{"id":242837,"date":"2026-03-30T07:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=242837"},"modified":"2026-04-01T14:28:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:28:46","slug":"childrens-book-author-soon-to-be-grad-sees-value-in-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/03\/childrens-book-author-soon-to-be-grad-sees-value-in-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Children\u2019s Book Author, Soon-To-Be Grad Sees Value in Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like the main character of a good book, Luisana Duarte Armend\u00e1riz<\/a> has a deep backstory, each turn casually worked into conversation when, and only when, it becomes pertinent to drop mention of things like dean of discipline at a boarding school.<\/p>\n

\"CountdownShe doesn\u2019t open with graphic designer or multimedia journalist and won\u2019t even talk about the time she held in her hand an acceptance letter to medical school. Sure, her stint as a high school art teacher might come up, along with that year-long missionary trip to the Philippines.<\/p>\n

But unless she\u2019s prodded, the doctoral candidate who\u2019s set to graduate in May, only mentions her past in relation to the present and to the future, as she reconciles the possibility, even opportunity, of yet another reinvention after defending her research this summer.<\/p>\n

\"The
“Julieta and The Cryptic Rose” will be released in September. (Contributed art)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Duarte Armend\u00e1riz \u201926 Ph.D. takes to heart her grandfather\u2019s wisdom doled out whenever she and her 21 cousins \u2013 that\u2019s just on her mother\u2019s side – switched majors or pivoted professions: Take the lessons gained from each experience and transfer them to the next, never were they useless.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why this semester as the graduate assistant for the UConn English<\/a> department\u2019s Creative Writing Program<\/a> she delighted in using her graphic design skills to help create posters for Poetic Journeys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s why her dissertation looking at the intersection of children\u2019s literature and translation studies is a natural fit.<\/p>\n

Having grown up in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Chihuahua, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, Duarte Armend\u00e1riz straddled the line between languages, cultures, and national borders, just as the young characters in her picture books and young adult novels stride their own stories.<\/p>\n

Author, translator, and dog mom, that\u2019s what she is today, the order of which is situationally dependent.<\/p>\n

Writing \u2013 Not Exclusive to Geniuses<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u201cI cannot write creatively in Spanish, and that goes back to growing up on the border and having more access to entertainment in English. My creative language is in English,\u201d Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says. \u201cI have compartments for different activities in the language that I do them in \u2013 like my love language is in English, but my cutesy language is in Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she watched a colleague\u2019s young child last spring, she admits needing a few days to find a natural play language to communicate with the 6-year-old. With her nieces and nephews, play happens in Spanish not English, the same as her childhood, and she had to adjust.<\/p>\n

Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says her own childhood was filled with books, her mother a frequent visitor of the library in El Paso with daughter in tow, her grandfather forever inquiring what book she had a nose in, her extended family as subjects of news reports in a paper she started at 8 years old.<\/p>\n

Her \u201cfirst crush,\u201d she says, was the detective Sherlock Holmes, it\u2019s why she learned to play the violin.<\/p>\n

Yet, she says she didn\u2019t recognize writing as a potential career until she was nearly done with college. It was a profession for only geniuses she thought, until taking a creative writing class that focused on children\u2019s literature.<\/p>\n

One might say she had an ah-ha moment, so when applying for master\u2019s programs she looked for one that would give her opportunity to bring to life the character that had been living in her head for some time.<\/p>\n

Simmons University in Boston paired her with an editor from Lee and Low Books to \u2013 in a single semester \u2013 write the first draft of \u201cJulieta and The Diamond Enigma.\u201d<\/a> Its sequel, \u201cJulieta and The Cryptic Rose,\u201d<\/a> will be released Sept. 15.<\/p>\n

Both chapter books, they tell the story of young Julieta, \u201cwho\u2019s sort of a combination of Amelia Bedelia, Ramona Quimby, and Flavia de Luce,\u201d she says, as the girl solves mysteries that involve her art handler father and art restorer mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know I was writing a mystery until my editor told me to put in more red herrings,\u201d Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says. \u201cI had this idea that it was just going to be an adventure story of a girl who would travel to a lot of places. That was the original nugget of the story, and it was more like a fantasy adjacent story in my head. But then it started evolving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two deep revisions and four years later, \u201cThe Diamond Enigma\u201d was published in June 2020. \u201cThe Cryptic Rose\u201d has taken six years to produce, but in between a couple of pictures books have been in development, although not yet sold, and a Ph.D. program has been in progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve definitely incorporated stories from my own life and things that have happened to me,\u201d Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says, giving as an example, \u201cMy first name is a hard one, people have always mispronounced it, so I knew that English readers would see \u2018Julieta\u2019 as \u2018Juliette.\u2019 In the first pages of the first book, she says that her name sounds like the hooting of an owl. That was a piece of my life that I was able to incorporate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
Luisana Duarte Armendariz ’26 Ph.D. flips through correspondence between acclaimed children’s literature authors Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak from the UConn Archives and Special Collections in the Dodd Center for Human Rights on Tuesday, March 17, 2026.(Sydney Herdle\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Making a Story Accessible<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Duarte Armend\u00e1riz once interned at the Massachusetts-based Charlesbridge Publishing, a stint during which she says she read through the \u201cslush pile,\u201d or unsolicited submissions that were sent to the publisher without an agent as a go-between.<\/p>\n

A mound capped with too many my-grandkids-and-me stories and sing-song rhymes that didn\u2019t quite hit the mark, she noted what worked and what didn\u2019t – because most submissions don\u2019t get a hardcover, let alone a soft one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose stories, it\u2019s not that they didn\u2019t have value because they\u2019re the experience of someone, but there\u2019s still something in them that might not appeal to everyone,\u201d Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says. \u201cThe key is trying to make a story accessible and find a new angle that hasn\u2019t been done before, which is a hard thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost equally as hard for an author is letting go of their story, the characters and the world they invested time into building.<\/p>\n

Upon completion of a story, Duarte Armend\u00e1riz explains, the next person to see it outside of the editors is the illustrator, a person deliberately kept out of the process until that point, a stranger to the author to allow for them to conceive the visual elements from the text the author provided.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s their interpretation of the world that I created,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd even though it might be scary for writers, I really appreciate it because, for example, the cover illustrator of ‘Julieta,’ Olivia Aserr, put a bandage on her knee. That says so much about who she is and her personality. I would never have thought about adding it if I had drawn Julieta.\u201d<\/p>\n

That one little detail made an impression, she notes, and could have changed the tone, meaning, and clarity of the story \u2013 something she, as a translator of children\u2019s literature, also keeps foremost in mind with the copy before her.<\/p>\n

Translations Give Ideas for Ideas<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Translating text from Spanish to English, or any language into any language, is not a word-for-word practice. Duarte Armend\u00e1riz describes it as \u201csense for sense. You want to give the idea for the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The
“Julieta and The Diamond Enigma” was published in 2020. Luisana Duarte Armend\u00e1riz \u201926 Ph.D. also translated it into Spanish. (Contributed art)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A translator must answer many questions as they move through the process including whether to maintain the cultural references of a story or synthesize the ideas into something a foreign audience would understand. After all, an English-speaking audience may not understand the cultural nuances of a story originally written in Swedish for Swedes, she says as an example.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen translating children\u2019s literature, you also have to think about changes in time, because what was allowed 20 years ago might not be as palatable today,\u201d Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says. \u201cI created a ruckus in one of my translation classes, because in the beginning of a book I\u2019m trying to translate, the mom is smoking a cigarette inside the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not crucial to the story, and I can change it to something else that will keep the essence of what the cigarette was doing, so it will be a little easier on contemporary American audiences,\u201d she continues. \u201cMy professor was aghast, \u2018How could you take away the cigarette?\u2019 But I\u2019m thinking about this as an industry. Who are the gatekeepers? The editors, the parents? Translation can be sense for sense, but you can also keep it foreign or make it domestic, depending on what the goal is.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also needs to know who the intended reader is because, she notes, Mexican Spanish is different than Castilian Spanish and Cuban Spanish and even Mexican American Spanish in the U.S. Indeed, \u201cpelota,\u201d \u201cbola,\u201d and \u201cbal\u00f3n\u201d all mean \u201cball\u201d in Spanish, just not to everyone who speaks Spanish.<\/p>\n

Only a small percentage of foreign texts are translated into English for U.S. audiences each year, whereas other countries are more inclined to adapt English texts to their tongue, Duarte Armend\u00e1riz explains. That\u2019s not surprising, as translations are one way for a country without a literary culture to build one or enhance what\u2019s produced domestically.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a way to get to know the world and have access to other experiences that otherwise you wouldn\u2019t have,\u201d she says of translated works, comparing them to Greek, Roman, or Asian art on display in a museum. \u201cBooks are just another representation of that art. It\u2019s another way of understanding the people around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children Devour Every Word<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Duarte Armend\u00e1riz has been learning origami lately and passes along a fluorescent pink frog. Her practice of the Japanese art of paper folding is in preparation for school visits this fall when \u201cThe Cryptic Rose\u201d debuts.<\/p>\n

Just how the frog fits in though, is about as cryptic as the meaning of the rose.<\/p>\n

Usually, Duarte Armend\u00e1riz visits fourth and fifth grade classrooms, students who\u2019ve built up to chapter books and have read all about Julieta. One Massachusetts school has designed a curriculum around the book.<\/p>\n

Teachers there take the upper elementary school students to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where they hunt for treasures, in search of their favorite piece. Later, back in the classroom, Duarte Armend\u00e1riz visits to help them sort through what they found and gives them a writing prompt: How would they smuggle that piece out of the museum?<\/p>\n

Create a distraction. Tuck it in an updo. Dip it in \u2026 oh, Duarte Armend\u00e1riz says she might incorporate that one into a future book. It\u2019s pretty clever.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s reinvigorating to go into classrooms and see that people actually read what I wrote because it\u2019s a few years from when I sat down to write until it\u2019s in the hands of the audience,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd children pay attention to all the details. I have to reread very quickly before I go into a classroom, so I\u2019m not saying, \u2018I wrote that? I don\u2019t remember writing that. It was just a plot point. I have no idea.\u2019 They want a reason for everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s much the same as what she as a young girl would have expected from writer and illustrator Leo Lionni, a childhood favorite, or from the Hardy Boys, maybe her second and third girl crushes.<\/p>\n

\u201cLetting yourself be silly is something that I always appreciated and still appreciate in children\u2019s books,\u201d she says. \u201cWith Julieta, I try to imbue that in her. I laugh sometimes when I\u2019m writing because I think, \u2018I would do that\u2019 or \u2018I wouldn\u2019t do that, but I would want to do that,\u2019 so I live vicariously through her. I really allow myself to play through writing, and that\u2019s something that\u2019s a through-line even in my own reading.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having grown up in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Chihuahua, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, Luisana Duarte Armend\u00e1riz \u201926 Ph.D. straddled the line between languages, cultures, and national borders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":243032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,2226,2229,2459,156,2712,1875,2235,2225,2306],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-242837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-clas","category-commencement","category-graduate-students","category-profile","category-student-success","category-grad-school","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 05:36:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242837"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243240,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242837\/revisions\/243240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/243032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242837"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=242837"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=242837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}