< Hop in the minivan: 'Summer Is for Cousins' invites you on a family vacation

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Summer's a time for swimming outside, playing cards and talking through the night. Summer is for ice cream and just doing nothing. Summer is for cousins.

RAJANI LAROCCA: Cousins are kind of like superstar relatives because they're kids, but they're not your siblings.

SIMON: "Summer Is For Cousins" is a new children's book by Rajani LaRocca. It's about a little boy named Ravi, who looks forward to his family vacation with his mother, father, Thatha, Pati and his six cousins.

LAROCCA: Ravi loves this time with his cousins, but he's a little worried this year because his oldest cousin, Dhruv, the only other boy, has gotten a lot bigger. He's a lot taller. His voice is deeper. And Ravi wonders whether he's forgotten about all the things they used to share, including their favorite flavor of ice cream.

SIMON: Spoiler alert - it's banana. I've never had banana ice cream, but now I'm intrigued. Rajani LaRocca and illustrator Abhi Alwar both come from big extended families, and they have lots of cousins. For our series "Picture This," they talk about creating this book and how, in one way or another, they both wound up in the story.

LAROCCA: All of my favorite summer memories involved my cousins. So I grew up in the United States, but I was born in India. And so every few years we would go to see my extended family in India. And I have 10 cousins, and we used to spend a lot of time together. And those are just precious memories for me.

ABHI ALWAR: My family is also, like, a South Indian Tamil immigrant family, and I ended up growing up around other families who are also Tamil immigrants. And we all kind of grew up together. In that way, I had a lot of cousins here. I'm a huge introvert also, I should mention. So, like, growing up in a huge family where people would keep coming and going, coming and going inside our house - it was a lot for me, but I really loved being on the outside and kind of, like, enjoying watching all of these interactions. And in that way, one of the characters, Anita, Ravi's older sister, was kind of a stand-in for me, I think. She's the one taking pictures and being a little bossy, you know, as older sisters are. That part of it was really important, to, like, be able to capture small interactions with all sorts of different pairings and groups of people within this family and a lot of fun little moments and expressions - a lot of expressions.

LAROCCA: So if I could describe Abhi's artwork, it's so energetic, and it's really sweet. I don't know how you captured both the craziness of a large family being on vacation together and also the closeness of all the various characters. But you did it.

ALWAR: It is a little more, like, cartoonish characters, but I've kind of set them in a very vivid, lush world as much as possible. I love using a lot of bright colors, and I tried to use a lot of - specifically a lot of yellows and purples because of this particular flavor of ice cream. I was like, let me make sure to complement it with a lot of purples.

LAROCCA: I don't think I would have realized that if you hadn't told me, Abhi (laughter).

ALWAR: Yeah. Banana is the color scheme of the book (laughter).

LAROCCA: I noticed all the purple. I really do love the purple. And I didn't realize that it was because it needed to contrast with the yellow. That was so interesting. And I had to apologize to her for making her illustrate 15 different characters.

ALWAR: (Laughter) Yeah.

LAROCCA: I said I didn't realize what I was asking of an illustrator until I saw the final book. And then I was like, oh, my goodness, there are 15 people on this spread. How in the world did she do that? Not only did she do it brilliantly, she set up entire family trees. She knew exactly who these people were. And Abhi, I think it shows that you used a lot of people that mean something to you in the illustrations. I think that that's why they're so charming and so lovable.

ALWAR: Oh, thank you. Yeah, some people are literally lifted off from my real life. My own thatha and pati are the thatha and pati in this book (laughter). And we sent photos to them. And my thatha was like, oh, nice. He's kind of short, though. And I was like, yeah, you know.

LAROCCA: Oh, my goodness, it's so great. And then I got to meet Abhi's father, and he's like, I recognize myself. I am the one that is cutting vegetables.

ALWAR: (Laughter).

LAROCCA: It was so great.

ALWAR: Coming up with this family tree was so important for all the future parts of the process and creating all these little tableaus of this vacation. Because I'd be like, now they're at the beach. Who likes to be at the beach? Who doesn't like to be at the beach? Who would be probably talking on the phone? Who is probably eating snacks right now? Who wants to go home? This world-building - I love doing that. So I'm so thankful that this project gave me that opportunity because I was like, wow, I'm just going ham on this. I hope Rajani's OK with all this (laughter).

LAROCCA: Well, that, you know, alleviates some of my guilt...

ALWAR: (Laughter).

LAROCCA: ...From making you create 15 characters. You know, when I wrote the book, I mean, I made it very specifically a South Indian Tamil family. I have a bunch of picture books and not all of them are illustrated by people who share my background. But I will say that in seeing Abhi's work, there were just many things that I didn't have to say. You know, we didn't have to specify anything because she knew, because this is her lived experience also, what this family would be like - the way that all the parents were kind of part of the meal preparation process, what they might eat - which is hilarious because it's this mishmash of very South Indian food, also, like, some just general Indian food and then also American food, because that's totally what we would eat all the time anyway.

ALWAR: It was very intentional for me because I was like, it's going to be important for me to populate this book with these details that definitely mattered to me growing up as a South Indian Tamil girl who's also American living in the Midwest. I intentionally made sure that there were details like bindis, dupattas every once in a while, like, making chai on a rainy day - very important. I'm sure there are other little cultural details that I didn't even register, but I was like, obviously Thatha and Pati would be, like, sitting on chairs, like, sitting right next to the food - like, these little moments that, like, I probably didn't even register, and I was like, duh, but I know that this is important to me to illustrate, and I hope important to other South Indian Tamil girls out there who like seeing themselves in this book.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: That was illustrator Abhi Alwar and author Rajani LaRocca talking about their children's book, "Summer Is For Cousins." Our series "Picture This" is produced by Samantha Balaban.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ALWAR: I don't know if you caught this, Rajani - I mean, I don't - it's very small and subtle. But I put in an Easter egg of the two of us on a little boat in a picture frame.

LAROCCA: What?

ALWAR: It's in the one where - on the rainy day spread.

LAROCCA: I see us. We're waving. It's a sailboat.

ALWAR: Yup, yup.

LAROCCA: That's adorable. It's a little wavy in the ocean. That's a little scary. But we look happy.

ALWAR: We look happy embarking on this journey.

LAROCCA: I hope we're not saying mayday (laughter).

ALWAR: No, no - starting an adventure.

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