar Vista Elementary School--who like so many others often struggle to speak and read English--can understand and identify with.

“I think we all have that obligation,” she said. “We all have our stories and we should get busy telling them.”

Perez’s story is mirrored in the book’s 31 pages.

Born in Mexico and the oldest of six children, she was 5 years old when her family moved to a run-down labor camp in El Monte.

Her father worked in an aluminum foundry. Her mother worked too, taking care of six children.

They all squeezed into a two-bedroom house, a place weathered and worn, with faded lime green floor tiles and a kitchen sink to match.

So when she writes about waking up on a crowded bed in a crowded room, with an elbow jabbing her in the ribs and a leg across her face, the words are lifted from memory.

When she writes about waiting in line to use the bathroom, and how the toilet seat was always warm, that’s how it used to be. And when she writes about how with her family’s help she converted a small storage closet into a room of her own, a place flanked by flour-sack curtains and brimming with library books, that’s true too.

“It’s almost like a line from a stand-up comic--we were so poor our relatives in Mexico had to send money so we could survive,” she jokes. “But we had a very language-rich house. We shared stories, we shared dreams, we played games. My mother made us feel so special.”

Perez was 12 when her family moved to a better home.

But more than three decades later, after she had graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in English and from Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks with a master’s in educational administration, memories of the place were still so fresh in her head that she decided to put them down on paper.

She spoke with other children’s authors, who encouraged her to go for it. She investigated book publishers to determine which would be the best fit.

Finally, at a bilingual education conference in early 1999, she built up the courage to make a pitch to a representative of Children’s Book Press, a nonprofit publisher that puts out fewer than half a dozen new titles a year.

She wouldn’t stop talking until the publisher agreed to look at it. Harriet Rohmer, executive director of Children’s Book Press, liked what she saw.

“It had a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and it definitely talked about something that everybody can relate to,” said Rohmer, who offered Perez a contract last fall and has put out a first printing of 7,500 copies.

“Amada Irma’s book has universal appeal; many of us can remember back to a time when we had to share a room or we wanted a room of our own,” she added. “But we’re also always trying to look at the bigger picture: The entire family wants something very important and very precious for this little girl, and maybe society at large hasn’t made the resources available for this family to have a decent house with enough rooms.”

Perez got her first look at the page proofs at the same bilingual education conference a year later, where the publisher held a party to introduce her as Children’s Book Press’ newest author.

The final product arrived at her home shortly before Mother’s Day this year. She gift-wrapped a copy and gave it to her mother, who provided the book’s Spanish-language translation.

The two women hugged and cried.

“It was just overwhelming; I was so proud,” said Perez’s mother, Consuelo Hernandez. “It is a story based on our own lives and a story common for children who come from Mexico.”

It’s the kind of story that’s not told enough, said Jody Shapiro, owner of the nationally recognized Adventures for Kids bookstore in Ventura.

While there has been solid growth over the last decade in the number and quality of bilingual children’s books, Shapiro said there is still a dearth of such stories by and about Latinos.

“I don’t think there’s enough people out there thinking, ‘I can do it,’ ” said Shapiro, who has stocked about 50 copies of Perez’s book. “Now that we have someone like Amada, maybe it will turn on the light and give them permission to give it a try.”

Ventura resident Kathleen Contreras--whose children’s book “Pandulce” was based on a Mexican bakery in Oxnard and published in 1996 by Scholastic Books--said it’s not enough to take existing children’s stories and translate them into Spanish.

Contreras, a Chicano studies instructor at the Ventura County campus of Cal State Northridge, said young readers need stories that are culturally relevant and reflect the way they live.

“The kids just love to be affirmed that way,” said Contreras, who was among those who encouraged Perez to pursue her writing passion.

“She has all the makings of a great writer: She’s inquisitive, she’s bilingual, she loves words and she loves children,” Contreras said. “I think that’s what really makes her stand out. She’s so committed to children and their working families.”

And she’s not done yet.

Already, Perez has submitted a second book for publication. And she says she’s got dozens of story ideas percolating in her head, waiting to spill out.

But for now, her baby--she likens the experience of writing a book to childbirth--has won her invitations to read to schoolchildren throughout the state.

And, of course, she has read the book to her own students. So has her husband, Arturo, a second-grade teacher at Juanamaria Elementary School in Ventura.

“I think people will relate to my book, even if they are not Latino, even if they’re adults and have their own room,” Perez said.

“I’m interested in helping people understand each other better,” she added. “There’s a message there for anybody who wants to see it.”