By Raena Hunter Doty Arts & Features Editor The Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival hosted Ibi Zoboi and Duncan Tonatiuh as keynote speakers Nov. 7. President Nancy Niemi introduced the speakers. “There are not many universities that have such a deep and thoughtful celebration of children’s literature and illustration and their profound continuing effect on literacy,” she said. “Not just literacy of children and young adults, but of our collective ability to read the world of stories and artistic designs in so many different formats,” she added. She said though digital and video media has become increasingly popular, “there is still nothing like a book,” and she believes books have a power offered by “no other media.” Tonatiuh was introduced first, and said though his books are “very different from one another,” spanning a variety of genres - both fiction and nonfiction - “one thing almost all of them have in common is that they have to do with Mexican culture or Mexican-American culture.” He said he was born in Mexico City and grew up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “When I moved there, I didn’t know the kids in my neighborhood. I didn’t know the kids in my school,” he said. “What I did have was a school library.” Tonatiuh said he borrowed a lot of books as a kid, especially “choose your own adventure” books, and became interested in writing his own stories. He added he also became interested in drawing after his cousins would bring him comic books and he “had never seen comics, so I got really excited. “We would make our own,” Tonatiuh said. “We would grab pieces of paper, old notebooks, and draw our own superheroes, draw our own villains, and make up our own characters. And that’s when I started drawing, and I never stopped doing it for more than 30 years.” He said he had family in both Mexico and the U.S., and when he was high school-aged, he moved to the U.S. He went to a highly art-oriented high school in Massachusetts. Eventually, he went to Parsons School of Design in New York City. “I was very happy there, but as I spent more time in the United States, I began to miss some of the things that were always around me,” he said. “I think sometimes, when you leave a place, you notice what’s special about it,” he added, and used the example of Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. “That’s just something I always did and celebrated as a kid and never thought twice about it,” he said. “When I was somewhere where people didn’t celebrate it or they didn’t celebrate as much, I began to say, ‘Wow, this is pretty unique.’” Tonatiuh said this is when he became particularly interested in Mexican and Mexican-American culture, and began connecting his assignments to the culture when he was able. He added when he was in his final year at Parsons, he had to do a year-long senior project, and decided to draw on the art of the Indigenous Mixtec culture in Mexico based on a friend, Sergio. “I went to my university’s library and I looked up Mixtec art,” he said. “I was very excited when I saw these drawings. And I’d seen this kind of artwork growing up in Mexico - in one of my elementary school textbooks I had. “But I’d be lying if I said that was something that inspired me when I was a kid,” he added, and said as a child, he was more drawn to art from outside of Mexico - comic books from the U.S. and anime from Japan, for example. “But after I had lived in the United States for several years, when I saw this kind of art again I was very struck by it,” Tonatiuh said. He added he wanted to portray Sergio’s life in a format inspired by ancient Mixtec codices, showing the different jobs he had and troubles he went through in these highly stylized drawings. A copy of this piece is on display in the Mazmanian Gallery until Dec. 11. Tonatiuh said one of his professors connected him with a children’s literature publisher and inspired him to write children’s books, and though he didn’t know how to write for children at first, he eventually pitched and published his book “Dear Primo: A Letter To My Cousin.” He added he writes about many subjects, but Mexican culture is always a part of it, and one of the most rewarding parts are from students who connect with his books, like a group of elementary students who wrote a poem based on his book “Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant's Tale,” which he shared with the audience. “I was very moved, especially the first time when they shared it with me because it does kind of confirm for me this idea that it’s important to see our stories reflected in books,” he said. Ibi Zoboi, Haitian-born author of young adult books including “American Street” and “Nigeria Jones,” said she was glad to visit Massachusetts because she has a connection to the area - her daughter went to school here and she has a connection to Boston because it has the third largest Haitian population in the country. She said Haitians started moving to Boston in the 1960s when Haitian academics were welcomed into U.S. academia and family members moved with them. “And I share that with you because this is what I write. I was born into a country that doesn’t get the best rap in the media. So I create dangerously,” she said. She said she grew up hearing harmful narratives about her birth country, and now everything she writes is to “right that wrong. “Creating dangerously means I take risks - big risks,” she said. “My books have been challenged and banned in different school districts across the country, but I continue to write because I am creating dangerously.” Zoboi said everyone should strive to create dangerously, and added her husband is a high school teacher and her daughter is going into education, “and I remind her that teaching is also an art. To teach dangerously requires that you are passionate.” She said this passion doesn’t necessarily have to be in a public space - “it could be in your kitchen, or in your shower.” Zoboi listed principles that help when “creating dangerously” - such as “question everything,” “make it beautiful,” “make it powerful,” “create with your heart,” and “it’s OK to be scared.” She said it’s important to her that she tells her story regardless of who tries to tell her it doesn’t matter because she herself learned to love writing after seeing an author writing about marginalized topics. “There are so many things in my career that let me know that no one wants to read my story or no one cares,” she said, but she wouldn’t have fallen in love with writing without falling in love with other people’s words. Zoboi said Octavia Butler was a particular source of inspiration for her, “and if you know Octavia Butler, she’s a tall Black woman with short hair and she’s not necessarily glamorous or a movie star, but I was the kind of young person that I didn’t look for that in my idols.” She said she looked for “intellectual heavyweights,” and Butler was exactly that. “And when I discovered that I shared a birthday with her, I became a super fan, because I was like - we’re the same,” she added. She said it was her aspiration to be like Butler, along with her “radical imagination,” that has brought her this far in life. Zoboi said she’s always had a radical imagination - in school, she was a good artist and a bad student because she “could not complete tasks. “Maybe I had some undiagnosed ADHD - I don’t know,” she added. She said students with radical imaginations who aren’t good in academic settings may slip by the notice of their teachers, and it’s important to help students cultivate their imaginations. “A radical imagination means that you go beyond the superficial to question your world and to create those answers,” she said. She added when she’s in middle schools, she asks students what they think the world will be like in five to 10 years, and they often struggle to answer the question, so she then asks them what they think the iPhone 50 will be like - and that gets their gears turning. “In asking those questions, I let them know that they are artists even though they say that they don’t want to be an artist when they grow up. That is art making,” she said. “That’s something truly empowering to tell marginalized children who feel like they have no place in the world.” Zoboi said Haiti is often on the news “and none of it is positive,” so to her, telling the story of her birth country in a way that represents Haitian friends and family is radical imagination. She then shifted to talking about her own childhood, and said her mother was a radio journalist in Haiti during a time when this was a very dangerous job, especially for a woman, due to the political climate. “I’m continuing her legacy,” Zoboi said, even though she didn’t fully know her mother’s legacy because her mother didn’t talk about it. She said her most dangerous book is “Nigeria Jones,” even though it’s not her most popular book, because it reflects her truth as a Haitian girl growing up in a diverse community in New York City. She said, “I’ve never gotten called the N-word in my life, but I have been called something - and pardon my French - ‘Haitian booty scratcher.’ Or been told ‘HBO,’ which is ‘Haitian body odor.’ “All of these were from kids who looked exactly like me. And what do you do with that sort of trauma and that hurt? You write about it,” Zoboi said. “I was nervous about this book but ultimately it went on to win the very prestigious Coretta Scott King Award,” she said. “I needed to write that book to make way for my fun, lighter books, but this is all part of why I create dangerously.”