Keishia Lee Louis, a writer and teacher living in Atlanta, is always on the lookout for new things to share with her students. And like all the best teachers, Louis knows that the most powerful lessons aren’t about memorizing a chronology of dry facts; they’re about what kids pick up regarding their own value and the value of others who are different from them. Those inherited values can make kids feel unsure of themselves and judgmental of others, or they can affirm that embracing multiculturalism and demonstrating courage in the face of discrimination make the world a better place.

Louis teaches a middle-school journalism class, so sharing stories and highlighting unsung heroes is central to her life’s work. When she came across the history of Jovita Idar, a journalist and passionate advocate for bilingual education, Louis knew she wanted to spread Idar’s story even wider than her own classroom.

“If leer es poder, then how powerful are your words when you put the pen in your hands and your ideas go to print? Jovita Idar was one of the most outstanding, outspoken journalists of her time,” Louis says. “She advocated for bilingual and bicultural public education and wrote during the Mexican Revolution. She chronicled the reality of living in Laredo, Texas, as a Mexican American during one of the most turbulent times of U.S. history after the Civil War.

“In her own words regarding education: ‘Mexican children in Texas need an education. But if they are taught the biography of Washington but not Hidalgo, the exploits of Lincoln but not Juárez, that child will be indifferent to his heritage.’

“I agree. Young people must know that people who share a common heritage have done great things so they will be inspired to do great things, too. Children must also learn that people have potential regardless of their cultural background or language differences.”

Louis’ book, Use Your Palabras, Jovita!, not only brings Idar’s story to a modern, young audience, but does so in both English and Spanish. With painterly illustrations done by Diego Alejandro Escobar Triana, Kirkus Reviews calls Use Your Palabras, Jovita! “an accessible and beautifully drawn biography of a formidable woman.”

Louis was already an experienced writer when she came across Idar’s story, but she’d never written anything like this before. For that matter, she’d never come across someone like Idar before. “She was a real Renaissance woman—a muckraking journalist, an educator, she ran a series of newspapers alongside her family, and she was also a nurse during the Mexican Revolution. So she was absolutely someone I wanted my students to know about, but I also taught about her as part of a broader unit about muckraking journalism.”

Louis studied writing as an undergraduate at NYU, then focused on writing kids’ books when she got a new job teaching in public schools in Atlanta ten years ago. She wrote a few drafts of different projects but started pushing herself to see books through to publication when her own students voiced their enthusiastic support.

“I have other books out there,” says Louis, “but Use Your Palabras, Jovita! is the first one where I really felt like I was shining a light on someone who had been lost to history. I was looking for more resources about her and [not] finding any, so I decided to write it myself. I found a really good illustrator, Diego Alejandro Escobar Triana, and the rest is history.”

Louis found Triana through Behance, a platform created by Adobe to help creative professionals like illustrators find work, and for people needing creative help to find the right person. Louis loved working with Triana and admired the creative vision he brought to Idar’s story. Instead of dictating to him exactly what she wanted, Louis was excited for Triana to make his own contribution. “I believe and support human artists for all of my projects,” she says, “whether they are the GraphicMama.com creative team or illustrators that I have come to know through networks like Behance and SCBWI. We must continue to lift up human professionals to see the picture-book space thrive.”

Bilingual and multicultural education was so central to Idar’s life and work, Louis knew she needed to write Use Your Palabras, Jovita! with Spanish words and invite English-speaking kids to learn them. Kirkus notes that “the text uses short, accessible sentences, couching Spanish words in English phrases in ways that makes them easy for English-only speakers to decode. (A helpful glossary is also given at the back of the book.)”

“At my school, we are very diverse,” says Louis, who is also certified in English Language Learning and has students who speak English, Spanish, and French. “We were already working on a project for Hispanic Heritage Month,” she says, “so I really wanted to inspire my Spanish-speaking students. And Idar was for bilingual and bicultural education at a time when neither the president nor the people in her community supported that idea. Idar pushed against imposing the English language on all kids, because she didn’t want them to lose connections to their heritage, or to think that their native language was not valid.”

Louis’ students were thrilled to see copies of the finished book. Because she works full time in her own classroom, Louis doesn’t have a lot of time to travel to other schools to promote the book. But word of Use Your Palabras, Jovita! is traveling anyway, and she did a book signing at her own local library, which had seen the starred Kirkus review and was eager to host her.

But more than the positive feedback and glowing reviews, Louis is focused on making Jovita Idar a better-known figure. She hopes to partner with more schools and libraries, not to uplift herself but to share her story with more kids. “I want her story to teach them that they, too, have a voice,” she says. “Children should know that they have rights, even if they aren’t voters yet, and that they can make a difference.”

Louis also notes that Idar’s close-knit family is an integral part of her story, with a deep love for activism, and in particular, a father who believed in women’s rights. She took her father’s progressive views on women—ones that extended to making sure his daughter was well educated—and worked to bring that same support to other women. Idar was a big contributor to many activist causes, which Louis notes is due to Idar’s strong faith. “She was a person of faith who didn’t just sit back in the pews,” she says. “She took those beliefs to her feet!”

Looking back on her writing career leading up to Use Your Palabras, Jovita!, Louis can see how far she’s progressed as an artist, and despite feeling “a little bit embarrassed” about her very first projects, she takes the same advice she gives her students, which is to allow herself to “learn and grow.”

Along those lines, Louis is considering pursuing a traditional publisher going forward, to learn how that kind of process works. She has joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and signed up for a picture-book challenge called “12x12,” which she hopes will help her further develop her craft as a picture-book author. She hasn’t yet started submitting to agents but is always ready to learn and find new challenges.

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn.