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| Photo by Rogene Reid |
Zalika Reid-Benta is the author of the new children's picture book The Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas. Her other books include the story collection Frying Plantain. She lives in Toronto.
Q: What inspired you to write The Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas?
A: Twelve Days came to me the way a lot of my stories come to me. It seems to be my process now where I try to write something else and then in the middle of that, like literally mid-sentence, I get an epiphany and I stop what I'm doing and start writing what's going to be the actual story.
So, I had been trying to write my first picture book for a while and nothing I was outputting was quite working, and I kept trying to edit and reframe what I had written and then at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday in March three years ago, I was on my couch rearranging the words of my first idea and it just clicked: what if I did The Twelve Days of Christmas but with Jamaican food?
I got really excited about that idea and I opened a new document and wrote it all out in about an hour -- it's the fastest I've ever written anything -- and then I sent it off to my agent who emailed back 15 minutes later like, Yes! This is the idea!
Q: What do you think Mariyah Rahman’s illustrations add to the book?
A: Definitely a sense of warmth and family and that cozy Christmas feeling.
I think that this book could go many different ways because if you look up some picture books for The Twelve Days of Christmas there's a focus on the gifts the true love gave and it can be very wondrous and fantastical and Mariyah kept the whimsical, wondrous feeling but grounded it in the relationships between the family members.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: Hopefully a strong sense of holiday spirit that also makes them hungry!
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book calls it a “loving ode to cultural traditions, family, holidays, and food that hits the spot.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think that's a fantastic description. I'm very happy with it because all of my work explores human nature or universal themes and experiences through the specific lens of Jamaican Canadian characters or Jamaican culture as experienced in the diaspora, and I think Kirkus describing Twelve Days as an ode to all of those things really showcases that.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I just finished my second adult novel, The Seacliff Hotel, which will be published in February of next year.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Pronounced: Plan-tin not Plant-ain (winky face).
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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