Illustrator and author Andrés Vera Martinez will speak to children about the “Monster Locker” series of graphic novels at the Windham Public Library at 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 28.
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| Illustrator and author Andres Vera Martinez will speak to children about his 'Monster Locker' series of graphic novels during a presentation at 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 28 at the Windham Public Library. SUBMITTED PHOTO |
“You work on graphic novels for so long, you have to be passionate about it,” he said, noting that most novels take two years to complete.
“Moster Locker” follows the adventures of middle school student Pablo Ortiz, after he discovers a locker in the basement of his school that opens a portal and summons an Aztec goddess. His new friends Takashi and Maggie help him take on the vengeful monster, and the trio bond through their journey.
“I liked the idea of a locker in the basement being haunted. When I was in middle school, I was very nervous about having a locker for the first time,” said Sam Cote, Windham Children’s Librarian, who sought to bring Martinez to the library. “I thought it was an interesting way to express that fear I think that a lot of middle schoolers have.”
Co-written with Jorge Aguirre, the two worked closely together to develop the story. Their mutual agent introduced the duo to work on a picture book together, and they decided to develop the idea for the series together after that successful collaboration.
“I had suggested that we write a middle school graphic novel series, and he did three pitches of a paragraph each,” Martinez said. “I chose one about a little girl who finds a monster in her locker. The monster wants to summon bigger and scarier monsters.”
“That was it,” he said. “We started on that.”
“I’ve never had that kind of collaborative process with a writer that was so involved,” Martinez said. “There was no way this could have been made without each of us being involved.”
“We both had equal parts in the characters, their stories, what they looked like, how they act,” he said.
For example, Martinez explained that while the original main character was a girl, he thought a boy might speak to an unexplored audience.
“Middle school graphic novels are really popular for girls, so I wanted to go against everything and have a boy protagonist,” he said. “What would I have liked to read in middle school?”
Also, the duo had discussed using Greek mythology as the basis for the monsters in the book, but Martinez suggested the Aztec mythos instead, in a nod to Pablo’s ancestry.
“Since he’s a Mexican American kid, why don’t we have Aztec mythology coming out of the locker?” he said. “We got to do a lot of research into Aztec myths and how we can portray it.”
Capturing multiculturism was essential to the writers, as Aguirre is the son of an immigrant from Colombia, and Martinez is Tejano, descendants of Native Americans who settled in Texas before it became a state. Pablo’s two friends are also bicultural, as Takashi is Japanese and Jewish, and Maggie is Irish and Jamaican. The duo plans to devote a book in the series to each of the characters which will factor in stories from their cultures.
“Each kid, instead of having skeletons in their closet, they have this otherness that doesn’t really blend in,” he said.
The multicultural theme continues in the second book in the series, “Monster Locker: Nine-Tail Trouble,” as readers follow Takashi, who summons Kitsune, a nine-tailed shape shifting fox based on Japanese mythology, to help him. Before long, this helpful new monster grows out of control, leaving Maggie and Pablo to find a way to save their friend and their school.
There will potentially be two more books in the series, but Martinez and Aguirre are waiting to hear if their publisher has decided to proceed with those additional tales. Separately, Martinez has an adaptation of “Esperanza Rising”, a book by Pam Muñoz Ryan, that will be released in March.
Martinez’s work has been recognized by The New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), the Society of Illustrators, and he has been honored with a number of awards, including the selection of “Monster Locker” to represent Maine in the Library of Congress Book Festival. However, the most meaningful praise is from the students he encounters as he goes to schools and libraries to talk about the novel.
“I’ve done some school visits where the kids ask questions about the characters, about what will happen next, what they can’t believe happened,” he said. “They’re fully invested in something I spent so much time on.”
“That’s the most important thing to me,” Martinez said.
Recognition for his work also helps spread the word to other teachers and librarians who could highlight the book for their students, allowing the book to reach more children.
“The awards give more chances for librarians and teachers to notice it, so they can put it in more kids’ hands,” Martinez said. “I think the awards are supportive of the goal – to get kids to hopefully enjoy books.”
One such nod led Cote to reach out to Martinez to see if he could give a presentation to children in Windham.
“I saw that he had been picked by the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine State Library for their Read ME program,” she said. “I had read and really liked “Monster Locker,” so I was excited to invite him to our library.”
Martinez continues to develop new projects but is looking for another adventure to add to his lengthy resume.
“My next step is teaching high school art,” he said. “I want to be an art teacher.”
While originally from Central Texas, Martinez has been “unsettled” since he was 17, he said, and attended college in Chicago before spending two years in Japan, teaching English. He lived in New Mexico for some time and spent a year traveling the world. Martinez spent 12 years in New York City, where he completed his master’s degree, married his wife, Na, and the couple had their two children, Mei, who is now 19, and Pablo, 12. After getting a job at Leslie University in Massachusetts, the couple ended up settling in Maine, where they have spent the past 12 years. Martinez also published a book with his wife, called “Little White Duck: A Childhood in China,” based on her experiences growing up in China.
For more information about the upcoming “Monster Locker” presentation, visit the Windham Public Library’s website at www.windham.lib.me.us. <
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