Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the Webby-nominated podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

This episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books has been sponsored by Himalaya, the best app for discovering, listening, and organizing podcasts.

Himalaya was nice enough to reach out and make me an editor's choice. So now they're a sponsor.

Check them out at Himalaya.com or in the app store. I'm really excited to be here with

Ricardo Cortez today, who is an artist, writer, and the number one New York Times best-selling illustrator

and publisher. Books of his include The Party, written by Jamaica Kincaid. It's just a plant,

sea creatures from the sky, go the bleep to sleep, and seriously go the blank to sleep. I didn't

want to say it on the podcast. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. So welcome, Ricardo.

Hey, thanks so much for having me here today. How did you decide to illustrate the party, your most

recent book with Jamaica Kincaid? And basically, how did you get started illustrating books to begin with?

Well, I started illustrating books actually kind of a strange way. I was actually into doing

political activism to a certain

extent and I was interested in drug policy reform. And strangely enough, my first book was a children's

book about marijuana and actually got a grant to write a children's story about how a child

who finds out her parents are using marijuana and basically it would be analogous

to maybe a book about sex education for kids. It wasn't teaching kids how to smoke pot or the pot

is for children at all whatsoever, but it was talking to children and parents could use it as a tool

to explain why some adults are using this thing and what it's about. So yeah, it's a very kind of strange way

to get into children's books. And that's how I got into it. Yeah, I did a book and it was moderately successful. I started publishing it my own. I couldn't find a publisher for a strange book like that. That was back in 2005. And the cultural landscape has changed a lot since then, but that's really how I got into it.

And I was always the illustrator. I think that was my, that's how I began. And that's how I gone into books. I've done a couple books since then. But how I found party, Jamaica story, was in a

book called Talk Stories, a book of basically her stories that were the talk of the Town pieces she'd written for the New Yorker

magazine at the beginning of her career, her writing career. It was just a collection of all these

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