A couple of questions answered about Becoming Naomi Leon from Pam Munoz Ryan’s website. 

Like Naomi, your background is a mix of different cultures. As a child were you exposed to each of them? Does each culture hold a favorite connection?  

Culturally, I was primarily exposed to the Mexican side of my family because they lived the closest so I saw many of them on a daily basis.  I saw my Oklahoman grandmother almost every Saturday. My most immediate connections to these cultures are to food like enchiladas, red mole, rice and beans. Or chicken, corn bread, smothered greens and peach cobblers. 

Your characters are all so distinct, so one-of-a-kind. Do their traits sprout from your imagination or are they drawn from people you know? 

Ideas for a book or fictional characters are similar to a confluence of rivers. The thoughts stream in from various paths and the final idea is the roiling water in the middle of my mind.  I loved to make lists when I was a young girl and hang out at the library so those were trait with which I was familiar and they lent themselves to Naomi’s personality. Naomi evolved from personal knowledge and imagination. The same was true of Owen. Over the years, I have known many boys who had traits similar to Owen but no one who had all of his characteristics. I did know a boy who had to have tape on his shirt each day. Another who was diagnosed as a F.L.K. Someone else had similar physical challenges yet an optimistic attitude like Owen.  Then, there are a few similarities between Gram and my Oklahoman grandmother. For instance, many of the sayings came from my grandmother and she was a tiny woman, but Gram is much more contemporary and feisty than my grandmother. All the characters are composites, who evolved from many facets, real and imaginary.

(Image source: Scholastic)

Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan (Scholastic, 2004). 

This book sucked me right in and made me a huge fan of Pam Munoz Ryan. Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw is in fifth grade and she and her little brother Owen have lived with their grandma since Naomi was three. That was when her mother dropped them off with Gram and never came back… until now. When Skyla (as her mom wants to be called) comes waltzing in the door of Gram’s airstream trailer with all her stuff in a big, black plastic bag, Naomi’s world is turned upside down. 

The plot takes a twist and Naomi, Owen, Gram and Gram’s two neighbor friends hit the road in Baby Beluga, as the trailer is called, headed to find Naomi and Owen’s father in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Here’s a short excerpt to get a little taste for yourself:

There we were, minding our lives with the same obedience as a clock ticking. A few weeks earlier the sun had switched to its winter bedtime, so even though it was early evening, the sky was dark as pine pitch. That meant that Gram, Owen, and I couldn’t sit outside on the white rock patio. Instead we had to crowd around the drop-down table in the living room/ kitchen of Baby Beluga. That was what Gram called our Airstream trailer…

…We had already put away the dinner dishes from Wednesday chicken bake and Owen started racing through his second-grade homework like a horse on a tear. People were usually fooled by his looks and thought he was low in school due to being born with his head tilted to one side and scrunched down next to his shoulder. It had straightened a little after three surgeries at Children’s Hospital, but he still talked with a permanent frog voice because of something inside being pinched…

…Gram, in her usual polyester pantsuit and running shoes, was doing her weekly hair set, rolling what little blue hair she had on those new bristle curlers that required no hairpins. (I was not being mean about her hair. It really looked blue in the sunlight.) And I mulled over my sorry situation at school, which was three boys in my fifth-grade class who had decided that Outlaw was the funniest last name in the universe. They did not give me an ounce of peace. 

(Image source: Scholastic)