Acclaimed author Pam Muñoz Ryan has been a fixture of the children’s literature scene for more than 25 years, winning the Pura Belpré Award in 2002 for Esperanza Rising, a Newbery Honor in 2016 for Echo, and the Children’s Literature Legacy Award in 2024. We spoke with Muñoz Ryan about her career and latest book, El Niño (Scholastic Press, May), which blends the legend of an underwater kingdom with a young boy’s journey of understanding love, death, and grief after losing his sister.
At the heart of your new novel is an underwater realm called the Library of Despair and Sorrow. Why do you view sadness and suffering as “more precious than gold,” as you describe in the novel?
I think it acknowledges our humanity. It says to the reader, “We all have feelings of sadness, despair, or sorrow at different points in our lives, and they’re real, and they don’t have to be ignored or suppressed.” When we hold hands with these emotions, we’re really acknowledging our humanity. I also liked the idea that people had a place, even for a moment, where they could lay down their pain if they needed or wanted to, just so that they could take one tiny step forward, and that while they did so, someone was there comforting their sadness.
Why choose a library as your treasury for these emotions?
I think of libraries as safe harbors, and I think of them as being so ecumenical—meaning that they address the needs of all people—that it doesn’t matter your socioeconomic status, it doesn’t matter your countenance or your history or disposition. It addresses the needs of everyone. As I said in my speech [at a Scholastic event] at ALA’s 2025 LibLearnX conference, librarians create a safe place where readers can dream and hope and lay down their pain. It’s a protected place where readers can glean information and resources and find avenues of possibility, where at least within the confines of a book, a reader might glimpse their own feelings, making them feel found when they thought they were lost, making them feel seen when they thought they were invisible, making them laugh when they thought all they could do was cry.
That’s why I chose a library.
What role have libraries played in your life?
As a young girl, I didn’t discover the library until the summer before 5th grade. My family had moved across town, and I began escaping to a small branch library in my new neighborhood. It was a refuge from my younger sisters and younger cousins, and it was air-conditioned—a big plus in the San Joaquin Valley heat [in central California]. Books captured me. A few years later, my mother, who was a secretary for the school district, became the librarian’s assistant at a high school library. She was in charge of all the textbooks, which was a big task at that time, especially at the beginning of the school year. Before school opened each summer, I would go to work with her for a few days to unpack boxes of books and organize them according to classes. I still remember that time with my mom in the cavernous and empty library, just the two of us sorting mountains of books.
You received the 2024 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. In the ever-shifting publishing landscape, what is different now from the early days of your writing career?
I’ve certainly seen a lot of changes in diversity in books, and there seems to be a bigger level of acceptance. Here’s my feeling as a writer: Whatever I present, I want to open the reader’s eyes just a little wider. All the campaigns that have gone through the publishing world, from multicultural literature to #WeNeedDiverseBooks to #OwnVoices, I think they have all contributed to helping nurture that awareness.
What are your thoughts on the increase in book bans across the country?
Book bans are so disheartening. All readers deserve to have stories in which they can escape or a story with which they can identify—one that reflects their own culture, history, challenges, and existence. We can’t really know another without knowing each other’s story. Therein lies the seeds of understanding. When we, as readers, embrace other people’s stories, we begin to accept differences and celebrate our similar humanity. One thing that I have learned from the thousands of letters I have received from students is that they love to see themselves reflected in a book. They applaud it and are grateful. And just as important are readers who come to see, appreciate, and understand someone other than themselves.
This book explores environmental and emotional turmoil and loss while also serving as a rich tribute to California. How might this story help heal readers impacted by the Southern California wildfires?
It isn’t just the fires in California, it can be a catastrophic thing happening anywhere or it can just be personal loss. And we don’t always know just by looking at somebody what their personal losses have been. That’s also the power of story—of such an intimate relationship between the words on the page and the reader. I hope it resonates. I hope it brings some sort of comfort.
It has such an important message of being kind to yourself in those moments.
I do think we beat ourselves up in those moments a little, that feeling that you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and trudge forward. I really wanted the reader, or at least my character, to acknowledge that his feelings were very real and important.
