character i thought of myself as a kid so i thought the character would have red hair and freckles and be a caucasian little girl like i was. then when my son turned four i started to look for children s books that featured characters like him and i found out there was almost nothing. this was a few years back and there was very little out on the market that had black oar latino kids and i thought why am i creating a character based on me when i should create characters based on my children. so i decided to change the character in my booking to a half dominican eight-year-old girl who speaks spanish and has long hair and calls her father papi like my children do and it s been received very well. my own kids love it. and we ve run into a lot of kids throughout who related to this character, more so than other characters that don t necessarily reflect their heritage. i can tell you that me from one papi, is going to get that