Maya Soetoro-Ng, an educator with a famous brother, reached back to her childhood to write her first book, Ladder to the Moon. But the new book has nothing to do with brother Barack Obama or with politics.
It’s a modern folktale inspired by Soetoro-Ng’s mother and her desire to share some of her late mother’s spirit and understanding with her own daughters.
In the story, young Suhaila, curious about her grandmother, awakens one night to find her grandmother waiting outside her bedroom window, her foot on the lowest rung of a ladder that reaches all the way to the moon. Together, they travel to the moon where they hear the sorrows of children caught in enormous waves and trapped in quaking towers. Together, they soothe them with kindness and moon dew, creating a glow around the moon that comforts all those below.
We sat down with Soetoro-Ng when she was in Seattle and talked about the book, her inspiration and her family.
SC: Could you tell me a little bit more about how you came to write a children’s book?
Soetoro-Ng: There are many different forces that seemed to collaborate to bring this book into being. One was that my mother really, really wanted grandchildren, and when I was pregnant with my daughter I went out to my mother’s storage locker and I found there two boxes labeled “for Maya’s children.” She had been gone for a decade very nearly when I was pregnant, so it was interesting that I happened upon them at that moment. Inside them were my childhood books and my childhood toys, and it was almost as though she was bestowing a gift upon my daughter, Suhaila. I felt so acutely her absence, and I wished so much that she could be there to get to know them and nourish them and teach them. When [my daughter] was born, I actually gave my daughter the name Suhaila in honor of her, because one of the things she loved to do was to show me the moon in the middle of the night. Often when I was sleeping, she would wake me to look at a particularly beautiful moon, and I would complain bitterly about it then; but, of course, I miss it now. So I named my daughter Suhaila, which in Sanskrit means, “glow around the moon.”
SC: Did you find writing the book harder or easier than you expected it to be?
Soetoro-Ng: It’s been about three years in the making, so it’s a fairly long process. I actually was campaigning for my brother, and it sounds strange, but it’s relevant, because when he decided to run for president and risk rejection at that level, I thought to myself, if he can do that, I can risk the rejection of trying to get a book born. I had been writing for years and I had wanted to be a children’s book author, but I just never was brave enough … I actually wrote the book in his basement where I was staying for a few months while on the campaign trail.
SC: One of the things that I was struck by in the book is there’s huge human tragedy, natural disasters, suggestive of the tsunami and 9/11.
Soetoro-Ng: My thought about 9/11 was that there was a tremendous opportunity to begin empathizing and connecting with one another, and so I wanted to create a story that would imagine that outcome rather than what actually transpired … And I wanted us to think about the fact that children are not exempt from the events of the world. They experience them as do we all, and I think if we’re going to have a future that is better than our present, we need to prepare our children to be not only problem solvers but to recognize that our lives are intertwined.
SC: I find myself with kind of warring instincts. I have a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old, and I do want to teach them the things you’re talking about. But I’m also not sure if I want to talk to them about 9/11 or the tsunami or the holocaust.
Soetoro-Ng: I do think this is a book to share, first of all – for parents to read with their kids – and the parents can decide how much they want to share … The reason I wasn’t specific is because I want the book to last and to be relevant well beyond the events that sort of shape our understanding. So the fact that I’m nonspecific means that it can apply just to any need for solace and sanctuary and safety and sweetness – you don’t have to give the specifics of any of that.
SC: So, being the sister of the president of the United State, do you think it’s going to help you or hurt you to get your own story out? I mean, I can’t not ask you about it, right? And I think that’s going to be true wherever you go.
Soetoro-Ng: I think it’s a mix. I think that there’s a danger of people thinking that perhaps the book doesn’t have merit on its own. Certainly sometimes it makes people curious or interested where they might not be otherwise … For me, personally, I understand that it’s a curiosity. I want, in future endeavors, for that to not make an impact … I really want to make sure that I’m not perceived as Barack Obama’s sister, but I want to be seen as a new writer and a voice that is valuable independently … And I do think that it’s a timely book insofar as I think that this is an important time to help move the dialogue of the importance of kindness and giving to one another. I think that’s no small thing, kindness; I think it’s really important.
Ladder to the Moon, by Maya Soetoro-Ng, illustrated by Yuyi Morales, (Candlewick Press, $16.99) is due out in mid-April.
