The Gift of Diversity and Culture in Stories with Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young

Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young shares with BookWorthy the celebration of diversity and culture in her picture book, Kailani's Gift

Join in the madness and help choose the #1 Middle Grade Book

The Middle Grade Madness contest and giveaway have begun. You can help choose the champion and enter for a chance to win 30 middle-grade books.

Discover more and join in the fun over on YouTube.

It is a whole lot of book fun!

---

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity but reflects the full conversation from the BookWorthy Podcast. Grab a cup of coffee, listen, and read along. This post does contain affiliate links. Thanks for your support.

Valerie - Welcome to Book Worthy, where we talk about the heart behind the books your kids are reading. Today, we're talking with author Dorina Lazo Gilmore Young. She is the author of several devotionals and Bible study tools for women, as well as a couple of children's books. Today, we're discussing Kailani's Gift, a picture book that showcases the value of patience, perseverance, and blessing others with your gifts, while also celebrating family, Filipino heritage, and dance. Welcome to Book Worthy, Dorina.

Dorina - Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored.

Valerie, it's a pleasure to have you. I've been following you for a while, and I love just your big heart and watching you and your family glorify God in all that you do. But to start us off, let's start with our random question of the week. What is your favorite thing about spring?

Dorina - Well, spring is one of my favorite seasons because we get to see the things that have been growing underground begin to bloom. I live in central California, so I see many flowers in the mountains and hills, as well as plants and extensive farmland around me. And it's a testament to the system every time it happens.

Valerie - It seems to surprise us that those pops of color after months of not so much, it really is always a surprise and a joy for certain. Tell us a bit about your children's book, Kailani's Gift.

Dorina - Yeah, this is so fun. This is a project that I actually worked on years ago. My first illustrated children's book, published, was titled Cora Cooks Pancit. This was about a young Filipino girl learning to make a noodle dish. It's a brief overview of the Filipino family, history, and culture. Well, I wrote Kailani's Gift actually as a sequel to that book that was an invitation by my editor at the time, but some different things happened where the publishing company was sold to a different company, and that editor ended up leaving. So Kailani's gift, which I had originally written, no longer had a home. Over the years, I had sent it to various editors and publishers, but it really wasn't until, I think, 2020, when an editor from Waterbrook and Multnomah Kids reached out to me. She, like you, had followed my family online. She loved seeing some of the multicultural things that we do and you know ways that I incorporate that into our family life. She said would you ever be interested in writing a children's book and I was like well that's funny because I've already published one and I have a sequel that I wrote and several other kind of ideas in the works so long story short. I loved being able to connect with that editor. And when she read this manuscript, she really loved it. We started working on it as one of the projects I would publish with that company. I'm very grateful to Bumi Ishola, my editor for that. It's particularly interesting because it's a book about perseverance. And it took more than 10 years for this book to come to fruition. In many ways, the backstory was also about perseverance.

Valerie - That's fun how God kind of makes it part of your own journey as you're working through trying to tell a story to children and families. Tell us a little bit about what Kalani is experiencing in this story.

Dorina - Yeah, so this little girl is the youngest of many siblings. She wants to learn this traditional Filipino dance called the Tinikling and her siblings are really good at it and they're practicing. So she kind of, you know, is the little sister off in the corner who's like, I want to learn, I want to learn, but it turns out it's actually a pretty hard, complicated dance. And so that's why it requires courage and perseverance from her. Her dad actually comes along and helps her to learn the dance because he loved dancing Tinikling when he was younger. And I think also it's kind of this interplay of how do we follow something that we might be interested in? How do we develop our gifts, which maybe we're not good at when we first start? And then how do we bless others with that gift? And so part of the book, which I won't give away all the details, but just to say that Kailani gets to actually bless others with her dancing towards the end of the book. And we see even a little redemption between her and her brother, whereas before her brother was kind of the one teasing her that she wasn't good at dancing. And I love that portion of it because so often I think kids start to give up on something. After all, they think they're not good at it when they start. And it does require perseverance, and it might be the thing that we are actually very talented and gifted at if we put the work in.

Valerie - I love that message because I have a bunch of perfectionists in my own home. And so they rarely will step into something that has piqued their interest because they fear not succeeding in it. And I know that's part of my own story too. And it's amazing if we just take the time to know that even if I'm not the best at it, I could still enjoy the process, enjoy learning. Could still bless others with a talent that I am working on and developing, whether that's dancing or writing or football, whatever that might be for our kids. So I love that message. What do you hope kiddos kind of walk away from Kalani's story with?

Dorina - Well, I do think kind of with along with what we were talking about that I want kids to understand that having perseverance and endurance is something that is a value in all of life, not just for performance, but even, know, when we're going through hard things, when we're learning something new like this with the dance, even if we are you know, having to grow in a certain area, maybe it's in academics or in relationships that have encouraged and endurance and perseverance is really important in that. And I think by telling it as a story, it's less kind of hitting kids over the head with like, this is the takeaway or this is the message, and more letting them observe like, okay, well, what did Kailani do to persevere? What are some of those kinds of negative scripts that she needed to overcome? Because she was teased for being kind of clumsy, which she's actually not. She's just not good at the dance when she starts, and she needs to learn some of the footwork to it. So for me, storytelling is really this opportunity for us to help teach kids those values, which are values that are in the Bible. But sometimes they're kind of hard to get our arms around if we're just describing them. So a story is such a great way to do that.

Valerie - I love how stories give us a chance to walk in someone else's shoes, to grow in empathy, to experience something that we feel, but in another way, and to actually put words to it or put, you know, mindsets that are very hard to grasp conceptually. A story allows a child to walk through those things in a way that seems formulaic, but it's more just that we kind of walk through it just like we would because we rarely like will take steps along the way to process what we're going through as children but to go through a story and walk through someone else's process allows us to see our own ditches and hardships you know in new lights. Now you are kind of teamed up with several other authors in a cohort to represent different cultures in literature. So, can you tell me a little bit about that cohort that you're a part of?

Dorina - Yeah, it's my privilege, actually, to kind of link arms with other children's book writers. I'm really passionate about telling multicultural stories, but also in promoting and championing my fellow authors who are doing something similar and sharing about their cultures. And I think it's so important, especially for us as believers, Christians, that we recognize that God created diversity. In fact, diversity is God's idea, one of the things I always say, because if we look in scripture, we see that he is the one who made each of us unique. And if we can celebrate that, again, through stories, because stories are so powerful in teaching us, know, rather than standing up in front of a classroom of kids and saying, like, we need to appreciate cultures, how much more impactful is it if they read a story, they get to peruse illustrations that really highlight those things. So this little cohort of friends, we're all children's authors. In fact, we all share one of our publishers. We're published by many different publishers and editors, but one of our publishers, Waterbrook Multnomah Kids, which I mentioned before, is the same author we share. And we didn't even realize that until we kind of got into this collaboration. But my friends, Xochil Dixon, Dorina Williamson, yes, she has the same first name as me. But that's a different person, and my friend Tina Cho and I all write books that celebrate God's diversity, that talk about real things that happen to kids, and also teach those Christian values, but through storytelling, and we love to promote each other's work so that we get to multiply that audience.

Valerie - I love what you guys are doing, not just in the area of diversity and culture, but also just in that authors can support one another. It's not, not in competition. We are celebrating each other's victories. And I love seeing that online, especially. And what is it? I wrote an article recently about kind of why we have the Bible in so many different languages and kind of why that's so important And I love how, know, Waterbrook and Multnomah especially is taking the time to have books that do present different cultures, different lifestyles, different ways of communicating sweet truths about God because our God is, like you said, a God of diversity, a God of, you know, just culture and people. And that comes in so many different shapes and sizes.

Dorina - Yeah, it's so beautiful, and I think that collaboration is so important. I think there are a lot of authors who are more in competition with each other like you mentioned and I have discovered that when I step into that community mindset instead of the more scarcity mindset, it blesses me too and you know our readers get the blessing of that because we hope that readers are not gonna just read Kailani's gift they're gonna want more books. And so, since these books, even though they're very different in their styles and their context, I think they have the same spirit. And so it just makes so much more sense that I would help fill people's bookshelves with the books that my friends have written as well.

Valerie - And I love that because I love to fill my bookshelf with books. Too much. Well, Dorina, can you tell us what's your favorite book other than the Bible?

Dorina - That I've read. Okay, that's such a hard one. I will mention a children's book that was very impactful in my young life, and partly because I was longing for diversity, but I didn't see it in a lot of places when I was younger. And I did find a children's picture book that I have one of my earliest memories of reading picture books, and it's called Nine Days Till Christmas. And

it actually was an award-winning book, I think from the 50s, I mean, pretty old. But the reason why that book caught my attention is that it's about a little girl who is Mexican in background, which is actually not my cultural heritage. But it talks all about how her family celebrated Christmas and something called Las Posadas, which in Mexico is kind of this series of parties and parades that really follow the idea of Mary and Joseph, you know, and their travels, and then how Mary has baby Jesus. And so what I saw in that book was this representation of culture, which was this girl with brown skin, going to pick out this piñata at the market with her mom, and the festivities that they were preparing to welcome people to this party. And there was something about it that just felt like home to me. It felt like my family, and it felt like it was celebrating something that, even though it wasn't about my culture, I really wanted to learn more about. And so I remember that book just being so impactful, and it's one of the books I think that really kind of planted a seed and helped inspire the books that I have published as well. Cause I want other kids to see themselves in the pages of my books. And even if it's from a different culture than their own culture, to be able to be curious. What can I learn about that culture? Or what can I learn about my own story? Sometimes, kids are not even asking those questions about their own cultures and their own stories. And again, we get to celebrate God's diversity when we are curious and when we really go on that treasure hunt for some of our own personal history as well.

Valerie - I love how, you know, culture is so rich and so deep throughout the world. And I love bringing culture into my own home. I know for our family, we, I know you guys went to Paris around the Olympics, not too long ago. And we have a tradition in our home where every time there's an Olympics or opening ceremony, we'll have a dinner from that country. So we'll gather a whole bunch of people, and everybody will bring some sort of dish from whichever country. So we've done a Russian dish, we've done what? Taiwan food, we did Paris food, which of course we had to have some French fries, which aren't Paris food, but some croissants. But it's fun to introduce culture into our families. I know even for us, we have an Irish background, and so St. Patrick's Day always comes with an Irish meal. And even though it's not something that was done when I was growing up. It's something I want to instill in my kids that their culture has value and it has meaning and a lot of history to unpack. How have you incorporated culture into your own families?

Dorina - Yeah, you're kind of bringing to mind something that we did actually that started during the COVID pandemic, when so many people were sheltering at home and social distancing. And I was trying to think of how we could connect our family with the world, even though we felt so disconnected from people. And we ended up starting this; it turned out to be kind of a little program or curriculum that people can still get if they want, but it's called

Global Glory Chasers. And it really grew out of that idea, similar to what your family did, where it was like, okay, we would do it once a week, where we would learn about a certain culture. And the way we would do that is we would gather some of the recipes of some of the traditional foods, and we would try to make them together. And we created some videos as a family, just making some of those dishes. And then we would oftentimes either read a book or we would watch a movie that would be a family activity. And then, you know, there were some other fun things like dances or games that you could play that really celebrated those different cultures. So that's something that we have done in the past. And then, even like you mentioned, there are some holidays where, like my family, we don't necessarily have an Irish background, but we always celebrate St. Patrick's Day with Irish food. And my mom was a folk dance teacher, so she knew how to do some Irish dancing. So when my girls were little, she would always get out the Irish jig music, and we would do a little bit of dancing after dinner. And I think just, even if you can't do it perfectly, being able to create a culture where your kids are learning together, where they're having fun together, again, following kind of that curiosity, even for older kids, maybe it's not dancing or playing games, but maybe it's watching a film and then having more of a kind of critical discussion about that film together. Now that my girls are teenagers, that's a little bit more of what we do. And I think that, you know, there's a richness there that, you know, when there's even difficult things going on in our world today, there's racism in our world. It opens the door for those conversations a little bit easier because we have that foundation of, okay, these are God's people. And God's people come from a diversity of backgrounds. And even if it's not the same as ours, we can love them, and here are some ways that we can do that.

Valerie - I love that. And I love how culture is so rich in the Bible itself, even though most of it takes place in one centralized location. You see, constantly, people of other countries are coming to influence and affect the Israelite population, and even their effect on the world around them. I think I could just talk forever just about how fun it is just to think of all the people of the world celebrating Christ when he comes again, and just knowing that everyone will be there, of all races and all nations. And it's a beautiful picture, I can't wait to see it.

Dorina - Agreed. My goodness. I'm so excited for that feast one day that we're going to have in heaven with all the different types of food.

Valerie - And plenty of dancing, I'm sure. Now, Dorina, did you always want to be an author?

Dorina - You know what? I am one of those kids who, ever since first grade, have wanted to be an author. And I had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Kozinski. I remember she had us write our very first creative story. And she encouraged me that one day I was going to be an author. I didn't know what that meant when I was six years old, and I was writing about unicorns traveling the world. But you know what, she planted a seed in my heart, and it is truly what gave me the perseverance. Mean, now I'm 48, so this is a lot of years that I've been working on this goal of trying to publish books. And it takes perseverance. There's a lot of rejection that happens in publishing. But I'm still so grateful that I had that teacher and that I have pursued this career because I think storytelling is powerful. And like we mentioned, it's in the Bible. It's really what Jesus used to teach and encourage people.

Valerie - because he just knew what our hearts were able to hear. We're not always able to hear that you have done something wrong, but we can hear, you know, what is it? Think Nathan was telling David a story about a shepherd, you know, taking, that was a way for, you know, to point to David himself without pointing a finger and to really stir in his heart. And I love how the Bible does that, and just what power stories do have. Now, what can we expect next from you, Dorina?

Dorina - Well, I'm actually working on an interesting project right now. I have written a little bit about our family's grief journey. My first husband died of cancer. And so I'm writing a journal that is for teens who are going through grief. And even if you haven't lost a loved one through death, there's so much grief in our world. And I feel like it's really important. It's a hard topic, again to talk about, I believe that through scripture and through journaling and through stories, there really can be healing. So that's my next project, and probably more details to come as far as publishing and dates and all of that.

Valerie - That sounds exciting. It's one of those griefs is not always just about losing a family member. Sometimes it's about losing an idea that you had or losing an identity that you had clung to. And I love that you're stepping into a space that is both hard and needed, especially in that teenage space, to be able to process those hard feelings in a healthy and God-honoring way.

Dorina - I think it's not a book that feels like this is so happy and so exciting, but I feel super passionate about it because I think it's needed.

Valerie - I love that God is bringing you through your heart to bless others. And so I know that he's gonna continue to do that with you for sure. Where can people find out more about you and your books, Dorina?

Dorina - Well, probably the quickest and easiest way is to go straight to my website, and that's www.dorinagilmore.com. I am on Instagram almost every day, so that's a fun place that I like to hang out in real time. But if you go to my website, then you can see all my books and all the other fun resources.

Valerie - We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes so people can find you easily. Thank you so much for joining me today, Dorina.

Dorina - Thank you. It was a pleasure to have this conversation.

Valerie - I've enjoyed it for certain, and I look forward to more. Thank you so much for joining Darina and me on this episode of the Bookworthy Podcast. Check the show notes for any books or links that we discussed, and let us know in the comments what your favorite thing about spring is.

If you follow Bookworthy on social media, you've heard about the middle-grade March Madness Contest and Giveaway. Help choose the number one middle grade book, and the more that you enter, the higher your chance to win the Reader's Prize on April 4th.

Check out more about the contest and giveaway

over on social media, and happy reading!