Do you like to read? Do you consider books your friends? Wouldja like to become an author or an illustrator? If you answered yes to any of these questions, we have the perfect event for you and your family—the second annual Tucson Festival of Books!
On the University of Arizona campus, this massive bookfest is March 13 and 14 from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The Arizona authors and illustrators below will be there, too, teaching what it takes to be in the book biz! They all love the Festival of Books (it’s the biggest in the state) and so will you! The festival and parking are free, and so are the fabulous workshops and booths for kids and adults.
Visit TucsonFestivalOfBooks.org to help you plan your family fun!
Author & Illustrator Adam Rex
A Few Books to Enjoy: “The True Meaning of Smekday,” “Pssst!,” “Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich,” “Frankenstein Takes the Cake,”
“The Dirty Cowboy”
Adam Rex has a knack for creating outrageously funny words to go along with his outrageously funny artwork.
“I grew up in the Phoenix area, moving there when I was 4,” Rex recalls. “I went through a period where I was far from popular—not good in sports or socially sophisticated—but I could draw!” It didn’t take long for Rex’s true talent to show through. “I was always considered the school artist. I started oil painting when I was 11, painting a lot of dragons and fantasy stuff,” he says.
He also appreciated humor at an early age. “I always tried to be the funny kid—often to get me out of uncomfortable situations,” Rex shares. “I think I get a lot of it from my dad. I made kind of an early study of a lot of what I was seeing, like Looney Tunes cartoons and books I was reading. I was always interested in why something was funny. I started paying attention to what worked and what didn’t,” he explains.
At the University of Arizona, Rex studied to become an illustrator and says that he learned a lot from his teachers. In fact, Rex was the illustrator, not the author, for his first two books.
But Rex wanted to start creating with words, too!
“I always wanted to do that, but was uncertain on whether I could,” he remembers. Eventually, he found an editor who appreciated his quirky style with words as well as his talent with a paintbrush. He points out that he also relies on pen and ink and digital art he creates on a computer.
His ‘Frankenstein’ books explore the monster-sized problems his character runs into trying to live in the normal world. “The ‘Frankenstein’ books came out of a desire to draw monsters,” Rex says. “I thought the best way to get to draw and paint pictures of monsters was to write a bunch of short stories or poems about them and try to get it published.”
Rex doesn’t like mapping out and outlining everything before he writes. He likes his creativity to take him where he needs to go. “I’ll figure out how the story goes along the way. Then there are rewrites and rewrites—that’s just part of the deal,” he says. For his funtastic poetry, “I learned by practicing. The more I wrote, the easier it became,” Rex points out.
Moving out to Arizona from New York in 1979 helped Marge Pellegrino to realize her dream of becoming a writer!
“My background is in psychology, and I was a corporate trainer in New York. I never could have taken the creative risks if I had stayed
in New York because the cost of living is so much greater there (than in Arizona),” Pellegrino explains. “So I stepped out of the business world
and into the writing world. It’s been a wonderful adventure!”
Pellegrino took an instant liking to her new surroundings. “The drive out
to the Desert Museum was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen! It was kind of love at first sight,” she remembers.
Her latest book, “Journey of Dreams,” is an award-winning read for young adults. The serious story is about 13-year-old Tomasa and members of her family desperately fleeing the violence of their home country, Guatemala, in the 1980s. Tomasa, her two brothers and her father are forced to head north to Mexico and on to Arizona as refugees.
“It’s totally inspired by Tucson, by the Sanctuary movement that happened here in the 1980s,” Pellegrino explains. An Arizona church started the nationwide Sanctuary movement, which gave shelter to refugees from U.S. Immigration officers.
To make her book “real,” Pellegrino interviewed refugees and people from the movement, and read boxes of books on the topic. “Journey of Dreams” took her 10 years to complete!
Pellegrino refers to her favorite books as “her friends.” And although her characters might be fictitious, they take on lives of their own when she writes. “They really do become real to you,” she explains. “I thought about how to be true to Tomasa and how to tell her story. Tomasa really did lead me,” she explains.
Pellegrino is excited to put the final edits on her next book for young adults—it’s ready for
the publisher! “There’s a graphic novel quality
to it. Bianca is in early high school,” she shares. “She takes photographs and then sketches them and alters them.”
Children’s Illustrator Guy Porfirio
Check Out These Books of His Work:
“Junk Man’s Daughter,”
“The Far Journey,” “The Day I Could Fly,” “The Legend of St. Nicholas: A Story of Christmas Giving”
Callin’ all young artists! You don’t hafta be a writer to get your name on a book. If you’re into drawing, you might consider sharpening your skills to become a book illustrator.
“It was one of those things that I always did—I was always doodling, always drawing,” says illustrator Guy Porfirio.
In 1981, Porfirio moved to Arizona from Schiller Park, near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “I had a grandmother and uncle who lived out here (in Arizona), and I came out to work with my uncle’s construction company for a summer,” the artist recalls.
“I figured if I moved out to Arizona, at least my grandmother would feed me—she’s a great cook.”
As an artist from the chilly Chicago area, Porfirio says he appreciates being here. “I think the inspiration (I get) from living here is just the atmosphere, the landscapes and the sunny days,” he says. “In Chicago, there’d be just weeks of dreary, rainy, foggy days. All the leaves would fall off the trees, and it was like ‘alright, enough already!’”
Porfirio goes back to his growing up years for a lot of his concepts. Luckily, his mom and dad always supported his artistic ambitions. “My parents really encouraged me. I felt like it was something special because they treated it like that. They’d put up my drawings around the house,” he recalls.
But when he was in high school, his folks may have gone a bit overboard for a big family get-together. “My mom was putting them up all over (the house),” Porfirio laughs. “I was like ‘oh my gosh, it’s the Guy museum!’”
Being an artist isn’t easy. “There’s a lot of work involved, so you need to have dedication,” he advises. “It’s a wide field. Creating imagery, as an illustrator I’m telling a story visually.”
Porfirio uses oil paints, watercolor, colored pencils, pastels. “I just sort of combine it all,” he explains. He adds that the field is constantly changing and evolving, especially with computers and their art programs becoming so powerful.
Regardless of how you draw it, “you’ve got to have that background, understanding composition and having a good eye for art and color,” he says. His illustration for “The Far Journey” was his first cover illlustration entirely created on his Mac!
Readers Can Hit a Home Run, Make a Big Splash!
Enjoy the works of the Arizona authors and illustrators featured here, and countless other storytellers this summer. Through your local library’s summer reading program, you can explore exciting new worlds and keep your reading skills sharp while you’re out of school. Plus, summer reading programs offer fun activities and cool prizes.
Many Valley libraries will team with the Diamondbacks and the Arizona Republic for “Extra! Extra! Read Your Way to the Ballpark!” Kids can have a winning summer season and earn great prizes! Kids who complete this program earn a FREE book!
“Extra! Extra! Read Your Way to the Ballpark!” runs June 1–July 31 at Phoenix Public Library. Others participating public libraries systems are: Apache Junction, Avondale, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria, Scottsdale, Tempe, Tolleson and Wickenburg.
Summer reading programs offer more than incentives to read, explains Nelson Mitchell of the Maricopa Country Library District. There’s the chance to interact with other kids and participate in great activities, he says. In previous years, kids have met and talked with authors, been entertained by acrobats and balloonists, learned to cartoon and taken part in science labs.
The Maricopa County summer program, May 17–July 18, will focus on water. Participants will get a surprise from the new Sea Life Aquarium, set to open this summer at Arizona Mills. Other incentives include prizes from Wet‘n’Wild and the Phoenix Zoo.
These programs are open to kids up to 18 years of age. Younger kids can log reading hours by having stories read to them. Check with your library to find out what’s happening this summer. Information should be available online in May.
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