Newbery Medalist Donna Barba Higuera retells the Aztec myth of creation, casting Xolotl, the dog-headed god of lighting, death, and misfortune, as the hero in her middle grade work Xolo, illustrated by Mariana Ruiz Johnson. When all life on Earth perishes and the immortal gods must throw themselves into a volcano to make the planet spin anew, Xolo’s boastful feathered serpent god twin brother, Quetzalcoatl, is the first to leap. But timid Xolo cannot summon the courage to follow, and is subsequently banished to the Underworld, ruled by the god Mictlantecuhtli, who hoards the bones needed to reanimate humankind. Yearning for the revival of his beloved mortals, Xolo approaches Quetzalcoatl with a plan: steal the bones and return them to the surface. In a conversation with PW, Higuera reflected on how her personal experiences, love of mythology, and dedication to her late dog influenced the novel’s creation.
What led you to reimagine the origin of humankind in Xolo?
My daughter was always a rockhound and so one summer about six years ago we decided to take her rockhounding. We went to the Royal Peacock Opal Mine in Denio, Nev., which is in the middle of nowhere. We rented this small trailer, and we packed up—my husband and I, our daughter, and our dog, Filson, who was kind of a Labrador retriever mix—and we went to the desert. We have our little hats and our chisels and we’re digging on the side of this mountain and there was no one there besides the family who owned the property. At some point, a guy drove up and goes, “Hey, there’s a lightning storm coming in. You need to get out of here and go hunker down.” We didn’t see anything at the time, but we were like, “Oh, okay,” and so we got back to our site and started a campfire. Then we started hearing the thunder and seeing the lightning, so we went inside the trailer, and we said, “How are we going to pass the time? Oh, let’s just take a nap.”
Filson was a little bit nervous, so I put him at the base of my feet. Every time there was a rumble of thunder, it would jar me awake a little bit, and I would look down, and he was slowly making his way closer, so by the time we woke up, he was right in my neck. In that moment, I thought about how he made me feel safer, too, and so we kind of helped each other. It made me think of Xolotl, who is the god of lightning and thunder and has the head of a dog.
When I got home, I started writing a picture book about this experience. In it, I juxtaposed Xolo with this scared, nervous dog. The story began as just a trip to the desert, but my love of folklore took it to a different place until it ballooned and became a totally different story and book.
What did you hope to convey by telling this story from Xolo’s perspective?
I couldn’t help but insert Filson’s personality into Xolo. We only have these bits and pieces of the mythology to work from. He refused to jump into the volcano, and I said, “Well, why?” There’s no explanation in the myth. Since we don’t know much about him, I wanted to create this alternate story for him. I started thinking of my dog’s personality and how complicated human emotions and relationships are and turned Xolo into this character as Filson, but Filson if he was struggling with these very human feelings of doubt and fear, things that we don’t normally attribute to the gods.
Xolo was known as this monstrosity, as this harbinger of chaos, and I thought, “Why did he get that title? How was he treated by the other gods?” Of course, we don’t actually know, so this is all just my imagining, but I wondered if he had a complicated relationship with his brother, Quetzalcoatl. And I thought about my life and the things that have happened, the grief that I’ve had, the loss I’ve endured, the family dynamics I’ve experienced, and wove those into this character’s story. I think, as a writer, you can’t help but add your personal experiences into stories. And if I’m not doing that, then I know the story isn’t going to resonate with others. Humans need to connect with others, and especially when they’re reading a book. If Xolo was just this black-and-white god character, how are readers going to empathize with him?
Xolo is also about the creation of the dog, humankind’s best friend. How did you tackle the process of weaving that narrative into the mythology?
As I write, things start playing out like a movie in my mind. The characters come together in their own lifelike manner, and they play out in front of me like they have their own story and desires and emotions and yearnings. And because the creation of Xolo involved Filson, I thought of his story and how he was 10 when we adopted him. Nobody wanted him because he was an older dog, but we just fell in love with him. All we knew about Filson was that his elderly owner had died. I started thinking about what he went through, what his doubts and fears would be, and how his attachment to humans came to be.
I didn’t realize this until I started doing research, but Xoloitzcuintles, the Mexican hairless dogs, are named after Xolo. So giving him parts of Filson made sense. Something that also occurred to me while writing was this connection between humans and dogs. We all think that our dogs are very humanlike and that they’re the best boy ever. And Filson really was. He just wanted to make us happy. He yearned to be loved, and he yearned to love us. As humans, that’s all we want: to love and be loved. It made it really easy to have this god who loved humans and wanted their love in return, and so, without even intending to, he created dogs who then went on to have this relationship with humans that Xolo lived through them. He protected us, like dogs protect us.
What’s next for you?
I’m finishing up Firesnake, the third book in the Last Cuentista series, which comes out next May. I swore I would never write a series—both The Last Cuentista and Alebrijes can be read independently. They’re in the same universe, but they’re not necessarily tied together because they feature different characters, different settings. But I got so many questions from kids at school visits going, “Well, what happened next in The Last Cuentista?” There were originally three more chapters that got cut from the first book. So now, Firesnake ties both The Last Cuentista and Alebrijes together. It’s been really difficult to write, because I’m taking stories of characters from two different planets and bringing them together.
Kids are hardcore: they love books, and they love story, and it’s very real to them. I was that kid. Making sure that I’m keeping the promises that I make to young readers and answering their curiosity is important to me.
Xolo by Donna Barba Higuera, illus. by Mariana Ruiz Johnson. Levine Querido, $19.99 Nov. 4 ISBN 978-1-6461-4702-1
