Her books speak to kids in their own language(s)

By Ed Goldman

From her double-wide trailer in North Highlands—a somewhat drab, low-income residential and industrial area which includes a decommissioned U.S. Air Force base reinvented as a business park—Christine L. Villa creates richly colorful worlds populated by curious kids and talking animals.

She has no children—and the sole animal in her life is Haiku, a Maltese poodle she even takes along when she appears on TV to promote her books. But Villa says she’s been watching kids and animals, and imagining their interior lives, for most of her 57 years.

If so, her work indicates she has 20-20 vision. The stories are filled with whimsy and gentle messaging, as in her book “Zoobooloo.” In this brightly illustrated work—Kathrina Iris, who lives in the Philippines (and whom the author has met ony electronically) did the colorful drawings—the animals at a zoo reveal themselves after closing time to be envious of each other. Eventually, (spoiler alert!) they accept themselves as they are. That’s not a bad lesson for kids of all ages, as they say (though I must add that the best piece of advice I ever received from a close acquaintance was, “Whatever you do, don’t be yourself”).

Villa points out “Zoobooloo” will have a bilingual edition (English and Spanish) any second now. This is an important point since Villa—born and raised in the Philippines, where her family still lives—hopes her books will not only connect with English-speaking youngsters and their parents but also with readers in her native country.

“I want to publish more books that will not only teach the Filipino language but will also help Filipino-American kids appreciate their heritage,” she says.

Asked if family members proved to be role models for her creativity, Villa says, “I really didn’t get any encouragement. My dad was an accountant, I have a brother who’s in management. My mom died when I was very young.” But when she first came to the United States, a variety of maladies caused her to be homebound, during which inspiration appeared in the form of a robin outside her window. ”It was a momma robin and pretty soon I saw her babies and I began to think more about animals and nature.”

She was living in an elders community with a husband 17 years her senior (who has since passed away), when Villa says she started to write “but wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to write. I didn’t think I had a story to tell.” She had begun to write poetry when she was in high school and now her imagination began to take her in different directions. She created DVDs that were essentially slide-show tryouts of the books she’d eventually write, and sold them to residents in her community and beyond.

In the past seven years, Villa has written and published 10 children’s books, three of which won awards: “Frankie Loves to Burp,” which took first place in children’s books at the 2018 Northern California Publishers and Authors Book Competition; the aforementioned “Zoobooloo,” which won the same award the following year; and “Will You Still Love Me? A Puppy Haiku Story.”