Rebecca Barcárcel: Hi, my name is Rebecca Barcárcel, and I'm the author of Shine On, Luz Véliz. To write this book, I needed to unlock several vivid memories. One was of a mysterious room at the end of a hallway in my grandparents' basement. I opened the door and stepped on the piles of saw dust. On a work bench sat a heavy clamp. Across an entire wall, hung tools, saws, chisels, mallets, and hammers. In a corner, stood a box of wood scraps, dowels, blocks, and planks. In this room, my grandfather had made a child size rocking chair, which I still have today. In the book, my grandfather's wood shop became the basis for Mr. Mac's garage. That's the garage across the street from Luz and her family, where Luz first learns to code computers. Sometimes a setting can be the start of an entire story. The magic of that place set my imagination in motion.

In real life, my grandfather was also a physics professor. He taught me to love science and to be curious about how everything works. That's probably why I perked up my ears when I made friends with boys who were into computers. For some reason, I was the only girl in the group, but I was fascinated to see how they made a TRF 80 or an Apple II Plus convert a list of commands into an image or a game. I first made a computer print my name in sixth grade. It felt like a magical thing. These early personal computers had no mouse and very simple graphics, and no internet existed in the way it does now. But, they gave us plenty of scope for our imagination. So playing with early computers in my grandfather's workshop are two memories that inspired this book.

My dad was also a soccer coach, like the dad in the book, but the third big memory is this. I'm about 11 years old, and from my room I can hear my parents having a serious discussion. I check it out. When I enter the kitchen, my dad is waving a folded paper. "What's that?" I ask. My parents explained that it's a letter from Guatemala. My father's home country. A young woman has written to ask if my dad is her father. I immediately imagine a girl growing up in Guatemala, not knowing who her birth father is and never meeting him. I wonder how she feels. My parents talk it through, and while my dad could have had a child in Guatemala before meeting my mother, they've decided that the timing this woman refers to seems off. They calculate mentally that she couldn't have been born when she says she was and still be my father's child. In the moment, while they sort this out, the ground under my feet has dropped away. If there were another child, then I would have a half sister. Twenty years later, they find out they were wrong. My father's heart breaks over the time lost, but we arrange visits and video calls. This book is dedicated to Azucena, that girl. She's my half sister in Guatemala and is a wonderful woman. And finally now, my friend. I wrote this book partly to imagine what our lives might have been like had we met as kids and partly to explore family and immigration and definitely to celebrate kids who are into science, and kids who want to or love to code.

Chapter One of Shine On, Luz Véliz.

So there's before it happened. Before I learned to use crutches. Before I needed physical therapy. Before, before, before.

Welcome to After.

I grab a trash bag that's almost as tall as I am. LAWN AND LEAF, the box says. Perfect for raking out the whole soccer section of my closet. Perfect for clearing out Before.

Soccer shoes? Into the bag. Shin guards? Into the bag. White and blue uniforms? The bag. Three trophies, one for being the top scorer in the whole Tri-Cities Junior League? Bag. I can't look at this stuff anymore.