[laughs]

Um, when I have the full, uh, chance to be able to create the, the story just with words and get into the inner thoughts of a character and the, the c- descriptive elements of the setting, all that gets stripped away when you do a graphic novel, and y- as a writer, you're solely relying on dialogue and maybe a few art notes to, to clue in the illustrator as to what your imagination is envisioning for that panel.

But it really is, you know, the editing, it's, you know, trimming down-

"She knows how to use her words." [laughs]

Oh, oh, Al would have a time with me as well, I think.

Uh, when I'm writing, uh, most m- all of my other books are just traditional novels, and sometimes my editor will go in there and, you know, you have to kill your darlings sometimes and just start trimming away, trimming away to get to the, to the, the heart of what you wanted to say.

So I'm not sure if, uh, speaking s- and being able to communicate in two languages, uh, is that helpful [laughs] as a, a writer in, in being concise 'cause sometimes you're thinking, "I could say it even better in this language," and the translation-

Can you talk a little bit about how these characters, specifically with Fabiola, gravitating more towards Nikki when she already had this friend group of people that spoke Spanish.

Well, Fabiola, at the beginning, when she first meets Nikki, her really only friend was Palmer, which actually is an American kid.

But he used to go to a dual language school.

And so he's the one who is really Fabiola's friend and neighbor.

So they've known each other before school started.

Seba is a kid that Fabiola meets.

And they do share, and they are excited and happy that they're both going to be in the same class.

Can you talk a little bit about Palmer's connection with soccer and kind of transition into more so the underlying theme of, you know, community sports, sportsmanship, teamwork that runs throughout offside?

across the

field.

Yes, and I'm glad you said it was an emu and not an ostrich because Patsy, the emu, does not like being confused with an ostrich.

So, yes, I throw the reader right into the action.

And then it looks like a bit of a chaotic scene.

They're all dressed in different soccer jerseys, basically running for their lives with this group of animals chasing after them.

And it looks very confusing.

How did you decide which dialogue should be translated immediately and which moments should require readers to work a little harder?

When I first started,

most of my books, I tried to incorporate characters that are either Hispanic or Latino backgrounds like myself because I didn't see myself usually in books growing up.

So I like to do that.

But I couldn't really put in too much Spanish, obviously, because I'm writing in English.

But then one time when I was visiting a school and doing a school visit, I do a lot of my presentations.

I always offer to do it bilingual or say something to ESOL classes because I learned English at school.

And I started noticing that in those classrooms, all the books were either all in English or all in Spanish.

Would you say a little bit more about why you wanted that to run parallel with the soccer plot line? Yeah, because the

Come on.

Well, it is very different writing a graphic novel.

I will say that when I have the full chance to be able to create the story just with words and get into the inner thoughts of a character and the descriptive elements of the setting.

All that gets stripped away when you do a graphic novel.

And as a writer, you're solely relying on dialogue and maybe a few art notes to clue in the illustrator as to what your imagination is envisioning for that panel.

But it really is, you know, the editing, it's, you know, trimming down, making sure that it'll fit into a little bubble.

And then if you're doing it bilingual, that...

And that was such an eye opener for so many people because we had never really experienced that back in the 80s and 90s.