Interview with Diane Debrovner and Stacy Cervenka, Authors of Roxie in Color
Diane:
Welcome to Smack Dab, Diane and Stacy. Please tell us a bit about Roxie in Color.
It’s about a 12-year-old named Roxie who is starting seventh grade in a new town and excited to make a fresh start. However, she’s worried that it will be harder for her to do that because both of her parents are blind. At her old school, she was known as “the girl with blind parents,” and she’s tired of being labeled. She wants to be known for the other parts of who she is too: an artist, a big sister, an animal lover, and the kind of person who bakes cookies for people she cares about for no special reason. She loves her parents, but she tries to keep their blindness a secret—at least until the kids at school get to know her. And some of the chapters in the book are told from the perspective of her mother’s guide dog, Nash.
At its heart, the book is about feeling different and wanting to belong without having to hide who you really are. It’s also one of the few middle grade books that includes an authentic portrayal of parents who have a disability.
The novel grew out of the Parents Magazine article "What Blind Parents Want You to See.” What about that reporting and feature experience made you want to turn the story into a novel?
I decided to write the article because I met a blind mom and realized that I didn’t know very much about blind parenting, even though I’d been an editor at Parents for more than twenty years. All of the blind parents I interviewed—including Stacy and her husband—had unique stories. But they’d also had experiences of being treated unfairly, including having other parents doubt their abilities and make assumptions about whether they were able to take good care of their kids. Or handle a playdate at their house. I was already writing middle grade fiction and couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be a sighted 12-year-old whose family was being treated that way. Most kids don’t know anyone who is blind, and I thought readers would be curious to learn more about how blind people do certain things differently. Even though this is a very specific story, many of Roxie’s feelings and experiences in middle school are very universal.
Roxie hides her parents' blindness from her new classmates to control how she's seen. That’s a heavy secret to carry. Most of the time, children’s lit explores characters who feel different about themselves, but this is exploring what it’s like to have a different parent. What was the most surprising part of fictionalizing these parents?
A lot of children feel that their family is different in some way, and they may worry about how others perceive them. However, that doesn’t necessarily impact how they feel about their parents. Roxie loves her family and is comfortable with her parents’ blindness. She knows they do certain things differently than other parents, but it’s “normal” to her. And readers will see that they’re just regular parents! The most surprising part of creating the characters of Roxie’s parents may have been realizing that we don’t really know what any family is like inside their own home. Roxie’s friend Quinn, who is the most popular girl in their grade, has a mother with debilitating migraines. Everyone is dealing with something, and we should try not to make assumptions.
How did your writing collaboration work? How did you divide the writing, and were there any major changes you requested of each other as the project progressed?
I live in New York and Stacy lives in Nebraska. We wrote the book using Google Docs and traded chapters back and forth to give feedback to each other. I had originally started writing the book on my own and then decided I couldn’t tell the family’s story by myself. Stacy and I had stayed in touch and I asked her if she wanted to co-author the book with me. We revised my early draft from top to bottom, creating new characters, situations, and details drawn from Stacy’s everyday life. Stacy introduced the Novaks—another family in which the parents are also blind—and the relationship between Roxie and their son Charlie became a particularly important part of the story.
Some chapters are narrated from the guide dog Nash's point of view. What made you want to break from Roxie's perspective? What did you do to tap into the voice of a dog?
When I was reporting the magazine article, I became fascinated with guide dogs and their training. I was particularly interested to learn that when they have their harness on, they know they are working, but when their harness is off at home (because their handler doesn’t help there), they’re just a regular pet. I thought readers might find that dual-persona perspective interesting too. As someone who often imagines what my own dog is thinking, it was surprisingly easy to find Nash’s voice.
Having chapters from Nash’s point of view allowed us to describe situations where Roxie wasn’t there—such as when her mom and Nash meet a friend of hers at the store. If we were only in Roxie’s head, we’d miss out on that opportunity. But Nash also plays a deeper role. Before Roxie moved to this new town, she didn’t have many friends and Nash was her closest companion. We can learn a lot from dogs: They love their humans unconditionally, never judge them or hold a grudge, and are always happy to see you. Nash set a good example for Roxie of what she should expect from a good friend.
Stacy:
Roxie also carries the fear that she might inherit the eye condition that caused her mother's vision loss. Why was it important to give Roxie that personal stake, rather than making this only a story only about her parents' experience?
Partially, it was just realism. Many eye conditions aren't hereditary, but others are. It's not uncommon for blind parents to have one or more blind children (as we also see with the Novaks). My husband is blind due to a gunshot injury and my eye condition isn't hereditary, but I have many friends who are blind themselves, grew up with blind parents, and now have blind children of their own. So, Roxie’s mom having a hereditary eye condition that Roxie thinks about isn’t uncommon at all in the blind community.
Roxie doesn't necessarily believe her life would be over if she lost her sight. She’s grown up being protected and provided for by her parents. She knows plenty of other successful blind adults. At one point, Roxie tells Charlie that, if she knew she were going to lose her vision, she'd start learning braille and choose a college in a place with good public transportation, so she understands that there would be life after vision loss. A huge part of her fear is uncertainty and also the possibility of losing her ability to paint, which means so much to her.
She also understands the way the world treats blind people. She's watched her parents face people's assumptions about whether blind adults should marry or have children. She sees her mom’s friend Grace face employment discrimination. She wonders at the roller rink whether her friends would still want to hang out with her if she had retinitis pigmentosa. She worries that if she gets RP and becomes a mom, Child Protective Services might take her children away. She doesn’t so much worry that she won’t be able to live independently; she worries that she won’t be able to paint and that she too will face the prejudice that her parents have.
It’s not just other children who look at Roxie’s family different. The book includes a scene involving Child Protective Services. What was behind this choice?
Unfortunately, unnecessary involvement of Child Protective Services is all too common in the blind community, especially right after a child is born or during a custody dispute after a divorce or separation. Thankfully, more states are passing laws protecting the rights of parents with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also adopted regulations a few years ago prohibiting disability discrimination by programs that receive federal funding, including Child Protective Services, foster care agencies, and family courts. But, as with many laws, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it never happens.
The fear of CPS in the blind community is much less than it was 15 or 16 years ago when my husband and I began thinking about having children. When I went to the hospital to have both of my kids, I packed several copies of Parenting Without Sight, a pamphlet the National Federation of the Blind created specifically for child protection social workers and family court professionals. Thankfully, I never needed it. But the fact that I felt I should bring it with me says a lot about what many blind parents worried about at the time. I wanted to acknowledge that history because it shaped a generation of blind parents, even as things have gotten better.
The book is typeset in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a font designed for low-vision readers, and it's being released in braille and audio. How involved were you in those accessibility decisions, and why did they matter to you?
From the beginning, it was important to me and Diane that blind and low vision kids would be able to read the book. After all, it's a story about blind and low vision people. A large part of my interest in writing Roxie in Color was to ensure that blind and low vision kids would encounter adults in literature they could relate to and look up to, adults they might want to become someday.
So it was important to us that the book be available in as many formats as possible. We were thrilled to partner with the Braille Institute to ensure that the standard print version was in the font they developed for low vision readers called Adkinson Hyperlegible. We also worked with the Perkins Library and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled to ensure that braille and audio editions would be available the same day as the print edition.
What do you hope kids of blind or disabled parents see reflected in Roxie's story? What do you hope kids without that experience walk away understanding differently?
When blind kids, blind adults, and the kids of blind parents read the book, it means a lot to me when they say they've never seen blindness portrayed in a book like this before. The characters don't just use white canes, guide dogs, and braille. They deal with rideshare drivers who refuse to transport guide dogs. They discover their child's school calendar is posted as an inaccessible PDF. They explain why one blind person chooses a white cane while another chooses a guide dog, and why they're tired of strangers insisting they "need" a guide dog to be “more independent”. Employment discrimination has real life consequences for the kids. They attend ACB and NFB conventions, have lifelong friendships through the blind community, and share the kind of easy camaraderie that comes from lived experience. I wanted blind readers to recognize their own lives in this book, not just generalities about "using their other senses.”
For sighted kids who don’t have blind friends or family members, I want them to see blind adults who are psychologists, authors, parents, professionals, and community leaders. I also hope they come away understanding that many of the challenges blind people face aren't caused by blindness itself, but by inaccessible systems and other people's assumptions. The kids reading Roxie in Color today will grow up to be the employers, teachers, doctors, and social workers of tomorrow. If this story helps them see blind people as capable, ordinary people with full and complex lives, then I think it has done something worthwhile.
What’s next?
Diane is working on another middle grade novel. I continue to run a state government agency that provides blind people the tools and training they need to work, live independently, and pursue the lives they choose. Many people have asked us if there’s more in store for Roxie. We’ll just have to find out! 😊
Where can we find you?
stacycervenka.com
Instagram: @stacycervenka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacy-cervenka/
dianedebrovner.com
Instagram: @diane.debrovner
Diane Debrovner is the former deputy editor of Parents magazine and author of the article “What Blind Parents Want You to See,” which provided the spark for this novel. She now helps nonprofits share their stories to raise the funding they need. Diane lives in New York City with her family and a dog who loves watermelon.
Stacy Cervenka is the director of the Iowa Department for the Blind and previously led the Blind Parents Group of the National Federation of the Blind. She divides her time between Des Moines and Lincoln, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and two children. Just like Roxie’s family, Stacy and her husband, Greg, are blind, while their children, Leo and Josephine, are sighted.
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