Baseball-playing middle schooler Elena navigates familial pressures and burnout in Curveball, a middle grade graphic novel illustrated by Miguel Diaz Rivas and written by Pablo Cartaya, the author of middle grade novel The Last Beekeeper, making his graphic novel debut. Though Elena loves the sport, her mother’s overbearing nature forces her to consider leaving the diamond for good. When an injury prevents Elena from attending a summer baseball clinic, it seems like a blessing in disguise—until she realizes that she doesn’t know who she is without baseball. But a summer spent LARPing with her younger brother may be the spark she needs to get her back on the field. Cartaya spoke with PW about the beauty of collaboration, the importance of play, and how past careers in food service and television inform his writing.
Most of your previous works have been prose. What compelled you to branch out into graphic novels?
Disney approached me with the idea of making this story about a kid playing baseball. Originally, it was a prose novel. But then Disney pivoted and was like, “We think this could be better served as a graphic novel.” And I, admittedly, kind of freaked out at first, because I’ve never written a graphic novel. But my editor, Rachel Stark, was like, “Listen, don’t worry, here are some ideas of how to do this. Just take your shot.”
When I learned the steps to creating a story in a graphic novel format, I realized that it really lent itself to my background as an actor and as a writer of TV and movies. Writing a graphic novel script is about bringing out the frames of a story. It was like I was directing the frames to then have Miguel Diaz Rivas do the illustrations.
The whole process felt in the spirit of what this novel is; it’s about when collaboration works well, and how it makes the process of creation so wonderful. I’m so grateful that it ended up working out as a graphic novel, because it provides another entry point for kids into writing and literature.
What were some challenges in pivoting from writing prose to drafting a graphic novel script?
The economy of words becomes more urgent when you’re writing a graphic novel, or when you’re writing a screenplay. You have to be very intentional about your words and about your directions. When writing in prose, you can draw out a scene and draw the character through language, but in the case of a graphic novel—much like in a screenplay—there really isn’t time for that. You have to let the visual medium take over. With a graphic novel, you have to give the illustrator the tools they need and from there, you have to let them interpret the story in their art form.
Historically, people have said that graphic novels aren’t really literature, that they’re not really books, and I couldn’t disagree more. The amount of thought I put into creating this story was very intense and profound because I’m not only thinking about the beats of the narrative or the character arcs or how the story is going to unfold, but I’m also considering what the illustrator needs to see and read in order to interpret the story that I’m writing. It’s a beautiful marriage of words and visual art that I think deserves more space in the literary community.
What is your relationship to sports and LARPing?
We have this tendency to put ourselves into these little boxes, right? You’re an athlete and that’s what you do. Or if you’re a creative type and you like to dress up and go live action role-playing, then that’s what you do. But I didn’t really live that life. When I was a kid, I was an athlete: I played baseball, soccer, basketball. But also, whenever company would come over, I would take my brothers and dress them up and we would put on these epic performances for my parents and their guests. Even when playing outside, I would dress up and go out into the woods and create these whole narratives for myself, oftentimes right after basketball practice. I wanted to bring these two loves of mine together into a story, to address the idea of what it means to play, because we can love a sport and be in the competitive spirit of playing it, but what happens when the pressure to compete becomes too much? I really wanted to juxtapose this idea of competitive play versus imaginative play.
What other aspects of your childhood did you draw on to create Curveball?
I drew a lot from my abuelos. When my abuelo and my abuela were married in Cuba in the 1940s, my abuelo wanted to do a tour of all the baseball stadiums for their honeymoon, and my poor grandma was like, “Okay, I guess.” He was just a lover of baseball.
When I was doing research for the story, I learned there were a lot of Cuban women who, during WWII, were recruited to go play for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Many of them settled in Racine, Wis., especially after the Batista regime and then Fidel Castro came into power. This idea of baseball being drawn from that period in Cuban history, to a place like where the novel is set in Wisconsin, was really important to me. It was also important because all my novels are an ode to my abuelita and abuelito. There’s always an abuela character in them because that’s how I honor and pay respect to them and their memory.
Curveball is very much about legacy and failed expectation. Elena’s abuela didn’t get to play in the AAGPBL, and Elena’s mother didn’t get to be on the high school baseball team, so now it falls on Elena as the legacy carrier to be the one to break through. A lot of us as parents, we try to push our kids sometimes into things that we didn’t achieve in our youth. I think that can be destructive for them, and for their idea of play. And so, Elena’s brother becomes the catalyst for Elena to break that barrier of her own competitiveness, and her own sense of fulfilling this legacy. He sort of serves as her conscience. He’s there to be like, “Listen, you gotta chill out a little bit.”
How did it feel to watch Curveball come to life through Miguel’s art?
Miguel knocked it out of the park—pun intended.
I asked editorial if it was okay if I get in contact with him and they were like, “Oh my God, yes, absolutely.” And so, when I went to Spain last summer, of course I was like, “Hola Miguel, no sé si estás por ahi pero quiero saber si quieres hablar.” [“Hello Miguel, I don’t know if you’re around, but I wanted to get together and talk.”] And Miguel was like, “¡Sí, nos encontraremos en Barcelona!” [“Yes, let’s find each other in Barcelona!”] So, we met up, and we ate at the Little Prince café. Miguel is just the sweetest. When we were talking, we were just geeking out over each other. He was like, “¡Este proceso ha sido increíble!” [“This process has been incredible!”] And I was like, “I know, right!” We were just enjoying each other’s contribution to this piece of art.
You’ve had many professions over the years, including acting, TV writing, and working in kitchens and restaurants. Did these experiences influence your work for children?
I believe in gratitude. When you work in restaurants, you learn that the dishwasher is the most important person in the kitchen. You learn to respect everybody’s role in the development of something. A plate that gets on a diner’s table has gone through the dishwasher, the line cooks, the prep cook, the runner, the buzzer, the waiter. Everybody gets to touch this thing that one person will sit and eat.
Then there’s the idea that a script is born, and then later has so many pieces that are attached to it to make it live—the actors, the directors, the producers, the filmmakers. And then you get to writing. Even when you’re writing traditional prose, there are so many pieces that are involved in that process. My name is on the cover, and Miguel’s name is on the cover, but there are hundreds of people who have been involved in the creation of Curveball. All these things are in the service to putting books into young people’s hands. To me, that’s a gift, and it’s something that I spend many mornings being grateful for.
One of my favorite things is speaking to young people. It’s less about me and more about the visibility that they get when someone like me speaks to them. Cuando yo empiezo hablar en español y los niños que estan oyendo [When I start speaking in Spanish, the children who are listening], the language clicks with them, and they recognize it—it’s the language of their abuelas. I had a kid in Indianapolis come up to me and go, “Mi abuelita era así también.” [“My grandmother was like that, too.”] That, to me, is a gift that she can give me from something that many different hands helped to create.
We should all be working to collaborate to make stories that give visibility, to help people feel seen, most importantly young people, who constantly feel alienated from the world around them. That’s all I want—to make sure that even one kid can have an access point to visibility, to their sense of self, their sense of belonging, their sense of wonder, their sense of fun, their sense of play.
What are you working on next?
I have a project that’s coming out next year with Kokila that took me four years to write. The book is very much about legacy and grief and how art helps us through grief. It’s prose, and it does have my signature humor in it, but it’s a very different novel than I’ve ever written.
Curveball by Pablo Cartaya, illus. by Miguel Diaz Rivas. Disney Hyperion, $24.99 May 7 ISBN 978-1-368-09009-4; $14.99 paper ISBN 978-1-368-08926-5
