I talked to Lorena C. Brown at Festival Latino 2019.

Tell me about your books.

I have been living here 2 years. Spanish is my first language. Portuguese is my second language and English is my third language. All the characters are birds. The idea is to teach values to children. For example, the first story is an ostrich who only has one leg. He dreams of going to the lagoon. A pony helps him. My books are bilingual (Spanish/English). My goal is to reach a child who speaks English because they are born here whose parents speak Spanish. Parents can help the children read in Spanish and they then can read in English.

Sidebar: I didn’t know that the spelling of names may be different in different languages. Lorena told me she couldn’t tell me how to spell her name in English. She had the English spelling of her name on her business card. Lorena apologized for her English not being so good. I had no problem understanding what she was saying. English, as her third language, is much better than my version of Spanish after taking 2 years of Spanish in high school many moons ago.