At Home in a Faraway Place

At Home in a Faraway Place is my newest book, a very-illustrated novel for readers ages 8-12. It’s the story of a young girl named Lissie, who travels with her dad and her grandma to visit an old friend of her dad’s, who lives in Central America. While she is there, she makes some friends and learns some Spanish words.

Kirkus reviews calls it “a warmhearted introduction to the joys of travel.” And it grew out of my own experience traveling to Central America, specifically Guatemala. Which grew out of my own desire to finally learn, really learn, to speak another language. Because I am a visual person, when I first started to study Spanish again (first time was in high school, many years ago), I made “flashcards.” Sometimes to help me remember the difference between two similar words, sometimes just because I found them interesting. For example, the Spanish word for turkey is “pavo,” and the Spanish word for peacock is “pavo real.” Literally, “royal turkey.” Which makes total sense when you look at them:

Sometimes, I just liked illustrating one of the sample sentences in the Spanish word-for-the-day I get every day in an email. This one just means, as you might guess, that the moonlight comes through my window:

I often write my books for the person I was at a certain age, hoping that maybe who I was, is not too unlike other persons that age. When I was young, I had a subscription to Golden Magazine, published by the publisher of the Little Golden Books. Often there was a page or a spread devoted to learning words in another language:

I studied these intently, sounding out the words, trying to remember them.

When I traveled to Guatemala, it was my first time visiting Central America. There were things that felt very different (volcanoes! gardens on the inside of houses!), and things that felt warm and familiar. (the friendliness of people. Sharing meals.) I started to make paintings about it. And I started thinking of making a story about a girl who visits Central America and discovers all this and more. And who, of course learns some Spanish along the way. And makes some friends.

Here are some of the drawings in the book:

Flory isn’t the only friend Lissie makes on her trip. Many of the friendships she makes are “tiny friendships.” The brief encounters we have with other people that, as Lissie’s grandma and I believe, are what hold the world together.

I hope you travel along with Lissie on her journey. And I wish you many journeys, both tiny and grand, of your own!

If you would like a signed copy of At Home in a Faraway Place, you can order from Horizon Books in Traverse City: https://www.horizonbooks.com/book/9780063378421

or Bay Books in Suttons Bay. baybooksmi.com

I encourage you to support your local independent bookstore. But if for some reason that’s not possible (like, you don’t have one), I encourage you to order through bookshop.org, which supports local independent bookstores: