Youme Landowne

My big question for the world is, 

“How much power do we have 

and how much power can we share?” 

--Youme Landowne

Author J.L. (aka Jessica) Powers recently interviewed Youme Landowne, writer and illustrator of books for young people. The interview was done in part as preparation for Jessica's upcoming lecture on children's literature at Vermont College of Fine Arts program on Writing for Children and Young Adults in which she'll be featuring Youme's work. Youme's upcoming book from Cinco Puntos Press is Mali Under the Night Sky (October 2010). The interview wanders deeply into the core of what Youme wants to do with her work in celebrating and encouraging the children of the world. Like Jessica, we at Cinco Puntos think Youme is creating books that are a unique vision of what can be done in changing the world of politics in which we live. Indeed, hers are a good reason to keep on publishing books. Here's a very short sample of the much longer interview:

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Jessica: All of your books have been about homelessness in some way. Why are you so fascinated with the topic?

Youme: I think it has to do with the questions I have about the world. Really, we all have a home—our home is our body on the planet. But there’s the central question of how could anyone not have a home, how could we as humans keep each other from what we need? Of course, hunger is even more fundamental than that, but from my own experience if we have a base, we can get what we need, but if we don’t have a base, there’s no foundation for getting what we need. I think I’m trying to explore the idea that we’re responsible for ourselves and at the same time we’re responsible for each other.