The second children’s book by Chilean Isabel Allende, ‘Pearl and the Pirate’, illustrated by Sandy Rodríguez, came to her on Halloween, inspired by her son Nico and narrated by a dog.
“One day he got lost when he was a kid and he gave us a tremendous scare,” he recalls in an interview with EFE, but the undisputed protagonist and the one who narrates the story is Perla.
He explains that the idea of Nico and Perla’s neighbor across the street, the teenager who arrives one day with the pirate symbol marked on his shirt, his scooter and his guitar case, came to him on October 31, Halloween, when three children from his street dressed up as privateers.
One of the originalities of the book, edited by Penguin Kid, is that it is told from the point of view of the dog, angry because humans, she says, “should learn ‘woof’, the language of dogs, and ‘meow’, that of cats.”
Allende “translates” a story written in ‘wow’
And because of this lack of knowledge of the dog’s language, Allende writes a brief introduction at the beginning of the book, where she reveals that, since she speaks ‘woof’, she can translate Perla’s new adventure into Spanish and write it, since the dog’s paws “are not made for the keyboard.”
Allende explains that she discovered Perla’s universe when the dog, one day in the park, invited her to have tea at her house, where she met Nico, Lucy, the cat, the pirate and the wizard who was visiting.
“This adventure really happened to Nico and Perla,” says Allende, who wants his little readers “to understand that they will never be abandoned, and that they should never venture out alone.”
As the author explains, with this story she relives a similar event that occurred in her son’s childhood.
The third book, ‘Pearl and the Princess’, in 2026
The text follows the story of the dog and Nico, main characters from Allende’s first children’s album (‘Perla, the super dog’), which promises to continue growing with a third book in the series for 2026: ‘Perla and the Princess’.
Allende comments that his dog Perla is “exact” to the one in the book: “A terrier adopted from a shelter, small, black, happy and daring.”
“I have had many pets in my long life, but none as fun as Perla,” he says.
In this children’s album, Allende tells the adventures of Nico, one day when, tired of waiting for his mother, who is late picking him up from school, he takes the “bad idea” of walking home alone.
And that’s where the dog, the pirate and his scooter come into play, and Nico’s sock that is used to track his scent.
The push to write for children came from a girl, Camila.
Allende comments that her foray into children’s literature comes from her agent Johanna Castillo, who suggested she write for children when she told her that Camila, a friend’s granddaughter, came to see her every week to rummage through her pile of children’s books.
“Camila comes to see me twice a week since she was one, now she is five. She comes into my house and goes straight to the pile of children’s books, she knows several by heart and also asks me to make up stories for her.”
Allende acknowledges that he had so much fun with the first one that he thought about making a series, so the third children’s book will arrive in 2026 “and there will be others in the future, but Perla will always be the protagonist.”
Awaken the interest of the child and seduce the adult
“In the series ‘Perla’ I want to refer to certain issues that affect children and they do not always dare to talk about, such as bullying at school, fear of abandonment or falling in love because, yes, little ones also fall in love,” he says.
The writer admits that the audience for these books is very young and, sometimes, it is the parents who have to read the book to them: “That means that you have to touch on topics that children care about, but at the same time you have to seduce adults. It is not an easy task.”
Remember that, in children’s books, she provides the story, but it is the illustrator Sandra Rodríguez who “provides everything else.”
Allende feels comfortable writing for children, but recognizes that hers is literature for adults, to which she has dedicated herself for forty years: “That is my forte,” she adds.
Sign up for the Newsletter Cultivate from The Mostradorjoin our community to tell you the most interesting things about the world of culture, science and technology.