It’s Always Spooky Season For This Los Angeles Children’s Book Author

Inside Rhode Montijo’s Los Angeles studio, it’s always spooky season.

The black and orange adornments show off Montijo’s almost three-decade art career and collection of vintage Halloween decorations.

“This is a very geeky comment here,” Montijo said before explaining that in the same way the sun charges Superman’s powers, his inspiration flows from the holiday.

“There's lots of cobwebs here too, which I just decided to leave up, because some people pay for that,” Montijo said. “I thought it added to the atmosphere.”

Montijo’s latest picture book, Skeletown: Sí. ¡No!, is inspired by another fall tradition, Día de Los Muertos. The story explores the adventures — and misadventures — of two calavera kids in just two words.

Montijo modified the suggestion of a former editor to try and tell a complete story using just two words.

The Skeletown series is twenty years in the making. Sí. ¡No!, the first installment, published in August and Montijo is currently working on the third book.

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“What if I could do it with two Spanish words?” Montijo wondered. “And what if I could do it with the help of visuals that anybody can hopefully understand it even if they don't speak Spanish?”

Montijo’s inspiration

Montijo remembers trick-or-treating with his brother in Stockton one year. He doesn’t remember how old he was, but he does remember his costume, a vampire, and his brother’s, Chewbacca.

They heard cackling from behind a curtain in a neighbor’s garage. The curtain opened to reveal a lanky, flailing scarecrow illuminated by a flashing strobe light.

First they were scared, but then they saw the teenagers responsible for the scarecrow’s haphazard limbs.

From then on, “I just always loved that feeling of what's behind the curtain,” Montijo said.

At one point Montijo created paper dolls of the Skeleton characters

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Montijo turned his desk chair, a Christmas gift from his wife, into a whimsical character.

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Montijo also sculpts in ceramic and Super Sculpey and created the skeleton in the center of the image.

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A old note to Montijo from a friend's daughter about an upcoming Halloween party among the decorations in the studio.

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A sketch in Montijo's studio.

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Around the same time every year, Montijo’s family put up a makeshift ofrenda in their home. There were family photos, water, soda, and a red licorice Super Rope — his late uncle’s favorite candy.

“It was remembering our loved ones,” Montijo said. “Putting out things that they enjoyed in their lives when they were alive and just celebrating them.”

Montijo’s dad is from Hermosillo and his mom is from Mexicali, where his parents met. Montijo grew up visiting family in the bordertown, but it was on a trip to central Mexico in his early 20s when he fell in love with the country’s ancient civilizations.

Back in the Bay area, where he lived at the time, Montijo exhausted the local library and used bookstores’ collections about Aztec and Mayan mythology.

Montijo poured his research into his first comic book, Pablo’s Inferno, about a little boy who stumbles into Mexico’s spirit world.

“When I did that book series, there weren't, at that time, there weren't any characters that looked like me as the main protagonist,” Montijo said.

The publishing industry has long failed to reflect the diversity of people that live in this country. For example, in the late 90s, about 1% of all children’s and young adult books were by or about Latine people, according to research from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. Last year about 18% of books were by and about Latino people, while at least 25% of U.S. kids are Latino. 

Montijo self-published his comic books and sold them from elaborate cardboard booths at WonderCon, Comic-Con, and other festivals for years. His wares also include prints, stickers, shirts, Black cat-shaped clocks, and other ephemera.

“Maybe there's better ways of using your time, but those are the things that make me happy,” Montijo said. “I really jam pack them in October time.”

There’s proof in the mountain of cardboard boxes of merchandise piled outside his studio to make room for our interview.

Creating Skeletown

Montijo started shopping the idea of a picture book set in a town of skeletons more than 20 years ago. He drew on two series that feature eclectic groups of kids on adventures that occasionally go awry — Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” and the Mexican sitcom “El Chavo del Ocho.”

Montijo said publishers couldn't see past his characters’ lack of skin.

“The idea of skeletons or kids as skeletons kind of creeped them out,” Montijo said.

For years, Montijo brought Skeletown to life in prints, T-shirts, and one very limited edition plush. The single doll in existence sits on the couch in his studio.

Montijo sketches one of his characters from his newest children's book, Skeletown: SÍ. ¡NO! The skeletons from the story have appeared on prints, t-shirts, zines and in sculptures over the years.

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Then in 2021, Little, Brown and Company offered to publish not just one, but four, Skeletown books.

The first in the series introduces the characters Skelly and Skully.

The story is a series of scenes that swing from innocent (Sí) one page to mischievous (¡No!) the next.

For example, giving your friend a balloon — Sí! Tying so many balloons to your friend that they start to float away — ¡No!

Eating a piece of cake — Sí! Eating the entire cake in one bite — ¡No! (Though Montijo said at least one child believes the latter scenario also belongs in the Sí category.)

The book’s climactic ¡NO! is when Skully launches his bike off a ramp over his friends. This scene is “potentially” inspired by Montijo’s own childhood — though he declined to say whether he was on the bike, beneath it, or a witness.

The heart of the story is in how the little skeletons recover and support one another in the resulting wreck.

Make! Believe!

The book is filled with subtle details rooted in Montijo’s immersion in Latin American history and culture.

Montijo points out an anxious carrot-shaped character peeking out from many of the pages.

“Skully is just this carefree, curious kid,” Montijo explained. “Wilfredo, unfortunately, is the worry doll who has to worry about all of this kid's adventures.”

The diminutive figures are said to absorb a child’s concerns while they sleep and originate in Mayan culture.

Montijo said Skeletown's architecture was inspired by Guanajuato and other parts of Mexico. In the background, there's both a church and a pyramid.

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Wilfredo, the worry doll, is always concerned about Skully's antics. In this scene, the skeleton boy rides a bike with one hand.

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Montijo imagined Skeletown as a Mexican city. A panorama of the town shows a burro munching grass, a paletero, tuba player, soccer-playing kids, and a family of ducks — all skeletons, of course.

A church and a pyramid sit atop hills in the background.

After conquistadors massacred indigenous people, they often built atop sacred sites. The world’s largest pyramid, Tlachihualtepetl, is beneath a church in Cholula.

But in Skeletown, the pyramid rises above the church.

“I just thought, ‘Hey, what if it were different in Skeletown?’” Montijo said.

The idea that creativity is a portal into another reality — Montijo cited “Harold and the Purple Crayon” as an influence — is part of why he creates children’s books.

Today, there’s a sign hanging in his studio that reads Make! Believe!

The punctuation turns the noun of an imagined place, into an enthusiastic encouragement to create and have conviction in those creations.

Celebrate a spooky centennial