When Newbery Medalist Meg Medina was a kid, she had a babysitter — señora Mimí.

“She was sort of heavyset and she had dyed red hair and she had a gold tooth in the back and she had freckles on her hands,” remembers Medina.

She was a wonderful babysitter but kind of a pain in the neck, as well — Medina says you could look at the things on her coffee table, but you definitely couldn’t touch them. “She felt this was a very important skill,” she says. “We used to stand at that table and she’d have us practice, like putting our hands behind our back, and you could lean forward and look at all the pretty things.”

Then, when Medina was five years old, her mother announced that their family — tías and abuelos — would be coming from Cuba, and Medina’s grandmother would become her babysitter. Not without some glee, Medina fired señora Mimí immediately.

“I marched myself right up to that apartment. I said, ‘señora Mimí, lo siento. I’m very sorry but, you know, you’re out. My abuela is coming. I don’t need you anymore,’” Medina laughs. But the joke was on her — señora Mimí went exactly nowhere. She became friends with Medina’s grandmother, and they’d often drink coffee together. “She loved us,” says Medina.

Now, Meg Medina is honoring señora Mimí — and caregivers everywhere — in her new children’s book, No More Señora Mimí, illustrated by Brittany Cicchese.

Illustrations copyright © 2024 by Brittany Cicchese/Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA

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“I knew from past research that Meg’s stories are all based a bit on her past experiences,” says Cicchese. She had a hunch that señora Mimí was based on a real person, but she emphatically did not want to know what she looked like. “Because as soon as I read the manuscript,” she explains, “I just had this image of who señora Mimí was. I could see her smile, the way she braided her hair, the way she walked. I knew that if I saw a photo, it would change it in some way. And I wanted to capture that initial energy.”

And, in fact, the fictional señora Mimí looks nothing like the real señora Mimí. In the book, señora Mimí is young — she has a “two-tooth” baby, Nelson, and a “no-tooth” dog named Pancho. She and the little girl in the story, Ana, wear cozy matching sweaters. There’s nary a gold tooth in sight. They eat buttered crackers together at the kitchen table.

“When I think of the breakfast of my childhood,” says Medina, “I think of my Cuban crackers and butter and that milky coffee.” Cicchese did want to see a photo of the crackers, to make sure she was getting them right — she also ordered some online to try.

Ana — like a young Meg Medina — starts out super excited that her abuela is coming. “I bet Abuela will let me stop and play whenever I want,” Ana tells señora Mimí.

“Abuela is coming to live with me!” Ana tells her teacher.

Until Ana realizes oh — a new babysitter means no more señora Mimí.

“This is a story that is quiet, right? The change that happens, happens quietly inside her,” says Medina.

Illustrations copyright © 2024 by Brittany Cicchese

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA

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Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA

Ana realizes that she won’t be able to tell señora Mimí the best parts of her day, or open her lobby mailbox with the little silver key, or press the top elevator button anymore. In one of Cicchese’s illustrations, Ana sits under the table, curled up with a blanket and Pancho the dog. “No more señora Mimí,” Ana whispers to Pancho, sadly.

“That was so tender to me,” says Medina. “This moment where she can appreciate that she’s going to lose something. She’s gaining something. She’s also going to lose something.”

Illustrator Brittany Cicchese says she wanted No More Señora Mimí to be a comforting story with lots of warm tones. “You’ll see a lot of warm, glowing yellows and rosy pinks,” she says. Cicchese set the story during autumn, at the start of the school year, since it’s also a time of change. “I think that echoes the story quite nicely,” she says.

Cicchese did the illustrations digitally, but her background is in traditional art. “I approached the story very much with that traditional mindset in building up the pieces as if I were working on a real painting,” she explains. “That was really important to me to capture the looseness of traditional mediums like oil paints or oil pastels.” Cicchese says the other benefit of working digitally was that it allowed her to capture the light. “You can go in and you can almost make a piece glow.” And it does create a very warm, comforting effect.

No spoilers, but author Meg Medina says señora Mimí stayed a part of her life forever. “I hold a space for her in my heart,” she says. “Señora Mimí is not buried very far from my real abuela in Flushing, Queens,” Medina says. She wrote this children’s book in her honor.

“So many people raise kids,” Medina says. There’s our parents, of course, but also older siblings, teachers, cousins, librarians, and neighbors. It’s easy to forget just how many people have a role in helping raise us.

“It feels good to know that there’s this modern story for kids right now, but that there’s a piece of this story that’s also about remembering these wonderful women who helped raise me,” says Medina. “It feels like we’re paying them honor. You know, we’re just honoring their memory.”

Illustrations copyright © 2024 by Brittany Cicchese

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA

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Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA

Does it sometimes seem as if social media has turned American popular culture into a perfectionist parody of itself?

Last week, I followed a social-media-spawned debate over whether a home decor trend called “fridgescaping” was worthy of media attention. I guess it must be, because Architectural Digest recently explored what it called “romanticizing your refrigerator.”

“For some participants of this trend, it’s about organizing the fridge with decorative containers,” Kristen Moonjian, of the trend forecasting company Fashion Snoops, told the magazine. “For others, it goes beyond that with the incorporation of flowers, vases, twinkle lights, LED candles, framed artwork and more.”

Seems to me that worrying how your milk cartons are arranged is a bit obsessive, but I am not here to judge. Oh, hell, yes, I am. If you find yourself hankering to hang a framed photo or light a candle inside your fridge, it may be time to get help.

The longer social media exerts its magnetic hold on us, the more we’re going to see such pop culture trends going off the rails.

Do you remember the pre-pandemic trend #VanLife? The term was coined to describe incredibly good-looking couples who claimed to be having a fabulous time roaming around the country in their vans, their beautiful golden retrievers in tow, posting endless chatty updates about whatever products they happened to be paid to push that week.

In a world beset by climate change, partisan division and $20 Erewhon smoothies, some seem to yearn for a kind of Woodstockian simplicity — being able to roll around in the mud during a rainstorm — but to look like a million dollars while they do it because, you know, Instagram. (Looking at you, Coachella and Burning Man.)

I don’t care how good-looking you and your dog are, it is not fun to live in a van.

A few months ago, I was taken aback by an article in the New York Times’ Vows section. Each week, the section highlights one wedding with photos and a generally upbeat tale about the couple’s sometimes tortuous road to the altar. The story at issue was about the union of two-self described social media influencers, which took place on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como — ovviamente.

The bride, who had been married twice before, and the groom, who had one previous spouse, were very beautiful, of course, and impeccably dressed. Her social media feeds promote luxury hotels and tourism boards. He is a successful photographer.

Their vows sounded as if they had been written by the great social satirist Tom Wolfe.

“If you are down to travel the world, make babies, raise a family, jump out of planes, heal your inner child, buy dream homes all over the world and give back to the community,” vowed the bride, “I am so down to be your wife.”

“Thank you for finding me in this lifetime,” said the groom. “And here is to many more to come.” (More lifetimes, presumably, not marriages.)

Anyway, the grand finale of the nuptials was an explosion of what are called “daytime fireworks,” shooting what looked like streams of rainbow-colored powder into the sky.

As far as I can tell, unlike so many made-for-social-media extravaganzas that make their way into the news — gender reveal parties, anyone? — this one deserves some credit for causing no one to die, no forest to catch fire, no truck to end up in a lake and no man to run away in anger because he is having a girl but really wants a boy.

Further proof that social media has turned so many Americans into unrestrained exhibitionists emerged a week ago when — sorry, New York Times — the paper of record published a lifestyle story about a Brooklyn woman who throws a “birthday” party for her frozen eggs every year.

And, as we in the newspaper business like to say, she is not alone.

“TikTok is full of women throwing and attending egg showers, in which they invite friends and family to celebrate their taking charge of their fertility futures,” the article reported.

The paper did not mention whether any eggs or embryos of honor have ever been incorporated into anyone’s fridgescape.

Because that would just be silly.

@robinkabcarian

On-air challenge: I’m going to give you two words. Change one letter in each of them to get a pair of antonyms.

Ex. Bloat & Sick –> Float & Sink

1. Bread & Marrow
2. Expansive & Cheat
3. Worn & Pray
4. Brine & Broom
5. Throb & Watch
6. Heaved & Well
7. Plaid & Fanny
8. Oven & Closet

Last week’s challenge: Last week’s challenge comes from listener Ethan Kane, of Albuquerque, N.M. Name a famous TV personality of the past. Drop the second letter of this person’s last name, and phonetically the first and last names together will sound like a creature of the past. What celebrity is this?

Challenge answer: Dinah Shore —> Dinosaur

Winner: DJ Boyd of Northville, Michigan

This week’s challenge: This week’s challenge comes from listener Michael Schwartz, of Florence, Oregon. Take the name of a watercraft that contains an odd number of letters. Remove the middle letter and rearrange the remaining ones to name a body of water. What words are these?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, September 12th, 2024 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.