Robert Liu-Trujillo: My name is Robert Liu-Trujillo. I'm the author and illustrator of Fresh Juice, Jugo Fresco.

One of the things that inspired me for this book is the relationship I have with my son. When he was a little boy, maybe about three years old, we lived in Brooklyn, New York, and at the time, whenever I would feel a cold coming on, I would make some juice with fruits and vegetables, sometimes with roots, and he really enjoyed doing that. And I thought of a story at that time. And we would go to a cooperative market in Brooklyn. And I pitched a story at that time, but it didn't work. And then I sat on the story for many years and then revisited recently before pitching it again, and this time situated it both in Brooklyn and Oakland. I hope that the audience, no matter where they are, will be able to see themselves or people who live in the city in it because it has a farmer's market and different stores, but basically trying to live healthy and make juice with my son inspired the book.

I think I haven't gotten to the favorite part yet. Usually my favorite part of making a book is being able to share it with people. And so reading it to children in schools. Being able to talk about it with students, kids, families, librarians, teachers, that's usually the best part. It's really fun to draw it and to paint it and to write it, to work on it. But it's most fun when you get to see it live out in the world and to hear people's responses.

One of my hopes or wishes is that people understand the power of community. I think in some ways our society teaches us very much to be self-sufficient and to do things on our own and to have self-determination, which is important, but it's also really important to be able to depend on community, to ask for help from them, and then to also give help. And so I think one of the messages in the story is that Art and his father don't just get the ingredients they need for their juice from one store. They get it from a bunch of different people, some of which they pay for, and some of which they get for free just through community. So, I think it's really important to work together as a community and support one another, not only for our health, our society to flourish and to get better.

The spread that I'm sharing is the one where Art and his father, they wake up in the morning. Art's father is not feeling that well. Art suggests that they get some juice. One of the first places they go to to get one of the ingredients for their juice, ginger, is the farmer's market. And so when you look at this spread, it says, "Art and daddy get off downtown and walk towards a Saturday farmer's market. It's filled with people from all over the world selling fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other treasures." And in this market, basically you see an aerial shot of several tents and signs from storefronts and things like that. Some of them are in English, some of them are in Spanish. I wanted to communicate that this is a multicultural world. And then you just see a bunch of different people selling the things that it mentions in the text, foods, vegetables, other things, and then lots of people walking around. So, that's one of my favorite spreads from the book.