Note: Text has been edited lightly for clarity and does not match audio exactly.

Katie O'Connor: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Katie O'Connor, and today I'm honored to be speaking with legendary children's book author Pam Muñoz Ryan about her latest novel, El Niño. Welcome, Pam.

Pam Muñoz Ryan: Thank you. It's so nice to be here.

KO: This is such a beautiful book, and you include in an author's note at the end that your originating idea for this story was really the myth of the island of California, an island of gold inhabited by an Amazonian queen and her women warriors. This was my first experience with the myth—I'm an East Coaster—but when did you first encounter the myth?

PMR: I first encountered the myth when I was researching my picture book, Our California, and I was researching how California got its name. I discovered that it got its name from a book that was printed in the 1500s called The Escapades of Esplandián. It was in Spanish, but I'm translating for you. It was what they call a romance novel, not in the sense of what we know as romance novels today. It's more likely today called a chivalric novel. They all had the same plot line: A conquistador went to a foreign place, conquered it for Spain, gathered up all of its valuables, also conquering it for Spain, and then converted everybody to Christianity. That was the premise of most of these chivalric novels. Well, this particular one became very popular and it was about an island encrusted with gold, ruled by an Amazonian queen who the author called Queen Calafia.

So, that's where the origin of the name “California” came from. In reality, the king and queen of Spain actually commissioned the explorer Cortés to go and find this island and claim it for Spain. The whole story became so pervasive and sailors started repeating it and touting that “Oh, yes, they had seen it.” And so the king and queen of Spain decided, “Okay, Spain needs this island.” Cortés was too old at the time, so he sent Ulloa, and Ulloa found instead of an island encrusted with gold, a peninsula attached to a mainland. When cartographers drew the new maps, they named the peninsula Baja California and the mainland Alta California, as a nod to the story queen.

The other thing that you should remember is, this is an old trope. This whole premise of an island encrusted with gold, ruled by an Amazonian queen and with all women warriors as her constituents, was a trope that's been echoed in Greek mythology and in tales from the Far East and all parts of Europe. So, it is an old trope. It's where the original Wonder Woman myth came from. Even [Garci Rodríguez] de Montalvo was gleaning from this old trope. So, that's where I first got the idea about the island of California. But that led me to start thinking about the possibility of the island still being there. In my mind, I was like, “Well, what if the island was still there, but only submerged?” And so that's how that all came about.

KO: I love all of your twists on it. And I really love that this old chivalric book essentially went viral and caused all these people to believe that it was real. It's such an amazing story.

PMR: Well, right. It would be as if, when you think of any popular book today and you think about the setting, it would be like a king sending their military to go find that country.

KO: Right. Go find Narnia, right? [laughs]

PMR: Yeah, exactly. Find it. Claim it for us. [laughs]

KO: The story of the myth is really effortlessly interwoven with the plot. Our hero, Kai Sosa, is grappling with grief two years after the disappearance of his sister Cali. He's desperate to get back to who he was, particularly back to the top-tier swimmer that he was. But memories of Cali and the fact that he wasn't able to deliver on his final promise to her to find her missing gold cuff are holding him back. But then Kai finds a library book that Cali had been obsessed with, about an underwater realm and a group of mermaliens protecting a lost ancient island, and details from the story start to appear in his own life. So, in addition to those details, you also include passages from the library book, which detailed this myth that we were just talking about of the island of California. How did this work with your writing process? Were you writing linearly, or perhaps did you write those myth passages first and then decide where to insert them?

PMR: When I first began writing the book, I wrote the myth first. Originally the myth was only a few pages, and I knew it would develop, but I had just the general outline of the myth. As the drafts progressed and as I began working with my editor, we had a lot of discussions about would it be all myth in the front, would it just be couched beginning and end, or would we weave it through? As it turned out, it really lent itself to be more integrated into the story.

"The audio is always such a surprise to me, because it's always everything I never guessed I wanted or needed."

KO: Another thing that Kai and the other characters are contending with is the impending El Niño. I really loved the weather reports, particularly how they were done in the audiobook. What type of research did you do to augment this part of the story?

PMR: First of all, I live in Southern California, where El Niño is prevalent. Of course, I think people all over the United States know about it, and even the world. It is a recognized weather effect. The weather reports, that part wasn't difficult. I listened to a lot of weather reports, but actually that was really fun to write. I knew they had to be concise. I knew they had to feel conversational. And I actually loved it so much listening to the audio because it was exactly how I imagined it. It sounded like you were listening to the report on the radio or on the television. I love how they voiced it.

I just felt like what happens when you have a weather-heavy year in anybody's life, it seems like that's all people talk about on the news. Especially when there's any type of devastating weather, it just feels like you're inundated with those reports. So, that's why I wanted to plug them in.

KO: You're like, “This is from lived experience.” [laughs]

PMR: Well, also it was a way to integrate information about what was going on really concisely and quickly without belaboring all of the issues.

KO: Yes, definitely. It's very effective. And just going back to the audio, this is such a stunning listening experience. It's anchored, of course, with Timothy Andrés Pabon as Kai and E.J. Lavery narrating the myth. But there's also beautiful music that kind of gives space and time context clues. There's water sound effects, and we were just talking about those wonderful weather reports that are so cleverly done. Audio has really come so far since you first started writing. Did you envision the audio at all as part of your creation process?

PMR: I mean, it's always hard to imagine when you're writing it. I write seeing it like I'm watching a movie, so I don't always have those aural clues as to what it's going to sound like. But the audio is always such a surprise to me, because it's always everything I never guessed I wanted or needed. And it always brings such dimension to the story. When I heard the audio for the first time of Echo, I actually cried. I knew what was going to happen, but it was so stunningly produced and so beautiful that it was almost a movie. It brought that dimension to it that just made it so much more real and authentic. And in this case, too, with the music and the water, the water ambiance sounds and the water ambiance music, it just really made it feel mysterious.

KO: Yeah. And so vivid. I mean, really, you feel like you're right there in so many moments with Kai. The magical realism in this story I think really elevates Kai's journey. You're no stranger to this literary style, having incorporated it in other novels, including The Dreamer and the Newbery Award-winning novel Echo, which you just mentioned. What appeals to you about using this style to augment stories for young readers and young listeners?

PMR: I think part of it comes from growing up with a Latina grandmother who spent so much time telling me cautionary tales like “La Llorona,” the crying woman along the river who captured children who misbehaved. And, of course, believing it because she believed it, and if I doubted her, [she] would say, "But I know someone who knows someone who has seen La Llorona." So, I grew up with a lot of that kind of psychology and storytelling, and I think that's certainly been one influence.

I also love the mysteriousness of magical realism, of when you read it, you're asking yourself always, “Is it real? Is it not real? Did the author want me to think this is real? Did the author want me to know that this wasn't real?” I think that ambiguity is sort of interesting but also reflects really how we all think in our own minds at times. Sometimes we really want to believe in whatever mythology that's around us, whether it's “That's a sign” or like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, or any of those things. I think there is that desire to believe. And I think I've kind of clung to that.

KO: I think we very much feel that deep desire to believe in Kai as well. He really wants to lean in to all of the signs that he's seeing around him that are perhaps connecting this realm from this book to his sister. And maybe Cali is closer than he thinks that she is, or that everyone suspects that she is. And that brings me to my next question, which is really about grief. Grief is such a delicate but important subject matter for kids, and it's a major theme in El Niño as Kai, and the whole Sosa family, really, still navigates the loss of Cali. How did you find the balance between showing enough grief that the listeners can understand the shifted family dynamics, but not so much that the listener feels overwhelmed by it?

PMR: Well, first of all, during the writing, initially when she had disappeared, the time frame was closer. But my editor and I talked a lot about just exactly what you're talking about, and so we moved it out a couple of years. There was a point where I even considered doing it in real time, as if they had the immediacy of just losing her. But we felt like there needed to be a little bit of distance. That was helpful.

"I started wondering, 'Where does our grief and our sadness go when we're so overwhelmed that we can hardly put a foot in front of the other?'"

I think the important thing for me, more than anything, was honoring grief and honoring the reality of grief. It happened to me, as far as how I came to write about it and create this place, was during COVID there was so much grief. People had lost family and friends, and we were all so isolated. We lost our professions and our community and our interactions with people. I was on Zoom one day with two other writer friends, and one of them was having a particularly hard time with her family and loss. And just as a gesture, I reached my hands out toward the screen and I said, "Here, just hand me a little bit of your pain. I'll carry it for you for a while." And my other friends sort of did the same. We laughed about it. It was funny but sad, and afterwards, I just thought to myself, “If only it was that easy, if only there was a place…”

I started wondering, “Where does our grief and our sadness go when we're so overwhelmed that we can hardly put a foot in front of the other?” And I started wondering about a place that would protect your grief, if only for just one moment. That's how I came to create the Library of Despair and Sorrow. And so, really, the book is about honoring grief.

KO: I love that. And I loved the idea of this library where you can lay down your sadness, lay down these heavy emotions and know that they're cared for. I liked how we saw that resonate not just with Kai but with his friends as well, knowing that they had a place where some of the feelings that perhaps felt too big for them could rest for a while.

PMR: Right. Until they needed the grief back.

KO: I think, too, it's a noble cause. The idea that the inhabitants of the island and Queen Califia, that they're guarding this, that this is what they're trying to protect as well, showing that grief can be something precious to you, too.

PMR: Right. That's why I wanted to portray it as something more precious than gold.

KO: Yeah. That's beautiful. Through all of your fiction, do you feel like you have one message or one theme that you keep coming back to that feels most important to share?

PMR: Well, it's hard for me to be objective about that. Sometimes readers will say to me, "Oh, I really like your books because they're about strong women." Or someone else might say, "Oh, I really love your books because I really love the theme of social justice that runs through them." And somebody else might say, “Oh, I love your books because there's so much adventure.”

I don't really know the answer to that. I would say I do get asked a lot, “What's your most ardent goal? What's your biggest goal when you sit down to write?” And I will be honest, my most determined wish when I'm sitting down to write is to write something that hopefully makes the reader want to turn the page. Obviously, that's not a theme. That's certainly what I hope happens when I'm writing a book. As far as the themes, I think that's something I have to let other people decide.

KO: I think we've gotten such a nice glimpse today in this conversation of where you're getting ideas from: the myth you first saw when you were working on your picture book; this idea for the library came in a conversation with your friends. When you are getting these little kernels, what's your next step? Are you writing them down somewhere to kind of hold on to them? What's that part of your writing process like?

PMR: Well, people really always want to know, “Where did this idea come from?” But ideas for me, for me—you can talk to 100 different writers, you'll get 100 different answers. For me, the ideas come from a confluence of rivers coming together. So, I had this story over here about the island of California. And then I had El Niño and the mythology behind El Niño and what El Niño meant and how El Niño got its name, and the devastation or abundance that it created. And then I had this contemporary story about Kai and his family and their loss. So, you write sort of all three of these stories coming together in a confluence of rivers.

I wish I could give you a tidy process that I have. Really, for me, writing is more an evolution and not so much a tidy process. I have writer friends who are far more organized in that maybe they do note cards on a big bulletin board and make all of these notes and pretty soon it all starts coming together. Maybe I do that in my mind, I'm not quite sure. Usually, I just start out in a story. I usually know that opening scene. I write it down, and the next day I go back to the beginning and I read and I rewrite and I write a little more. And the next day I go back to the beginning, and I inch the story forward in that way. I’m a recursive writer, so it’s just the way I do it.

"I find it interesting that I now write primarily for the age that I was when books made the biggest difference in my life."

Right now, for instance, I'm working on a new novel. I had an idea for this one story for a long time, and it just didn't go anywhere. It's just been nagging at me. And I had this other idea that I had sort of worked on as a short story, and then it occurred to me that I could dovetail these two. So, sometimes that happens. Sometimes I have ideas or sometimes something is a short story that I think, “Wow, I could probably develop that someday into a novel.” But maybe I tried and it just didn't go anywhere until another story came along that seemed to work with it.

KO: I love that. I love the idea of opportunities for conversion. That's beautiful. You have won countless awards, including most recently the Children's Literature Legacy Award, and you are the 2026 US nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, which recognizes authors and illustrators whose works have made an important, lasting contribution to children's literature. What do you want your legacy to be?

PMR: Wow, that's a really hard question. It's not something I think about. First of all, I just love my job and I really approach it very practically. I really want to write books that make readers want to turn the page. Awards, they’re gifts, they’re beautiful gifts that you receive that really sort of validate that you continue to do what you're doing, or they make you feel validated enough to keep doing what you're doing. So, they're these just priceless gifts. I feel so fortunate to have had other people say to me, “We're going to give you this award and honor what you have done.” But as far as saying to me, “What would you like your legacy to be?” I just really want to write books that make readers want to turn the page.

I find it interesting that I now write primarily for the age that I was when books made the biggest difference in my life. Those fifth through ninth grade years, that's when books made the biggest difference, really a profound difference in my life. I find it interesting that I now write for that age, because I certainly didn't do that deliberately. It was just something that was organic.

KO: What were some of those books?

PMR: Well, I didn't really discover the library till about fifth grade, and we lived across town, away from the big library in Bakersfield. And so the only library that was close to me that I could ride my bike to was just a few blocks away, it was a tiny branch library called the East Bakersfield Branch Library. And you have to remember the collection was probably very pedestrian. I think the books that I read, most of them were classics. Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, a lot of series. But primarily, I remember reading a lot of Marguerite Henry. Maybe they had a lot of Marguerite Henry books because the area that I lived in was very countryish, a lot of fields and horses and farms. It was a controlled reading existence at that time because there wasn’t a lot of choice. But I loved it, and I loved escaping into it.

KO: And I think you now provide that beautiful escape for so many.

PMR: I hope so.

KO: Which is such a nice full-circle moment. I know you mentioned that you're working on a new novel, but I'm just curious, what is next for you?

PMR: So, during COVID, I wrote the script for the graphic novel of Esperanza Rising, which has been in print for 25 years. That is being illustrated right now. And so next year the graphic novel of Esperanza Rising will publish.

KO: That's so exciting.

PMR: Yeah. And I'm working on a picture book. I'm working on another novel. I'm getting ready to go on tour right now, though, so a lot of that's going to have to be put on the back burner for just a little while. And then I'll revisit everything.

KO: That's exciting. Well, enjoy this tour. Enjoy the release of El Niño.

PMR: Thank you.

KO: I feel personally excited for it, just because I got this early listen, but it's so stunning. I can't wait for everyone to hear it.

PMR: Oh, thank you so much. I so appreciate the audio and I'm so grateful that it will come out simultaneously.

KO: And listeners, you can get El Niño by Pam Muñoz Ryan right now on Audible.