Zeke Peña is an artist, writer and storyteller. His recent picture book, Sundust, earned a 2026 Caldecott Honor Book Award. His art is also praised in Hold, in Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel and in My Papi Has a Motorcycle. He creates in his home studio in Northwest Arkansas, and this week he visited the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio to talk about his recent honor, his books, his art and his love of storytelling. He says he remembers creating at a very early age.
Peña: I love to draw. I love comics. My dad got me into comics. That was kind of my first introduction to books. He never had comics, though, which was funny. We didn't have comics in the house. I just knew he liked them and so I liked them. I think when I was younger, I just liked trying to draw the cartoon characters and the comic characters that I really liked. And I think that's when I first realized that I felt good when I was drawing, and I think it was then, when I was that age, I was like, I like this. I like the way this feels. I like doing this thing. And I feel that that was kind of when I knew that it was something that I wanted to continue doing. He would tell us stories when we were kids, and I've been thinking a lot lately about when my story journey began. He was the storyteller. He would sit down at night and make up these stories. And they were stories about animals and how the animals got to be the way they are. How did the rabbit get long teeth? Or how did the fox get long ears or stuff like that?
Kellams: Oh my gosh, what a joy. You were recently in Chicago. What was that all about?
Peña: That was a really exciting thing. So I was, my book Sundust was published in 2025. It received a Caldecott Honor Award, which is an award for the illustrations in a book. I can't tell you how little I expected it. I couldn't have expected it less. I just was not aware of the timing of when those awards come out and stuff. And so I got that news. It came as a huge surprise. It's an amazing honor for the book, an honor for myself. The story is an ode to El Paso, where I'm from and the people of El Paso and the desert. So I take it as an honor for us and for our story. We went up to Chicago. They had this amazing banquet style dinner. Got dressed up and went in front of, I don't know, like 2,000 people to receive this really prestigious book award.
Kellams: It's a tribute to El Paso, but it's universal. It's about these two young people, adolescents, and this journey. They go beyond the wall to see something beyond their neighborhood. And it's based in reality, but it lets them explore. I love it. There's an innocence there, but there's also a melancholy, sure. But at the end they want to explore again the next day. And there's just this exuberance.
Peña: I love that you brought out the melancholy. Not many people point that out. It's a very joyous thing, but being in the desert is boring and it's hot. And when you're young in El Paso, Texas, it's boring. And everyone, when I was growing up, I don't know what's the case now with the young folks that I have there now, I have family there and nieces and nephews, and we always wanted to get out of there. We wanted to leave there. It was boring. And there's this kind of melancholy when you feel like you're in the center of the universe as a young person. I think in El Paso it accentuates that because it has such a massive sky and there's so much emptiness. So I'm always about keeping things in balance, that we can have this really beautiful experience being in the desert and trying to maybe think about the world that we live in a little bit.
As young people, that scope is very narrow when we're young. But I just wanted to touch on that. And I had read books when I was younger about the desert. And a lot of the times the desert is just the backdrop, right, in books that I had read when I was in school, from the '80s and '90s. And they're mostly written by people who are not necessarily from the desert. So I was really interested in how can I center the desert as a character in the story and really just celebrate the really special things that happen there, and the really special people that live there. But it also is universal. It's so specific. But I also just tried to leave it open for folks to think a little bit about the place that they live. What do you see when you go outside and what are the things that stand out to you as a young person? And what are those moments in time when you're a young person that resonate throughout your life? And that was one of them for me. Sundust takes place throughout the day, but it comes to a close at sunset. And I just always remember that as a kid, just having this reverence for the beautiful colors in the sky. And it resonates through my life in such a special way.
Kellams: The boy I identified with because he's like, I don't know if I want to do this. Yes, that was me. And the girl, who I'm assuming is his sister, she's like, no, we've got to go beyond the stone wall. We've got to see what's out there.
Peña: Yes, the sister's the one that's driving, the brave one. That was directly taken from my personal experience. As a young person I was very outgoing and adventurous, but very pensive and very worrying. I could think of all the different ways that something was going to go wrong in the desert or whatever when we would go out there, and my sister was just very adventurous and didn't have that. And that continues through our life. That's still us today. And so I like that really special sibling relationship that happens in the book, where it gives you some space to reflect on the person in your life. You might not have a sibling, or you might, but we all have those people from when we're younger that we kind of relate to. And sometimes you want to be like them, or sometimes we despise them, or sometimes, most of the time, it's both.
Kellams: Do you think there's some autobiography here?
Peña: Yeah, sure.
Kellams: Do you think there's also a little nudge to the children who were like you and me that are a little tentative, like go a little bit?
Peña: Yeah, definitely. Very transparently, I'm trying to get kids to go outside a little bit, and adults for that matter, everyone. Just a little inspiration to be like, hey, wow, the places that we live in. I live here in Northwest Arkansas. We've been here for a long time and it's just such a special place when you go outside, the creeks and the plants, the water. When I first moved here, I was like, oh my goodness, the water. I've never seen so much clean, clear water. So I'm just trying to give folks a little spark to get outside. And we have so many incentives to stay inside, so many incentives to be comfortable in our homes doing whatever on whatever device. And it's nice just to take a break every now and then. And then on another level, it's also a little reminder for us to dream wildly, to just imagine. The story takes a turn for the fantastic.
Kellams: I was going to ask about the art because the art is grounded. At some point we see cacti or a crane or maybe some abandoned machinery. But then, as you say, it takes a turn for the fantastic. Did you think about the art you're creating? Fantastic, but you're keeping us rooted. We end up in the home. Did you think about that during the creative?
Peña: Yeah, I mean, again, just trying to have all things in balance. I was afraid to go fantastic with the storytelling. It's part of my work. I'm always wanting to do the most fantastic thing in my work. But I think for whatever reason, when you're working on books, the permanence of the book is very present in the process. So I took a little encouragement from my editor to say, well, let's just go all the way. What happens if you just go all the way with it? And so I had sketches that were feeding kind of the story that I had worked on previously. I'm always working on things for long periods of time, in little seeds here and there. I work on a little idea here, and then years pass and something else pops up. And so this book was me gathering things from all over, from all those years.
But I guess there's this idea that if I can put something in there that's so normal and so much a part of our day, like hanging out with your sibling or your cousin or whoever, and you're just in this neighborhood, and then slowly grab someone with that and then just slowly kind of take them along and get more fantastic and more fantastic, I'm going to lose some folks. Some young readers are going to be like, this is too absurd. I've had young people be like, what is this? What are you doing? Which I love. There's all different types of personalities, and sometimes people's suspension of disbelief isn't as ready as others. So it was fun to be like, okay, what does happen here? I probably could have gone even further with it, but I think it's a nice balance of being very ordinary and very fantastic at the same time.
Kellams: Hold. Which is marvelous. A very young child who wants to hold things.
Peña: Yes.
Kellams: My favorite part is when he wants to hold the rain. And you talk about joy and exploration. This book is about, you know, there aren't many words, but it's just about joy.
Peña: Yeah. I have to give credit right off the bat to Randy Ribay, an amazing author. If you're unfamiliar with his work, check it out. Primarily a YA author, primarily writing for older kids, but he just wrote this really sparse manuscript. And I had been putting it into the universe that I really wanted to work with him, and this came across, and I was so grateful for it. Such few words, but just so profound at the same time.
Kellams: So when there are so few words, the art's really got to carry.
Peña: Yeah, I mean, when I take a manuscript, if I don't see something right off the bat, it's probably not the best thing for me to work on. I saw something immediately, and it's attributed to his descriptions. Authors don't always write a lot of descriptions. Some like to leave more space than others. But he just wrote these really distinct descriptions, and I was like, this book has the amazing opportunity to be hilarious and be so sweet. So the art, but I also tried to keep the art sparse. It's not a whole lot there. And I'm trying to let the readers and the listeners, because with picture books you sometimes have an adult reading and you sometimes have a young person reading, how can I leave some space there for them to put themselves into it, to put their own spaces into it.
So I don't really spell out what the home looks like. The home is just empty, but the reader's going to fill those blanks in. The reader's going to fill that space in there, so that it can be their space and their story. And they chose us. Randy is the father of, I believe, a seven or eight year old now. His son is a little older, but I feel like when he started working on the story he was more toddler age. And I have a three year old, and so when they picked us it was like, here are these two dads that are just dealing with this on a daily basis. It was just such a pleasure to have space to put all of that energy and experience into.
Kellams: What can you tell me about Rad Dad?
Peña: Oh, yes. So Rad Dad, this is a new kind of story time series that we're doing at Dad Suggests Books, on Mission here in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We're the first one featured, Hold, the book we were just talking about, which just came out this past March. And I also read My Papi Has a Motorcycle, another book written by Isabel Quintero. It came out in 2019. This is an amazing bookstore. If you've never been to this bookstore, it is probably my favorite for sure, but it is one of the best young people's book spaces. They have children's literature of all ages, picture books all the way to YA and teen. Plus they have the most amazing reading space that is a recreation of a hobbit house, and it has a hobbit door to walk into, which is just like, whoa, my mind was blown when I saw that. So it's a little time for us to hold some space. We're going to be featuring different dads reading at different times in the story time. Bring your kids, bring the family, we'll have snacks. There's going to be some drawing demonstrations, and the next one will be coming up in August. And so we'll announce that, if you find us on Instagram.
Kellams: You love to tell stories. You heard stories growing up. That's not an accident, right?
Peña: Not an accident at all. I don't think I've fully processed the significance of my dad, as I was mentioning, my dad reading. He wasn't reading to us. He was inventing these stories. And I don't think I realized that when I was younger. It was just like, yeah, my dad's got these stories and they're amazing. And I never thought where they came from, but he was making them up. And my dad was a creative person that never had the privilege of being able to practice his creativity. He worked his whole life, worked for his family to provide for his family. He tried to own a restaurant for a little while, but it didn't work out. And so he just had this creativity inside of him, and I could see it come out in other places, like in the way he worked on the house and the way he did things and the way he just thought about things. And so it's really special for me to be able to practice that in my life and in my profession, to be able to come up with stories and reflect on our lives and provide that opportunity for other people. It's a really nice full circle moment for me, that I'm able to practice every day.
Kellams: You're born in the early '80s. So you're seeing picture books in the mid '80s. You're beginning to read in the early '90s. Did you see yourself in books that you had?
Peña: I didn't. Very straightforward, no. I don't ever recall having a book in my hands where the characters looked like me. I don't ever recall reading a book that took place in a place where I was from, which is really important, from a cultural standpoint. There aren't a whole lot of books about El Paso, but I think it's also just where the industry was at, the book publishing industry. Fortunately there's just this amazing thing that's happening right now where books are becoming more diverse. We're getting stories in people's own voices, these also collaborative cross-cultural collaborations that are happening. Like, for example, Randy and I, Randy's a Filipino American, I'm a Mexican American. So I think it's important for every kid to be able to see themselves in books and in literature. And it has such an impact on literacy. It has such an impact on cultural competency. There's just so many reasons in the classroom why we should have access to just more books rather than less books.
Kellams: People get picture books or young books and it will become part of their life for a long time. Some of your work is in households and is going to get passed down and be shared, and have a legacy of sorts, if only in that house. Do you think about that?
Peña: No, please don't make me think about that.
Kellams: No, it's wonderful.
Peña: Honestly, it's an honor that I don't take lightly. I don't take this lightly, what I do, that my work is being read to young people who are in a moment of their lives when they're impressionable and when they're going to receive things. I have to treat that with great care, in the same way that a teacher does, in the same way that a parent does. So I see the readers of my books, young readers, as an extension of my family.
There's this special relationship that happens when you're a picture book creator or a book creator, where you have this intimate relationship with the person reading. The beautiful thing about picture books is that it's almost always a collective reading. So not only do I have this relationship with an individual reader, I have this relationship with their parent, their grandparent, their teacher, their older sibling, their older caretaker, whoever it is. So that's just so special. I've always been interested in story in my work, and it's just the most special way for me to practice what I do as a storyteller. And I'm just so grateful for anyone who's willing to pass on the book. And I hope that my books are torn up. I hope that the covers are ripped. I hope that there are crayon drawings all over my drawings. The whole point is for them to be this kind of living document of the person who owns them.
Kellams: Congratulations on the Caldecott and all the great work. Come back when you've got something else.
Peña: Thank you so much, Kyle. I super appreciate the time, and thanks for having me here.
Peña's book, Sundust, was awarded a 2026 Caldecott Honor Book Award, and his art can be found in other books, including Hold, Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel and My Papi Has a Motorcycle. Much more about Zeke can be found at zpvisual.com, and by going to his Instagram account at @zpvisual. We spoke Monday at the Carver Center for Public Radio.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
