House Hunter

The children's hour

By Michelle Tea

IT'S NO SURPRISE Children's Book Press gets mistaken for the children's branch of the Red Cross. Walk into its office on Mission Street and you're immediately traipsing down a watery mural painted right on the floor. Look up and your eyes are whacked with color: walls painted boldly and hung with paper flags from Mexico, cutouts of cats and chickens, and original artwork from the company's award-winning, bilingual children's books.

Since 1975, Children's Book Press has produced high-quality kids' literature, paired up with fine-art illustrations that bring the authors' vibrant visions to life. Focusing on the stories of children from Latino, African American, Asian American, and Native American communities and running the stories in bilingual format when necessary, Children's Book Press books have collected a heap of honors, including real dazzlers like the American Library Association's Pura Belpré and Coretta Scott King Awards, National Parenting Publications awards, the Skipping Stones Award, and the über-prestigious Americas Award. Those last two have gone, at various times, to poet, teacher, and activist Jorge Argueta, who came to San Francisco to escape the violent civil war in his native El Salvador. Argueta's first book with CBP, A Movie in My Pillow, uses poetry – unusual for kids' lit – to explore such an immigration from a child's point of view. While Movie in My Pillow is as whimsical and silly as you'd expect a book for kids to be, it's also at times as sorrowful as the subject matter warrants.

Argueta's second book, Xochitl and the Flowers, recounts the true story of the Nuevo Ramize Flowers shop at 23rd and Shotwell Streets, the enterprise of one Mrs. Ramirez, also an immigrant from tumultuous El Salvador. "She used to clean houses for a living," Argueta recalls. When a neighborhood jackass complained about the enterprising woman dealing flowers in a residential zone, the community rallied around her, convincing the city Planning Commission that Ramirez and her flowers were a boon to the community; Xochitl and the Flowers is the story of how the people prevailed and contains illustrated cameos by many of the Mission's familiar faces. One scene takes place inside El Trebol, home of the yummiest, cheapest deep-fried plantains in the Mission, and depicts a plate of just this delicacy being delivered by that nice lady with the blue eyeshadow and the sweet smile who brings them to your table in real life. The community members illustrated on the cover include a bespectacled gentleman who may have served you up a cup of joe over at Café La Boheme, and like all Children's Book Press publications, the book contains a deeper look at the real-life issues that affect the community depicted.

"We have been talking about struggle, but to make people take part in this story brought happiness for everyone," Argueta says. "Children's Book Press took part in the community effort to save that place. The community won; the flower shop continues to be there."

Argueta is at work on another book, one dealing with a scared little girl and a scared little monster, and spends time traveling around and meeting the kids who are touched by his writings. "You meet all kinds of children – happy, sad, cranky," he says. Argueta, whose upbringing was deeply impoverished, has found his life transformed by the success of his books and by his publisher. "It's not because they're happy books," he says bluntly. "It's done with such a loving care that people can see that there's also a lot of beauty in the way we express ourselves. They express the stories with pride."

Children's Book Press doesn't shy away from the harsher realities facing its young readers. Executive director Ruth Tobar says, "We're reflecting the complexities of people's lives. They come with complexities; they come with dimensions." A prime example of the press's unflinching publishing is the recent A Shelter in Our Car, which details the story of Zettie and her Mama, Jamaican immigrants who are forced by underemployment to live in their "old and junky" pink car. "I don't cry easily," editorial director Ina Cumpiano declares, "and my eyes just welled up with tears. It doesn't try to sugarcoat the situation homeless kids face."

Through a grant from unlikely sources Mervyn's and Target, the nonprofit Children's Book Press has been able to print 5,000 books to be given away at homeless shelters across the country, all of which were picked by CBP staff. "Each of us divided the U.S. into states and did research on our own to find homeless shelters," publicity coordinator Janet del Mundo says.

Children's Book Press plans on sparking lots more partnerships like the ones forged with the shopping giants; it's in this way that the publisher intends to widen the scope of its services. "We want to reach many more kids. We're going to do a lot better," Tobar enthusiastically promises. "We're using these books to touch kids' lives." Turns out the resemblance to the children's branch of the Red Cross is more then superficial, if you get how a book can save a life.