Carmen T Bernier Grand - FAQ about Carmen

How do you say your last name?
It doesn’t matter to me how you say Bernier. I don’t say it the right way either.

Bernier is French. Some five generations ago, three French brothers came to live in Puerto Rico. In French, you don’t pronounce the last “r” in Bernier. But since we speak Spanish in Puerto Rico, I pronounce the “r”.

In Puerto Rico, you would use your father’s name but also your mother’s maiden name, which also appears last. When I was single, most legal papers had me listed as Carmen T. Bernier Rodríguez. My mother’s maiden name is Rodríguez.

Grand is my married name. Grand also means big. I am very short: 4' 9" and shrinking! I will never die. Instead, I will disappear. But I do have a big last name: Bernier-Grand.

Is your husband Puerto Rican?
No, he’s Canadian, but grew up in Portland, Oregon. I met him while we were studying math at the University of Connecticut.

Do you have kids?
Two. Guillermo is a mechanical engineer and is designing legs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Juliana teaches first grade.

Do you have pets?
We have a dog. His name is Falcon because there is a book and a movie called the Maltese Falcon. He is a Maltese. He loves to play patty-cake, and hide-and-seek. He’s bilingual! He says “Wow-wow,” when speaking in English, and “Jau-jau,” when speaking in Spanish.

Do you have brothers or sisters?
My brother Segundo retired as the Vice-President of Operations at the Banco Popular in Puerto Rico. He doesn’t want me to write about him.

My sister Lisette retired as the Principal at Truman School in New Haven, Connecticut. I want to write a book about her!

Where do you get your ideas?
You have as many ideas as I do. Ideas are everywhere. You just have to look.

I got the idea for Juan Bobo:Four Folktales From Puerto Rico when my author friend Eric Kimmel asked me to write stories that I heard when I was growing up.

I got the idea to write Poet And Politician Of Puerto Rico: Don Luis Munoz Marin after reading Lider y Maestro, a biography that my uncle Elfren Bernier wrote about Muñoz Marín - the first elected governor of Puerto Rico. What he wrote intrigued me because, until then, I didn’t know many of the things in the book. So, I decided to write a book for young adults about him.

The idea to write In The Shade Of The Nispero Tree began one day when I was missing my first-grade friend Hilcia Montañez. I wanted to write about her, but the characters took over my story and began to tell me their own story.

Who Helped Ox was a work-for-hire, Scholastic asked me to write a circular story. That means that they wanted the characters to end the story where they began. I remembered this story that my grandfather used to tell. The book is number 68 out of a collection of 72. I only wrote Who Helped Ox.

Shake It, Morena is a collection of songs, games, riddles, stories that I sang, played, solved, and heard when I was growing up.

Cesar is my only book that is not about Puerto Rico. I didn’t think I could write it because I am not Mexican but after researching the farmworkers’ leader, the story of César Chavez grabbed my heart.

When did you start writing?
I wrote my first story in second grade. My teacher asked us to write a composition and I wrote about my teacher chewing gum in school. The paper came back with a note from my teacher that said: Great Imagination! But my sister said that the note meant that I was a liar. I didn’t write another story until my children were born in 1981.

How long does it take to write a book?
A long time.

I write in my second language. I can write in Spanish, but most of my books are in English. It takes me longer than it might take a native English speaker.