When I had the pleasure of meeting Emma Otheguy, I got a taste of her passion for introducing history to young readers. In addition to writing early readers and picture books, she is the author of middle grade novels, Silver Meadows (Knopf, 2019) and Sofia Acosta Makes a Scene (Knopf, 2022). I am excited to share our recent discussion featuring the launch, both in English and in Spanish, of her upcoming book, Cousins in the Time of Magic. (February 25, 2025). In this time travel adventure, three cousins get transported to 1862 to play an important role in the Battle of Puebla, the reason we celebrate Cinco de Mayo today.
Interview with Emily
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Jen: Cousins in the Time of Magic comes out in THREE DAYS! Can you tell me about how you came to write for young people?
Emma: I was always interested in children’s books. I read a lot as a child. I also took multiple courses with the children’s author Donna Jo Napoli when I was an undergraduate. I thought I was going to be a history professor and went to graduate school to get a doctorate. One of the things that was really exciting about being in graduate school is that I started to learn a lot about Latin American history, which as we all know is not well represented in our school curriculums here in the United States. That’s really concerning because Latin America is our nearest neighbor, a quarter of the people in the United States are Latinos, and a high concentration among them are young people. I think there’s a real need for everybody to learn this history. I felt that it was affirming and meaningful to learn the history of my own people. I really missed doing something that was creative and something that had a public focus. When I first started writing, I wrote straight fantasies for children, things that had nothing at all to do with what I was studying. I also wrote my first published book Marti’s Song for Freedom, which does have a colonial Latin America theme. It was partially an escape, and partially a way to make public all of the amazing things I was learning.
Jen: When did the history bug bite you?
Emma: I was always interested in history. My parents came to the United States as exiles from Cuba. They talked a lot about their culture and about their understanding of the events that precipitated them coming to the United States. I think that being a child of immigrants always comes with a story. This interest in the stories of the past naturally led me to an interest in history. I also had really incredible teachers in high school A handful of teachers at my school went above and beyond on a level that is incredibly rare. Now as a parent, I read to my children and I see stories as a vessel for what we want to tell our children, whether it’s an immigration story or another type of story.
Jen: What are some of the ways that you bring history alive for your readers?
Emma: The key to Cousins in the Time of Magic is that the readers meet kids their own age who are like them. Jorge, Camilla and Siggy are contemporary kids who live in Miami in the modern day. They travel back in time and meet kids their own age in the historical time periods they are visiting. The whole journey and all of the historical themes are revealed to the reader through the eyes of children. This is a powerful connection because this is how kids are able to socialize and connect with the experience. The other thing that I think really made Cousins in the Time of Magic accessible to kid readers is the illustrations. Poly Bernatene really brought the characters to life. Kids reading the book see the characters expressions on their faces, and their body language. I think the pictures add another layer of connection and immediacy, as well as excitement and an emotional depth to the character’s experiences. The style of the illustrations adds a kind of wonder and magic to the book. They also make it easier to visualize certain historical technologies, such as a telegram test transmitter and an ironclad.
Jen: What are some ways you approach difficult topics such as colonialism and racism?
Emma: My hope is that kids get sucked into this big exciting magical adventure and are swept along by the story. There are those bigger historical issues that a kid might not pick up on the first time reading through, especially a younger reader. My approach to talking about difficult topics in history with kids is to be up front and to use words that they can understand. It’s not complicated to talk about things like racism and colonialism, right? It’s actually fairly simple. Europeans made a lot of money enslaving people and growing crops like sugar. That’s why they wanted to hold onto power, and hold onto these territories. In some ways because it is so basic, it is the most simple thing in the world to understand. It’s greed. The reason adults make these concepts complicated is that we’re trying to sanitize events for children. We don’t want to tell kids, yeah, there are emperors and they want to colonize people and hold on to power because they want to be powerful. Kids understand that. It’s never easy to talk about racism or the history of slavery for kids. Part of what made it clear to me that this was the path we need to follow was thinking about who those narratives serve to protect and who I was trying to speak to. I’m just trying to be really honest. I also think that if kids don’t know what racism and colonialism look like, because we’re constantly trying to sanitize it and make it more palatable to them, then we can’t expect them to notice it when it starts to sneak up on them and their own lives.
Jen: What surprised you most while writing this book?
Emma: I was surprised how hard it was to find research material for my book. I very rarely meet somebody who, when I say, “I’m writing a book about Cinco de Mayo,” who says, “Well, what’s that?” Everybody knows it’s a holiday but very few people know the history. It wasn’t that big a thing in Mexico, it’s a much bigger deal here in the United States. It was so hard to find relevant books in the United States. Eventually I went to Mexico where my cousins lived. We went to Puebla, so I got to see the sights in real life with my own eyes. I went to a bookstore and brought home a bag of books written in Spanish. That is how I did the research for the Mexico part of the book.
Jen: I know you have never been through a time traveling portal, but what parts of this book are closest to your life? Are you close with your cousins?
Emma: The place where the kids begin their adventure is inspired by two houses. One is my grandmother’s house in Miami, where I spent a lot of time with my cousins playing in her yard and running around. The tinajón, the big clay pot that the kids climb into to time travel, was inspired by my father’s house, and the house my father grew up in in Cuba. He had a painting that my grandmother had made of that house so I always had this image in my mind. That’s where the premise of the portal came from.
Illustration by Poly Bernatene in Cousins in the Time of Magic
I’m close with cousins on both sides of the family. One of my cousins who lives in Mexico was very helpful with the research for this book, because he hosted me. My cousins in Miami were also helpful. I kept texting them things like, where would these kids live and, what street would this be near? I’m lucky to have a lot of different cousins all spread out in different places, Jorge, the youngest cousin in the book, reminds me of one of my uncles, who must have broken more bones than I can count. He’s my mom’s youngest brother and always kind of doing athletic and somewhat headlong things.
Jen: Jorge, Camilla and Siggy all embrace their Latino identity. Can you expand upon this aspect of the book?
Emma: The three cousins are growing up in a predominantly Latino city, and they spend a lot of time with each other. All three of them are bilingual, they’re all Latinos on both sides, although their parents come from different parts of Latin America. On the one hand they experience this real pride and comfort with their Latino identity. On the other hand, they live in a society and in a moment that tends to project hostility toward Latinos. So my vision for the book is that by learning about their own history and especially learning about their people’s role in the establishment, founding and shaping of the major moments in US history, they start to feel more pride of identity that goes beyond just their experience within their own community. I also wanted them to have the valuable experience of traveling back in time and meeting other kids who are Latino and who speak Spanish.
Jen: Can you give an example of how this appears in your book?
Emma: I highlight this in a scene where the cousins are in their magic boat and they’re trying to make land. They are in Virginia on the peninsula during the Civil War era. A boy runs into their boat shouting in Spanish. He’s a Union drummer boy, but he’s Cuban American. He’s a fictional character, but there was a well-known Union officer who was Cuban American and who spoke Spanish. I made this child up so that the kids would have an experience that really existed in history. Although we don’t talk about it, a very large percentage of the Union army was foreign born or second generation. Another important piece of this character’s identity is that the kids learned to counter the narrative that there is something new or different or odd about Latinos in the United States.
Jen: What are some of your favorite middle grade novels?
Emma: This question is hard for me because I read so many different books and it’s always hard to choose one book or one author. I’m thinking about my own colleagues in children’s literature. Tammy Charles is one of my critique partners and so I read absolutely everything she writes. I’ve gotten to read some of her work in manuscript form. I feel like Angela Cervantes is somebody who’s a colleague and has always been one step ahead of me. She wrote Gaby Lost and Found, an incredible that book came out shortly before my first book came out, so I’ve always been following her path and her trajectory. Those are just two authors I love to read and I could probably go on and on and on, but I’ll just give you those two.
Jen: Is there anything else that you would like readers to know about Cousins in the Time of Magic?
Emma: I want them to know that I consider this history to be vital. Any time you write about a group like Latinos that are not a majority group, you run the risk of your book being put on the shelf in the corner. You run the risk of tokenism. You run the risk of your book being trotted out at Hispanic heritage month and never again. This history is especially relevant to Latinos, but I think that everybody should know this history. I don’t think it’s incidental. I didn’t go dig up a story so that I could find a way to fit Latinos into the history of the United States. It’s actually the real history. So I hope that kids read it and it reshapes their understanding of the United States. I hope this is not too ambitious to say, but this is my hope.
Jen: Now that your wonderful book is out in the world, what’s next?
Emma: I’m working on another manuscript about the cousins that will take them to meet some really important Latino intellectual figures in the 20th century.
Illustration by E.L. Konigsburg in From the Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Franweiler
Jen: Do you have any connection to the book The Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler?
Emma: It is one of my favorite books I grew up on that train line that E.L.Konigsburg talks about. That moment when the kids are on the cement platforms of the Metro-North train is a moment that always made an impression on me as a kid coming into the city from the suburbs. I think she captures so well going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art like I did with a lot of my friends growing up. Konigsburg once said she had never seen kids who were so comfortable on the outside and so uncomfortable on the inside. This made a big impression on me.
No MUF interview is complete without a lightning round so …
Favorite place to write? Lately any one of the many coffee shops in Astoria, Queens
Dark chocolate or milk chocolate? Milk chocolate!
Superpower? Getting rid of stuff! My family lives in a small apartment but I have never once complained of not having enough storage. I’m ruthless.
Dream job when you were a kid? I was lucky that the grown-ups in my life rarely asked me this question as a kid. I got to focus on what I liked to do, especially reading, so for many years I was pretty sure I would grow up to be a fairy, a princess, or a mermaid!
Jen: Where can readers find you if they want to reach out?
You can connect with me through my website https://emmaotheguy.com/childrens-literature/
Alison Pearce Stevens has an M.S. in zoology and Ph.D. in ecology, evolution, and behavior. She has researched and written hundreds of articles for Science News Explores, Highlights for Children, and ASK magazine, among others. Her book Rhinos in Nebraska (Henry Holt BYR) details the discovery and excavation of one of the world’s premier paleontology sites, and Animal Climate Heroes (Henry Holt BYR) showcases four incredible animals working to protect their ecosystems—and us. Both were Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections. She and her husband have three dogs, one of which would make a great detective dog.
