Magaly Morales is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Tajín and the Twelve Thunders: A Pre-Colombian Myth. She has illustrated several picture books, including What Can You Do with a Paleta?. She lives in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
Q: What inspired you to create your new book, and how similar is it to the original myth?
A: I grew up in Veracruz, the Mexican state where the ancient city of El Tajín still stands, so this myth was part of the cultural landscape that surrounded me from childhood.
But what kept bringing me back to the story over the years was Tajín himself. I felt a connection to his intense, mischievous, impulsive energy, and long before I imagined writing the book, I wanted to bring his story to life through my illustrations.
There isn’t really one definitive version of the myth. Like many stories passed down through oral tradition, it has changed across communities and storytellers. My book was especially influenced by a version documented in 1954 by Mexican ethnologist and anthropologist Roberto Williams García.
I wanted to preserve the essence of the original myth—Tajín’s personality, the Twelve Thunders, his fascination with their powers, the chaos he creates, and his connection to storms—while shaping the narrative for a contemporary picture book. I wasn’t interested in changing who Tajín is. For me, his wild energy is the heart of the story.
Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations first--or both simultaneously?
A: For me, neither words nor illustrations really come first. What comes first is a feeling.
I begin with what is moving me—what I am experiencing, what I want to express, and why. Then the words begin to arrive, and almost immediately the images come with them. As the language takes shape, my imagination starts creating scenes almost like a vivid movie playing inside my head.
The words and images then begin to influence each other. Sometimes the words lead me to an image, and sometimes an image reveals something the words have not yet said. So although I may begin writing first, the two processes quickly become inseparable.
Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: Yes. Knowing the story since childhood was very different from understanding the world from which it emerged. I wanted to go beyond the plot and learn about its origins, symbolism, and cultural context.
My research led me to the Museum of Anthropology of Xalapa, to the archaeological site of El Tajín itself, and to the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, and other researchers who have studied the ancient cultures of the Gulf Coast.
One thing that surprised me was discovering that the history of El Tajín and its relationship to the Totonac people is much more complex than I had understood growing up.
But perhaps what surprised and fascinated me even more was the extraordinary diversity of ways in which ancient peoples expressed their understanding of the world. Their architecture, sculpture, myths, and symbols reveal profound ways of thinking about nature, time, the universe, and human existence.
Thousands of years later, we can still encounter those ideas through what they left behind. There is deep knowledge and wisdom there, and I find it remarkable that these ancient voices can still speak to us today.
Q: What do you hope kids (and adults) take away from the story?
A: I hope readers come away with the idea that growth doesn’t necessarily mean becoming someone different.
Tajín is intense, impulsive, mischievous, and overflowing with energy. Those qualities get him into enormous trouble, but I never wanted the solution to be that he should stop being Tajín. That energy is part of him. What he can learn is how to understand it, direct it, and discover what it can become.
I think this is true for all of us. Sometimes a quality that creates difficulty in one context can become a strength in another. Intensity can become passion. Restlessness can become curiosity. Impulsiveness can contain courage and spontaneity.
The challenge is not always to eliminate what is difficult about ourselves, but to understand it well enough to find where it belongs and what we can do with it.
I would love for children—and adults—to recognize that possibility in Tajín: that growing does not have to mean erasing parts of ourselves. Sometimes it means learning how to use what was already there.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I recently finished illustrating Night of the Three Kings, written by Carmen Tafolla, which will be released later this year. It was especially meaningful to work with Carmen again, since my first published picture book, What Can You Do with a Paleta?, was also written by her.
At the same time, I am developing new stories of my own and exploring more deeply the relationship between writing and illustration. After so many years of telling stories primarily through images, Tajín and the Twelve Thunders opened a new door for me as an author, and I am very interested in seeing where that leads.
I am also working on a graphic memoir, which is allowing me to explore a very different kind of storytelling—more personal, introspective, and intended for an older audience. I am especially interested right now in what happens when words and images don’t simply illustrate one another, but each carries a different part of the story.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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