We are so excited to have Mariam Gates join us today to share information about Milestones Picture Books!
Mariam Gates, M.Ed is the bestselling author of the Good Night Yoga series and many more books for young people. She has a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and years of experience in the classroom as a Mindfulness Educator and Special Education Teacher. Mariam and her work have been featured in numerous publications to include Parents, Time for KiDS, and New York Magazine as well as teacher, parent and kid lit blogs. As a Yoga, Meditation and Mindfulness expert, she teaches children and adults at workshops and conferences around the country. She also teaches weekly at public schools in Northern California. Her forthcoming (9th) book OLIVE ALL AT ONCE (Sounds True, September 2024) follows the titular character as she navigates the many (and sometimes contradictory) ways she feels about significant events in her life (the first day of school, a friend’s birthday party, being with her baby sister, and more.) As Olive sorts through her sometimes mixed-up feelings she teaches young readers that it’s okay, and part of being human, to feel many different ways---all at once.
As a children’s book writer, I am always looking for and receiving inspiration. To me, almost anything has the potential to be a story. (If I see Girl Scouts selling cookies, I start imagining a cookie that gets sent around the world delivered by a little chipmunk postman or a cookie competition between a group of friends that goes somehow awry). For those of you who are writers, you may relate to that moment of hearing a turn of phrase, or seeing an image and getting that feeling that this could be something. Of course, some of those pan out and others don’t (like the aforementioned cookie ideas) but the ones I find most compelling are those that feel like a window into the rich inner lives of children.
During the pandemic, and for quite a bit afterward, I was struck by the ways in which many children had a mixed experience of the world being shut down around them. Of course, for so many it was incredibly challenging, but for others, having that much time at home with their families was not all negative. It made me start to think about the ways in which, even in less extreme times, in many of the important moments and milestones in our lives, we do not feel just one way.
As adults, we know that taking a child to kindergarten (or off to college) is a combination of joy and sadness. We know we can feel both fulfillment and loss a the same time. We even have relationships that we appreciate and also struggle with, and the list goes on. I started being more aware of how true this is for children. But what also felt clear is that we don’t often reflect to them that having ‘mixed feelings’ and holding the contradictions of life is a part of being human. Instead we want them to feel ‘happy’ on the first day of school, when they get a new sibling, or attend a birthday party. I wanted to create a book where the protagonist was able to explain feeling ‘more than one way’ at a time. I wanted to celebrate the importance and humanity of that.
The question was, how to do it? I knew Olive, in Olive All At Once, was going to go through the first day of school, a new sibling, a birthday party, and grandparents visiting and do it all with the accompanying complex feelings each of those events brings. But that still felt hard to show. What really helped me was when I found a way to have her have agency in all of it. In Olive All At Once, the narrator is in a dialogue with Olive. Olive is the one explaining that she does not feel just one way while the unseen narrator is trying to tell a more traditional (and predictable) story. Giving Olive the ability to ‘correct’ the narrator throughout made the story, and her character, really come alive for me. She was the one who knew how full her range of feelings could be. She was the one teaching that to the narrator, and then to the reader.
I am thrilled with how Olive All At Once turned out and as with all of my books, I hope it helps kids feel more welcome and more a part of this big world.
Thanks so much for joining us, Mariam!
You can find Mariam on her website at mariamgates.com or Instagram @mariam.gates.