The Picture Book Buzz - Interview with Torrey Maldonado

Maria Marshall
1 minute ago
7 min read

Torrey Maldonado is an author and teacher in Brooklyn, New York. Torrey Maldonado was born and raised in Brooklyn, growing up in the Red Hook housing projects. He has been a teacher for New York City public schools for nearly 25 years and his fast-paced, compelling stories are inspired by his and his students’ experiences.

Photo of author Tony Maldonado standing against a white background.

In each of his books you find a Black or Brown boy protagonist and diverse cast. Every book helps kids analyze behavior and gives them words to name feelings and space to discuss tough topics in fun ways. And you’ll get Brooklyn stories never before told.

Collage of the covers of Torrey Maldonado's four middle grade novels.

He is the author of many award-winning, popular middle grade novels, including Hands (2024), What Lane?(2021), Tight (2018), and Secret Saturdays (2012).

Torrey’s debut picture book, Just Right, releases January 20^th.

Welcome Torrey,

Tell us a little about yourself. (Where/when do you write? How long have you been writing and creating poetry?)

How long have I been writing? I can’t walk into a school-visit without kids saying, “You look like The Rock”. I even have the matching Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson baldie haircut. The uncle in Just Right is also the garage-owner uncle in Hands and he resembles “The Rock”. So, you can say I began writing before I was “The Rock” back when I was a pebble and Toby’s age in Just Right.

It might be hard to believe I once was Toby’s size with his amount of hair. Actually, I had a huge lollipop Jackson 5 afro. Also at Toby’s age, I’d take cues from my Mom like how he does. Me? I’d study my Mom’s joy as she wrote in spiral notebooks. I knew something before thirty years of teaching—often, kids will be what they see. Wow, did I copycat by Mom and try to write stories.

While my childhood tales weren’t as strong as Just Right or as strong as my novels, I kept singing in my head that Michael Jackson tune with my Jackson fro, “Oh baby, give me one more chance”. And one more chance to more chances to write until Jay-Z’s and Alicia Key’s lyric in their song came true—“New York concrete jungle where dreams are made of” and my dream of publishing came true. There’s a saying, “A tree grows in Brooklyn”. The seeds my Mom planted maybe turned me into that tree because my boyhood stories are fruit in the market that young readers, families, and educators enjoy and ask for more.

It is so nice to get to "meet" you and hear about your start as a mirror of your mother. What is one of the most fun or unusual places where you’ve written a manuscript?

How Tim Robbins gets out of jail in the movie Shawshank Redemption tells you a lot about when and how I write. With a full-time teaching job and how time-consuming it is, I write how Robbins digs a tunnel to freedom with a spoon. During any free moment, just a bit at a time. I’m nearing thirty years of teaching so that’s a lot of spoonfuls and a lot of digging, and readers say they appreciate my stories as if they’re dug up treasures or spoonfuls of awesomeness.

That includes Oprah who treasured What Lane? as a favorite book. That includes kids across the globe because Hands is a Global Read Aloud winner. As for a fun place where I’ve written, it’s said when it storms, it pours, right? When a snowstorm hit Brooklyn, it was fun to watch big snowflakes fall from the sky and that’s when the big idea and words for Just Right almost magically fell with the snow into my hands then onto the page.

Big, swirling, snowflakes are always magical! What was your inspiration or spark of interest for Just Right?

Book cover - a boy, holding a package, sitting on the shoulder of his uncle with a car up on a lift in a mechanic's shop in the background. Orange cone and tool boxes below the car.

So many inspirations but there’s a word count for my answers right? LOL.

I had a just right mom and just right uncles (who weren’t blood-related) who made me feel just right and they are the models for Ma and Uncle in Just Right. Just Right published on Martin Luther King, Junior’s weekend and both King’s and my efforts are similar—we want a just right world.

Kirkus gave Just Right a review that hits bullseye my inspiration for writing it. Here, let me read their line, “Maldonado’s story is a useful teaching tool for children to reinforce trusting your intuition. Maldonado shows adult readers ways to convey security and love to the children in their lives. He models specific strategies for making youngsters feel seen and valued.” In essence, that means we can be Toby’s Ma or his uncle to anyone. That means we can make the world more just right by aligning with our just right intuition and aligning with our just right people and places. More kids and grownups doing that inspires me.

What is the hardest or most challenging thing about writing Just Right? And what was the most fun?

There’s something that is hard and challenging to both adults and younger people—we mutually don’t enjoy boring, unnecessarily long anythings that weigh us down. Who says, “Please make this meeting as long and as useless as possible”? Who says, “Please give me a book that depresses me and adds extra heaviness to any heaviness I already feel”?

So, my challenge with Just Right was to spark readers and Betsy Bird of School Library Journal to say what they’ve said of my novels. Bird says it better so here’s a line from of one of her reviews—“Torrey is writing sophisticated stories for readers but with a low page count that won’t scare away the reluctant. He taps into a kind of writing we’ve been in need for and with his authentic voice and whole heaping helpfuls of heart. A Maldonado story never seeks to intimidate. The kid who discovers one of his books is not going to be disappointed. They’re going to just keep reading and reading and reading . . .” So, do readers and Bird feel I’ve risen to the challenge with Just Right? Bird’s review says, “You are clearly a man of many superpowers, including your ability to manage to encapsulate a huge story in a scant number of pages. That’s been a hallmark of your novels. It just seems logical that you’d be able to do that for picture books as well, and lo and behold, that’s what happened!”.

Sounds like you were more than up to the challenge, and your debut picture book is amazing. Did anything amaze or surprise you when you first saw Teresa Martínez’s illustrations? What is your favorite spread?

Although Just Right is super new and published on January 20th, in its short existence a fun tug-of-war is happening between people claiming their favorite two-page spread of illustrations.

The Publisher’s Weekly journalist—Patricia Murphy—who interviewed me loves when Toby is scooped up into the air by Uncle. The National Writing Project podcast interviewer—Dr. Flores, a professor of language and Literacy—loves the spread where Uncle rubs against his cheek the socks Toby’s gifts him.

Internal spread - child sitting in his uncle's office. On the left, child in a rolling chair, with a crown taped to the top and a sign (Toby's Chair) taped to the back, holding a present and look up across the desk. On the right, uncle sits at his desk, with a child's scrawled art on the lower right, a vacation photo of the uncle and Toby, a baseball in a stand, Toby's favorite rock on a stand, and twelve pictures drawn by the boy on the wall behind uncle.

Text © Torrey Maldonado, 2026. Image © Teresa Martínez, 2026.

For me, I get all the feels when Toby sits across from Uncle in the garage-office. Why? The rapper Big Sean raps, “The grass is greener where you water it.” A timeless phrase says, “From little acorns grow mighty oaks”. In those two pages, it’s clear how Uncle nourishes Toby to make him blossom. The pages show how constant Uncle has been as a loving adult to Toby. That spread shows their bond has grown from Toby being so little that he drew on the bottoms of Uncle’s desks to Toby being his age now with his drawings now wallpapering Uncle’s office. And the love in both of their faces for one other! Those two pages are a master class on different ways someone can show love. The love is in the details of those two pages.

I totally agree with you! I love this image and their obvious love for each other. Thanks for sharing what you love about it with us! What's something you want your readers to know about Just Right?

I can hear Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice and the Hamilton’s cast sing, “It’s the Ten Duel Commandments” because my book has “The Ten Just Right Commandments”. They’re not numbered or listed, but they’re shown by the words and actions of Ma and Uncle.

The commandments are “Number one: Remember, you are just right,” “Number two: Be with people and in places that feel just right to you,” “Number three: ‘Who’ and ‘where’ is just right is where you feel happy and healthy," “Number four: . . .” Well, you just have to read the book to learn the other ones. And when you do, you’ll realize how we can make the world more just right in instant and “just right now” ways.

WOW - I hope readers dive in and uncover the remaining seven commandments. Are there any new projects you are working on now that you can share a tidbit with us?

I didn’t expect a second and a third picture-book to pour out of my when I wrote my first picture book. So, I have good news for the parent who snagged a copy of Just Right before it sold out at my recent bookstore event (that parent messaged me that his daughter asked to read Just Right five times). I have good news for the mom who messaged me that her children keep reading Just Right to each other and that I need to write another picture book.

The good news is my second picture book, Little Artists (illustrated by Reggie Brown), and my third, Uncle (illustrated by Bea Jackson), are scheduled to follow Just Right, and just like it, they celebrate loving caregivers and helpers in our lives. They’re rich with the uplifting messaging and yummy eye candy of Just Right and will leave readers feeling magical, joyful, celebrated, seen, and that they’re just right.

Ooh, I can't wait to read these next two books! Congrats! Thank you, Torrey, for sharing with us a bit about yourself and your debut picture book.