From Misheard Word to Mariachi Magic: Creating Family Stories with Jolene Gutiérrez, Author of Mamiachi and Me

A podcast interview with Jolene Gutiérrez discussing Mamiachi and Me on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

In this episode of The Growing Readers Podcast, teacher-librarian and children’s book author Jolene Gutiérrez shares the heartwarming journey of creating Mamiachi and Me with her son Dakota. This vibrant picture book, born from a simple misheard word, blossoms into a joyful celebration of mariachi music, family tradition, and finding one’s voice.

With nearly three decades of experience connecting young readers to transformative stories, Jolene offers unique insights into the power of representation in children’s literature. She discusses how the pandemic created an unexpected opportunity to collaborate with both her children on picture books, including Mamiachi and Me and The Ofrenda That We Built (co-written with her daughter Shaian), and shares why authentic cultural narratives should feel as natural as the clothes we wear.

Through engaging stories from her roles as both educator and author, Jolene illuminates the creative process, the importance of persistence in publishing, and the magical moments when children see themselves reflected in books. Join us for an inspiring conversation about family, creativity, and the enduring power of sharing our unique voices through children’s literature.

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Bianca Schulze: Hi Jolene, welcome to the Growing Readers podcast.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Hi, Bianca, thank you so much for hosting me.

Bianca Schulze: My gosh, such a pleasure. I just so listeners know, I have been getting to know Jolene on and off for, I don’t know, like the last 12 months, probably a little longer through the SCBWI organization. We’re both members of the Rocky Mountain Chapter. So I have been getting to know Jolene at different events. And can I just say that she is one of the loveliest people I have met. So you’re all in for a treat.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Thank you. Likewise.

Bianca Schulze: That’s sweet of you, Jolene. Well, I want to warm up with some rapid fire questions. Is that okay with you?

Jolene Gutiérrez: It is. I’ll try my best.

Bianca Schulze: All right. Coffee or tea when you’re writing? What kind of tea?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Okay, love it. Tea. I love Yogi’s sweet tangerine tea. Delicious.

Bianca Schulze: That sounds good. All right. Best place to brainstorm story ideas. Library, park, or kitchen table.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Library.

Bianca Schulze: What’s your go-to snack during a writing session?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Gummy bears? Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Yum. A specific brand of gummy bears or any gummy bears?

Jolene Gutiérrez: No, Albany’s I think is the brand name. They’re delicious and soft.

Bianca Schulze: All right, drafting in silence or with music playing.

Jolene Gutiérrez: With nature sounds or like instrumental music, but no words.

Bianca Schulze: Mmm, I love that. All right, most unexpected place you’ve jotted down a story idea.

Jolene Gutiérrez: My car. That’s not that unexpected, but I did it a lot when my kids were in extracurricular activities.

Bianca Schulze: Ooh. I love it. All right. Well, Jolene, what would you say is what drives you and guides you in creating books for kids?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Well, I am a school librarian and I’ve been a school librarian for almost 30 years at this point. And so I’m around kids all the time, around kids literature. And I see the power of stories to change lives. I see the power of stories, honestly, to save lives. And I also see some of the gaps, stories that I wish were there or that my kids, my students wish were there and aren’t. So those kind of pieces all come together to me wanting to fill some of those gaps if appropriate and to try to put my stories into kids’ hands as well.

Bianca Schulze: I love that. Well, so as a school librarian, you absolutely must see firsthand how children connect with different books. So do any memorable moments come to mind when you’ve witnessed a student’s reaction to finding themselves represented in a story for the first time?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Yes. And this honestly comes more from me as an author presenting than me as a librarian. Our school, the school that I’m at is primarily white students. They are primarily neurodivergent students, but they are mostly white. So I do the best that I can to surround them with all kinds of diversity. But they see themselves represented everywhere in our world every day, you know, physically. And so I know the importance though of them connecting with neurodivergent characters, absolutely, because that is a big aha moment when they see others who learn like them in books. As an author though, when I’ve been sharing the book that my daughter and I co-wrote, the ofrenda that we built, and talking about tamales or reading some of the Spanish words within that book, I’ve had kids say, wait, I speak Spanish too, or we eat tamales too or things like that. And it’s so beautiful to see the joy in them and to see how honored they are to see their story represented within our story.

Bianca Schulze: I love that. Well, there’s the classic saying that to be a writer, you need to be a reader first. So was there a pivotal moment in which you considered yourself a reader?

Jolene Gutiérrez: My mom always read to me. Just, remember her all, we always had books around from the time I was a toddler. And I thought I could read because we would read some of my favorite stories over and over again. And I memorized them. And then when I went to kindergarten, I realized, I can’t read. And that was jarring. And there was a student in my kindergarten class who could already read and she would read story time to us sometimes and I was so jealous and I wanted to be just like Peggy. But it honestly took me a couple of years before I developed those skills. I always had the love of books and story, but it was like second grade. My teacher, Mr. Becker, who also inspired me to be a writer. That was the class where he challenged us with our spelling words. He challenged us with our reading. And I found a chapter book that I connected with there called A Horse Called Dragon that was told through a horse’s viewpoint. And then now it’s like a love, lifelong love of horses as well for me. But that was the year where I think so many things shifted for me.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. When you think about your reading experience as a kid, do you feel as though that affects the way that you write books for children? And maybe it’s more subconscious than conscious, but do you feel like your reading experiences impact your writing?

Jolene Gutiérrez: That’s such a great question. Yes, to a certain extent, I can definitely say yes on the surface level, and I probably need to think more deeply about that. But to me, that’s one of those questions that I may have an aha later. I know I didn’t know about my own sensory processing issues and things like that until my daughter was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder. But I knew as a child, that I struggled with things that it didn’t seem like others struggled with. And the first time I felt like I saw myself in a book was The Princess and the Pea, that story, because I thought, I must be a princess, because I would totally feel that pea down, 20 mattresses down or however far down. But that was, you like I saw this sensitivity reflected and then I, in my own diva way, thought that that meant I was a princess, but still it was that reflection. As a parent of someone with neurodivergence and then learning about my own sensory sensitivities, that’s when I wrote the book Too Much, An Overwhelming Day, because it was all about, wanted to normalize some of these sensitivities and create a book that my parents probably could have used to parent me better and that I definitely could have used to help support my daughter as well. So yes, seeing that changed things for me.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah. I feel like a lot of us that write for children, even when we’re not aware we’re doing it, it is where we’re writing for our younger selves, right? And a lot of people are writing the books that they didn’t see that they needed as kids. And I love that you are doing that. And I do just have to tangent and say that on the flip side of your Princess and the Pea, I felt very upset and disappointed that I couldn’t be a princess because I sleep like a log. Fall asleep. I’m at sleepovers. I was always the first to sleep. I would not feel a pee if it was under the mattress. I felt very sad about that.

Bianca Schulze: So let’s see. What is one thing you do in your day-to-day practices that you feel would be either the most surprising or the most relatable to listeners?

Jolene Gutiérrez: I don’t know how inspiring it is, I just full transparency, there are times that go like days go by when I haven’t written, you know, and I, I, when I first entered the writing world to try to write something for publication, I really, you know, I would hear advice like you need to make it a practice. Needs to be a daily practice. You really need to invest. I agree that you need to invest, but I tried the getting up early, you know, like four o’clock and trying to carve out writing time and that did not work. And I, you know, like I’ve tried as many ways as I can to make it a daily practice and it just isn’t for me. I do my best, but I also like life is too short. I have to give myself grace and just be proud of myself for what I have done and let go of the rest. And so if there’s anyone out there beating themselves up for not being able to write on a daily basis, let it go. Because that guilt is going to weigh you down and slow down your process, I think as well. So just be kind to yourself and cheer yourself on for every little bit that you can do, every 15 minutes you can carve out, even if it’s once a week, once a month, whenever. Yeah, be gentle with ourselves.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. Love that. No matter what aspect of life that we’re talking about, whether it’s writing or parenting or just existing in this world, right, there is so much advice available and so many tips available. But there just isn’t one path to like one specific way to do everything, right? And so it’s finding the path that brings you joy and resonates with you.

Jolene Gutiérrez: I love that. Yeah, and I love the brings you joy piece because that’s why we do this and we want it to keep bringing us joy.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. And when you’re writing from a place of joy, no matter what genre, right, if what you’re writing brings you joy, that’s going to come across to the reader too.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Absolutely.

Bianca Schulze: So I love that you have an honest perspective about letting go of guilt and acknowledging that we’re all doing our best. So how do you feel that this mindset influences your creative process and especially when you’re co-authoring books with your son Dakota and your daughter Shaian?

Jolene Gutiérrez: The letting go of guilt, think is just, I think that was a good model for them. And that’s what I would tell myself too, as a parent, when I started writing and they were younger, when I started writing and they were younger, there were times I’d feel guilty. We had an office and it had a glass door, but sometimes I would shut that door and say, mommy’s gonna work for a little bit. And they could see me and I could see them and I would still sometimes have guilt and I would tell myself, no, I’m doing something that I love and following my heart. I’m modeling persistence because they see that it’s taking me years at this practice. I’m modeling some good things for them. And then as we began to work together, I think just showing them to give themselves grace too. Like we’re gonna work on this manuscript and we’re gonna work on it together and we’re gonna try to create something that we wish was in the world when you guys were younger and it may not get published and that’s okay because we’re doing this for us. We’re doing this for the beauty of us connecting and working together and weaving a story. And I think that was really a powerful thing for all of us. I mean, it was such a beautiful gift to me to be able to work with them because it was during the pandemic that we were all in the same house and doing this, trying to just create something positive and something beautiful during a tough time. But you know, like I am so grateful the way everything turned out that those books actually ended up being published and are in the world.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, it’s so incredible. Feel like, and correct me if I’m wrong, but The Ofrenda That We Built is published by Chronicle Kids and Mamiachi and Me is published by Abrams, right? So did they both get picked up at the same time or did you have this fear that one was going to get picked up and not the other? And we all want, we will want like equality and equity for our children? Like, did you have a fear that one would get picked up and the other wouldn’t?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Yeah, so The Ofrenda That We Built, I worked with Shaian first on that. She was learning from home from college. She was home from college learning from home. And so I knew that my time with her was potentially even shorter than with Dakota because he was in high school at that time. And we had had family members who had passed recently and our ofrenda had become really important. And Shaian always had created the papel picado, like the cut paper, and she would paint things for our ofrenda, and she was always very involved in it. So I knew that that all kind of came about organically. We wrote that manuscript and Caitlin, my agent, started submitting it. And then the idea for Mamiachi came and I thought, well, you know, I want this to be a girl power story because of the name Mamiachi and an all-female mariachi group, but I would love for Dakota to write it with me because I haven’t written with him and he’s very involved in the arts and had wanted to join his Mariachi group his senior year of high school, which didn’t happen because of COVID. So that all felt really like a good fit. But Dakota’s a little more low key than Shaian is. And Shaian even said with the Mariachi idea, well, why aren’t you writing with me? It’s a girl band. And I’m like, I know honey, but we’ve written one together and I want to try to write with Dakota and give him a chance too. So I knew kind of from that interaction if only one sold, if anything sold, I was hoping that Ofrenda would sell because I knew Dakota could take it if it didn’t. And that’s the order they sold in. Ofrenda sold first and then eventually, and we wrote it first anyway, but then eventually Mamiachi sold. I think in 2021 because I was just looking that up last night. I mean, to me, it’s just miraculous that they both sold anyway and that they both sold as quickly as they did because I have books that I’ve worked on by myself that we’ve had on sub for years at this point that have not sold. Like just full transparency, it was a magical thing to have that happen. And I was so happy and feel so blessed to have that experience.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, so incredible. Well, since Mamiachi and Me is the latest book to come out, and it beautifully captures the essence of female mariachi performers. Let’s talk a little bit more about your inspiration for you and Dakota to tell this particular story together. I know you just kind of explained it a little bit, but let’s just go a little deeper on that if you can.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Absolutely, mean, mariachi music had always been something that I loved. My dad liked that music and so I’d hear it growing up. But my husband is from Mexico and so he was immersed in mariachi music and that, you know, like for funerals, for weddings, for birthdays, just always in the plaza on the weekends, you know, it’s, he grew up in Jalisco. He was born in Jalisco and visited there pretty frequently. And that’s the state that many people say mariachi music originated in. So it’s there. And so as the kids were growing, it was a type of music that we always had around. And then during COVID, my husband came upstairs during one of my teaching breaks and said, Hey, I just listened to this really amazing NPR interview with an all female mariachi band. And my brain, all-female Mamiachi band. And so I said to him, wait, did you just say Mamiachi? Because yeah, I was like, what is he trying to say? And is this offensive? Is he joking? What is happening? And he said, no, I said Mariachi. And I’m like, so I misheard you, but that’s a really cool word. And then my brain just had already started, like, well, what if there is spinning on this all-female Mariachi story? What about a little girl who calls her mom, Mamiachi, and is raised in this tradition, and it’s her first time to perform with her mommy and her madrinas, kind of like godmothers, in their mariachi group. And so I researched a little bit, and the title didn’t exist anywhere, because nobody else’s brain hears things like mine does, apparently. And that’s fine. But then I approached Dakota and said, what do you think? And he was all for it. And the difference between the two stories, the ofrenda that we built that I wrote with Shaian is based on the house that Jack built format. So it has rhythm and rhyme and Shaian is very musical as well. And she was the perfect person to write that with because she could help me along with that because rhyme is so hard for me. And Mamiachi is very lyrical. It’s not rhyming, thank goodness. But it was so beautiful to set with Dakota and try to pinpoint the perfect words and things like that. Was just each experience kind of was different, just like each child is different. And I cherish that as well.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, since Mamiachi and Me and The Ofrenda, I’m trying to say it like you, Jillian, you know how much I love the way you like say your Spanish words and I, my Australian accent just butches it, but the ofrenda that we built both celebrate family, culture and community. So what’s your thought process between balancing the sharing of cultural elements while keeping the plot of the story for young readers engaging as well?

Jolene Gutiérrez: I think in the stories, and I hope we’ve done this within our books, in the stories that I love sharing with my students, the cultural piece is just a part of it, just like the characters’ clothes, or just, you know, it just is who they are. It’s not shoved in your face. It’s there. It’s there for you to appreciate, and hopefully it’s there in a way that someone who hasn’t experienced an ofrenda or Dia de Muertos or a mariachi group, hopefully it’s there in a way that someone who has never heard of that or experienced that can also appreciate and experience and see it. But so that the little kids who hear about the males or hear about mariachi music can say, we play mariachi music or we eat the males at our house and get really excited. That’s what my hope is, that it appeals to everyone and that it’s a universal story of joy and community that everyone can connect with.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, beautiful. Well, there’s a gorgeous spread in which the main character Rosa is singing and soaring through melody. So do you want to walk us through how that moment came to life in the writing process?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Can I open to that page because I have the mark here and I am so like visual. Yeah, the soaring through the melody and she’s painting a picture with her hands. When you watch, I love watching mariachi groups, the emotion and I am not fluent in Spanish. I speak un poquitito but like you don’t have to speak the language to feel the emotion and that’s what I’m getting emotional thinking about it. You know can listen to some of the songs and you can feel this is a joyful song. You can like I will cry over songs that I don’t even understand the full meaning of sometimes because of the emotion in the singer’s voices, the richness. And so her in this scene it’s really about her taking ownership. Had some stage fright prior to this. She was worried, am I going to be enough? Basically, can I perform with these amazing women who have been doing this? And here she’s taking ownership of that moment and she is channeling the emotion and her heritage and her joy. And I just, it makes me so happy because I think anyone who’s ever performed probably has had a moment like this where you feel like you’re connected to something bigger than just you.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, such a beautiful explanation. All right, you have to tell me how it felt when you saw her. Again, me if I pronounce this in her name incorrect. Correct me if I pronounce this name incorrectly. Morel Ortigas art. So tell me how you felt when you saw her art.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Her art is magical. She’s an award-winning illustrator. And if you’ve seen any of her other artwork, you can see why. And if you haven’t, you can look at Mamayachi and me and see why. I mean, just, it’s luminous, it’s joyful, it’s girl power. I mean, I just look at that cover and this is, I think anyone can connect to this story, but I know there are a lot of girls who are drawn right to those pinks and purples because they’ve told me that. I know I’m generalizing and I apologize. Pink is not my favorite color, but I love the colors here. And yeah, just the way that she has shown the musicality and the power of these women and the diversity. I’m gonna turn to the back matter where this is a different group, mariachi group, but it’s showing diversity in body shapes and heights and hair color and skin color and ability and age. Mean, she just she’s done such a beautiful job of representing characters in such a lovely way. So powerful. It’s just breathtaking.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, you described the pinks and the purples, but I think also for me, starting from that book cover is that the orange, like it’s the combination of the orange and the purple and the pink. Like it’s such a powerful use of color combination.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Agreed. Honestly, the orange is what I connect with most. And when I’m signing, a lot of times I’m signing my name in orange because I love that thread of color. But I had to mention the pink and purple because so many little girls have already told me how much they love that. So I’m like, okay, I want to honor them too.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I love it. Well, you already told me a little bit about what you hope readers take away from Mamiachi and me. So I want to jump to how does it feel to have written and published a picture book with each of your kids? And what’s different about your creative process when working with them versus when you’re working solo?

Jolene Gutiérrez: It’s making me emotional because it’s just, it truly is a dream come true to have published something with each of them. These are the types of books that I looked for when I was pregnant with my daughter. And I found some, but not enough. And so to be able to have worked with each of them to create something that maybe someday their kids, if they ever have children, will hold and that certainly, children today, you know, now are holding and connecting with is just the most beautiful full circle moment. Absolutely. And I’m sorry, remind me of the second part of the question. I got too emotional.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, emotions are great. I bring the emotions. So like, what’s different about your creative process when you’re working with them versus when you’re working just on a manuscript by yourself?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Thank you, yes. I love co-authoring and I have a few other unpublished, as of yet, manuscripts that are co-authored. I do a lot of collaborative teaching, so I think it’s just something that comes natural to me. I love bouncing ideas off of others and things like that. So that piece is beautiful and being able to do it with my own kids was so special, but it is. When I’m by myself, obviously I have full creative reign over what’s gonna happen when it’s just me writing, but I don’t necessarily have someone in the moment to bounce ideas off of. I have critique partners and I have family members that I can run things by, but I am kind of on my own and my own raft. And then there’s just not that symbiotic relationship. Like something entirely different comes when you add another mind. Obviously not just your story anymore. And I love the beautiful places you can go when that happens.

Bianca Schulze: When do you decide, like if you have an idea, when do you decide that it’s something that you need to work on solo or that you want to partner with someone?

Jolene Gutiérrez: That’s a great idea, I mean a great question too. So. I’m, with the other projects where I am working with co-authors, they started as non-fiction pieces where I was doing research, and then I uncovered someone’s story and thought, this is so powerful, this should be a book. And so then I would reach out to those people and say, would you want to work together in telling this story? The examples I’m thinking of, and I’m sorry I’m being very vague, but they’re all biographies, and so it’s all people that I’ve been doing other non-fiction research or things like that, and then I think, why is there not a book about this? Why is this story not out there? And it’s something that, you know, especially when it’s a biography, I think if the person is still living, it is very helpful to loop them in and gain their perspective. And one of the projects is a middle grade story that is so much more powerful. I mean, just having my co-author’s voice has enriched that to such a level, something that I never could have done without her being on board.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I love that. It’s like tapping into this extra bucket of knowledge and wealth that’s closer to the source. So you have the desire and the passion, and then you combine that with the knowledge and the wealth of knowledge. I love that. So as both a teacher librarian and an author, what advice would you give to parents and educators about nurturing young readers’ confidence in sharing their own stories?

Jolene Gutiérrez: I mean, I feel like kids want to write. Have a little self-published area in our library here and kids bring me books and I put on a barcode and we put on a date do slip so that their books can circulate. And I think just nurturing them in that way. Allowing them to be creative. That’s what my second grade teacher, Mr. Becker, that’s the way he encouraged our writing. If you write something, I will publish it for you, which meant he typed it up on the typewriter or his wife typed it up on the typewriter. And being able to feel that success and that joy that someone other than you believes in your work, I think is so powerful. So allowing kids to find that success and really encouraging it and not nitpicking like this isn’t spelled correctly or this doesn’t look like your best work but just allowing them to flow like they’ll learn about rough drafts and things like that later but just letting them feel that success. Dakota my son and the co-author of Mamiachi when he was little he had register paper just a long of register paper that my mom had given him and he wrote his novel on that and just kept writing and kept writing. So anything that brings joy and allows them to create either in words or pictures or however they’d like verbally, however they’d like to tell their story, encourage that. Cheer them on and let them find success.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Now, I know that you’ve been doing various school visits, and I’ve done school visits myself. And I think we can both agree that when an author visits a school, that the children get so energized and inspired and just engaged in both the reading and the writing portions. But I’ve also noticed that a lot of schools don’t actively seek out author visits. And I know that part of that is a budgeting issue. With that part aside, when a school has access or could tap into having school visits, can we just talk a little bit about the value that you see when authors come and visit schools, both from your teacher librarian perspective and also as an author who visits other schools?

Jolene Gutiérrez: Yeah, absolutely. It is, it’s magical. I know this because I feel this way when we host authors here at my school. But as an author visiting schools, I had to kind of wrap my head around the fact that authors are like celebrities for these kids. This is like bringing, you know, a famous movie star onto campus for the day. They are viewing authors with stars in their eyes, like they are in awe of us and enamored. And then when we talk about our craft and kind of help them, usually author visits help students understand that this wasn’t easy to publish this book and that, you know, all of the different times we’ve had to revise and the years that we’ve had to struggle or things like that to normalize it for them and help them understand there’s nothing really special about us other than the fact that we persisted and we worked hard. And so then kids see that they could be us. And that’s the beauty. Sorry, it’s making me emotional because as a child, we didn’t have author visits at my school. And just a couple of months ago, I visited the school that I attended when I was a child and got to do an author visit there and got to tell them like, I was here. I was in this gym and I did this. You can do this. And it opens doors for kids. And especially if we talk about our school struggles, you know, that I struggled to read and I struggled to connect to things. And it took me 10 years to get a book published. That allows kids to see there’s nothing magical about me. I just worked hard. I had a dream. And so that’s the message I try to leave kids with as an author and as a teacher, I try to tell our kids that here, you know, it’s if you have a dream, it doesn’t have to be writing a book, but whatever dream it is, if you persist and work and grow your skills and just keep trying, you will achieve it. So I think that is the magic. It’s such a special thing. And I encourage every teacher to loop in an author somehow. There’s World Read Aloud Day. There are YouTube videos. There are different Zoom meetings if you can’t afford to physically bring an author and I know we talked about the budget piece but there are ways to do this and allow kids to hear authors voices.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Well, Jolene, if listeners were to take away just one important thing from our conversation today, what would you want that to be?

Jolene Gutiérrez: That’s a tough question. I just, think maybe the power, the power that we as adults have in connecting kids to books and helping kids believe in themselves, power of story, I think.

Bianca Schulze: Mm, I love that. Well, with that inspiring message, Jolene, thank you for sharing your journey, your creative process, and most importantly, your vision of a world where every child can see themselves in the stories they read. Your books are perfect additions to both home and classroom libraries because they celebrate family, culture, and the power of sharing our unique voices. So thank you for so beautifully reminding us today that our experiences, our voices, and our stories matter. And I appreciate you so much.

Jolene Gutiérrez: Thank you so much, Bianca. I appreciate you too. I’m so grateful for our time.

About the Book

Publisher’s Book Summary: Mamiachi & Me is a lyrical and empowering picture book written by Jolene and Dakota Gutiérrez and illustrated by Mirelle Ortega, winner of a Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor, about what it means to be a mariachi in an all‑female band.

Today’s the day! Rosa will take the stage next to her mami and play along with her popular mariachi band. But as they fasten the shiny botonaduras and tie the moños on their charra suits, Rosa begins to worry. What if the audience doesn’t like her? Is she ready to perform?

With her mamiachi and madrinas by her side, Rosa’s stage fright is soothed away by the sound of trumpets, guitars, and violins. Centering on the power of sisterhood, community, and music, the warm and lively text by mother-and-son writing duo Jolene and Dakota Gutiérrez—joined by Mirelle Ortega’s beautiful illustrations—provides a unique perspective to the male-dominated world of mariachi.

Back matter includes additional context on the history of the beloved Mexican tradition and the rise of all-female mariachi groups, as well as a glossary, a bibliography, further reading, and a fun, detailed look at a mariachi’s signature charro suit!

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Show Notes

Jolene Gutiérrez and Dakota Gutiérrez see the magic in music, from singing in a choir to enjoying mariachi performances in Mexican plazas. Dakota’s father’s family is from Jalostotitlán (a town in Jalisco, Mexico), so mariachi music has a very special place in Jolene and Dakota’s lives. When a year of virtual learning meant Dakota couldn’t join his high school’s mariachi band, the pair teamed up to write Mamiachi and Me as their way of honoring the strength and beauty of women performing in what historically has been a male-dominated art form.

Jolene is an award-winning teacher-librarian and author of many books for young readers, including Too Much! She lives in Denver, Colorado, and is an active member of SCBWI and the Author’s Guild, part of the KidLitCollective group, and a co-creator of #KidlitZombieWeek and Picture Book Gold.

Dakota is a college student at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, with a passion for music and writing. He is majoring in civil engineering and is active in the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and intramural sports.

For more information, visit ⁠https://www.jolenegutierrez.com/⁠

Keywords: children’s literature, storytelling, cultural representation, writing process, family, school visits, young readers, author interviews, creativity, inspiration