Mónica Rodríguez has a degree in Physical Sciences and a master’s degree in Nuclear Energy. She worked for 15 years at the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT), but in 2003 she decided to completely turn her career around and published her first book of children’s literature. Two decades later – and with more than 60 published works – the writer was awarded the National Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature for her work. Umiko.
The author explains to this newspaper that the change “was not sudden,” and that in fact she began writing since she was a teenager. For many years he cultivated his love for stories at night, when he returned from work, until he decided to take a two-year leave of absence, which ended up becoming fifteen. “I never would have imagined that I would get this far,” he admits.
When you decided to study Physical Sciences, was it because of your vocation or because at school you were recommended to go “for science”?
No, I was very clear that I wanted to study science. My parents were chemists, but beyond that, I always really liked science. In fact, I never liked the language subject. I say it a lot in meetings. I always really liked reading, but not analyzing sentences. It was natural to go for science. If I think about it today, I wouldn’t study physics. I would do something more related to literature because I think I have had many readings that were very disordered, very out of time. And maybe that would have helped me make a different base. It is also true that physics has helped me a lot to think in a certain way. To reason, which is also present in what I write.
Should we rethink how language and literature are taught in schools?
Yes. I would separate literature from language. In schools, reading for joy should be encouraged, and writing too. It is absolutely necessary to learn to write, and in a creative way. When I do it I realize that in the end, when you write, you always discover something. Something from you and from outside. Transmitting that this happens with the kids is wonderful.
Reading and writing from joy must be encouraged in schools
Monica Rodriguez
— Physicist and writer
“I write to know” is the phrase with which he opens his biography on his website.
Gonzalo Moure says it a lot, who is the person to whom I owe everything I know about writing. I have known him for more than twenty years. When I started writing children’s literature, he was already an important writer of children’s and youth literature, and with impressive generosity. He began to read the irregular and insecure texts that I wrote then and taught me to write from truth, honesty and emotion. It is a phrase that I learned from him, writing to know and not for what one knows.
He also says, “Sometimes I prefer to see the world through the eyes of an elephant.” How does doing so through your characters change the way you see the world?
That is the great power that literature has. The ability to make us look at the world from another perspective. Making that enormous empathetic effort to transform yourself into something completely different from what you are. From there, you start to see the world from another place and that teaches you a lot. The more perspectives we have to know reality, the better we will know it.
Is it difficult to instill a love of reading and writing in young people?
In this society everything goes very fast and the immediate reward, the self and the now are sought; and reading is something that requires intimacy, time, slowness, reflection. It is something that is increasingly difficult to achieve, but statistics, however, say that it is read more now than before. I don’t know if the way we read is changing, but it is true that we writers of children’s and youth literature move around a lot between schools and institutes and we come across many teachers who often, against everything, are doing a job to contagious reading that is impressive. I wish this were extended to all schools and institutes.
Why are you interested in children’s and youth literature in particular?
He was born spontaneously, without even knowing that world. I was changing my way of writing, I was delving into that childish look so amazed at the world, so clean. Perhaps because I also have a very strong memory of my childhood, it is very present in me and I would like to recover that wide and limitless moment. I always observe children a lot, how they understand the world.
In this society everything goes very fast and immediate reward is sought; and reading requires intimacy and time
Monica Rodriguez
— Physicist and writer
Who did you read when you were little?
The books of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie. Now I don’t like crime novels, but at the time I read everything. Also the books that my mother had from when she was little, Antoñita the Fantastic, William the Mischievous. My grandfather also had a huge library. When I was little I tinkered and that’s where I discovered poetry. I remember discovering Lorca and his gypsy balladnot understanding it at all, but producing a fascination for that use of language so different, those words so provocative in some way. It continues to produce a brutal fascination for me.
What do you think about the lists of required readings in schools?
It’s a complicated topic. On the one hand, it is true that we must let them choose their readings, but on the other hand, there are books that they would never reach if they chose alone. It is very interesting, as I go to schools and institutes, to have a meeting in which everyone has read the same book. Although everyone has read the same one, no one actually reads the same one. When they start talking about what they have felt, what they have understood, what they have interpreted, there is a fantastic intersection of reflections that widens the view of the book to the rest of the companions much more. That generates discoveries that you wouldn’t make with a reading alone or with just a friend.
It would be necessary to do a little of everything, some book among all, even if it is a bad one, because it is also good to read critically. What should never be done is an examination of the readings. Of course not, because they really end up approaching reading in a fearful way and many times what they do is not read and look for a summary. If you search the Internet for my books, the first thing that comes up is someone asking for a summary. That doesn’t make much sense. We must try to transmit reading for pleasure.
Although it is not the main plot, Umiko It includes the story of a first love, how did you plan to tell it?
It is a moment in life that fascinates me. That’s why I write a lot about the discovery of desire, of love, that age between twelve and thirteen where until then you may have liked it. But that’s where the sexual aspect, the hormones, comes into play. When I write I don’t know where I’m going to go, I discover the story while I write. In this case it was a documentary about the ama, the Japanese divers. It is an ancient profession that is inherited from mothers to daughters and today daughters do not want to follow it because it is very hard.
They spend many hours in the Pacific Ocean with the icy waters doing full lung dives, with the problem they may have with their ears. They are tied to a rope that can be hooked. There are sharks. It is a complicated, dangerous job. The housekeepers that exist now tend to be very old women, even 80 years old. One of them, who had been a mistress for fifty years, said that the ocean was a woman’s world. And that, when she was down there, in the solitude and that silence was when she discovered who she really was. These two phrases were what led me to write.
Can everything be talked about and told in literature aimed at children and adolescents?
You have to find a way to do it, adapt it to your maturational and emotional level, but you can talk about anything. What’s more, they are interested in almost everything. In general, children, adolescents and young people really want to know what is happening in the world. That’s why we have to be honest and write from the truth. Do not tell about a world that they will not find later, because that is also very harmful. Put them in a bubble and talk to them about worlds that are not true. You can’t lie. Another thing is the way you tell it, display it and show it.
Children, adolescents and young people want to know what is happening in the world. That’s why we have to be honest and write from the truth. Do not put them in a bubble and tell a world that they will not find later, because that is also very harmful. You can’t lie
Monica Rodriguez
— Physicist and writer
How do writers of children’s and youth literature get along with each other?
The world of children’s literature is very kind, very beautiful. Many of us writers, illustrators, and editors know each other. We read each other, we like each other, both men and women. Chiki Fabregat calls us “the Gallic village.” We are resisting in our brave new world against the Romans who are fighting each other, who belong in adult literature.
I suppose it has its reason for being, and that is that children’s and youth literature is a bit like literature’s little sister. So there are no big egos like in adults, or among poets, because children really don’t care about the writer, they care about the book. The important thing is the books, not the people behind them. The fact that there are no big egos, and that we are not despised, but we are made invisible in some media, makes us more united. And that’s very good.
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