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Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people. This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Penguin Young Readers.

In honor of Graphic Novels in Libraries Month, we're presenting a series of special Shelf Care Interviews. Today, we're kicking off the month's festivities (which include webinars, panels, our July issue, and an issue supplement; watch our website for updates) with this episode starring Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. Their graphic novel, When Stars Are Scattered, published by Dial, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, hit shelves in April.

You can listen to this Shelf Care Interview here. This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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SARAH HUNTER: Thank you very much for being here, Victoria and Omar, I'm really excited to talk to you.

VICTORIA JAMIESON: Me too. Thanks for having us.
Okay, so Victoria, you typically write and illustrate on your own. And Omar, it sounds like from the back matter of the book that you weren't originally planning to turn this into a graphic novel for kids. Can you talk about how this project came about? How did it change, if at all, throughout the process?
JAMIESON: Yeah, Omar, do you want to start with your story? You were planning on writing a book before I met you, well before I met you.

MOHAMED: Since I came to America, I always thought of writing a book and sharing my story with the rest of the world. And the main reason I wanted to do [it] always was: I wanted to be the voice for the voiceless. And the voiceless are those refugees who are still in the refugee camp, and I had written about a rough draft of my personal story saved on my computer, and I always was looking for coauthor or publisher, something of that sort. And then I met with Victoria Jamieson.
Omar, I'm curious if working with Victoria changed how you saw your project, the way you originally envisioned it?
MOHAMED: Yes, this was something new to me because I wasn't into becoming author or writing books or graphic novels or that, so it wasn't something on my [mind]. I had a dream about it, but I thought it was hard, this and that, but when I met with Victoria and she told me she writes children's books, graphic novel of the sort. And she showed me her previous books and that stuff. And then, at that time, I trusted her. And we just work together from there. And the outcome was beyond my imagination. So it was way better than I had hoped.
So collaboration is a really unique and interesting experience for all creators who work together. And Victoria, I was thinking when I was reading this book about the sort of especially unique circumstances of illustrating somebody else's life story. What were some of the challenges of drawing Omar's memories? I'm thinking about your style, specifically, because you have a pretty distinct style in all of your work. Did you feel like it was challenging to mesh your personal style with a different person's story? Or did it come together kind of organically? So, Omar, can you tell me a little bit about your experience on the other side of this, having your memories translated into pictures from an illustrator? Was there anything that you felt particularly strongly needed to be in Victoria's artwork? So again, Omar, this is your life story. And obviously, there is so much that I'm assuming got left out of this. How did you approach paring down your experiences into a story that would fit in the allotted pages that you have? And was there anything that was particularly difficult for you to leave out? Did you end up combining some characters into the group of friends that you had in the camp? I feel like I read that in the author's note in the back. So, can you tell me a little bit more about your collaborative process on the book? Obviously, Omar, you came with a full-fledged story and Victoria, you came with your own background and style and art. What was it like working together to make what we all read now?
MOHAMED: It was really hard for Victoria. For me, in the beginning, I gave her the rough draft as written before. So she has to go over, through all that. And that rough draft was meant for authors. And then the next step was -I had two full time jobs, too, at that time - meeting with Victoria. We used to always have communication, text message, Facebook, even she comes to my, when I'm at work or weekends, even at home or my house, where she asks me follow-up questions after she emails me and I answer all the questions. And then we meet where we specifically go over any detailed question that Victoria may have, too. Then she comes with her artwork where we go over together and say this is how it was, like this writing, this, this, and that. So, it was really time-consuming for her, but for me, it wasn't that way.
I think that you touched on this a little bit, Omar, in the back matter to the book, but I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to what you hope readers take away from When Stars Are Scattered?
MOHAMED: I hope readers [know], first of all, it was more about education of where, I really wanted people to know who those refugees are. Because we only see about refugees, villages, coming to America, going to Canada, so I really wanted people to know who those refugees that you always hear from the news, that we always hear from our elected officials, who those refugees are. That is one thing I wanted to be able to educate about. And I wanted people to know and understand that those refugees didn't choose to be refugees and no human being wants to be a refugee. The last thing I ever wanted for myself was to grow up in a refugee camp where nothing was available to me; no resources, nothing was available to me. So that's one thing I really wanted people to know and understand about who those refugees are. Also, the other thing people wanted to learn is that one kind thing that you do for human beings, it may have a huge change on his entire life. For example, if Susana Martinez, the social worker with the UNHCR who helped me with the school uniform, looks at the small kind [thing], I was able to go finish my high school and now speak with you in English that I've learned back home and also when I came to America. So you don't know one small thing that you do for another human being, the influence it may have on them. It may be small from your side, but it may change his or her entire life. So never never think one small kind act doesn't mean anything to you. It may mean a lot to them. So that's some of the things that I really wanted people to take from this book.

JAMIESON: And, for me, one of the things I hope [is] that after people and kids read the book, they'll check out Refugee Strong. That was one of my biggest hopes for the book: that they'll see the important work that Omar is doing now, going back to Dadaab, and bringing school supplies to kids who are going to school there. And yeah, I think that was one of my big hopes. When I first started volunteering, it was kind of because I felt like the refugee crisis was far away and there was nothing I could do here in America. But there's lots you could do in America, I realized. You can volunteer in your community, you can do fundraising. Where Omar works, they always have drives for laptops or backpacks to help new arrivals to the United States kind of get accustomed. That's my other hope: that kids will realize there's a lot they can do personally to help.

That's wonderful. Okay, we are coming up on our last question: can you please tell me about a time that libraries or librarians helped you in any way?
JAMIESON: I'll start because I'm very excited by this question. I was very excited to see it on your list because I spent, I'd say, like three quarters of my childhood in the library. We were just always at the library-all the time. We were there so often that my mom eventually got hired to work there. Like she didn't have a degree in library science. She was like, you're here all the time anyway, why don't you just work here? So, so much of my childhood was just wrapped up in the public library and doing summer reading programs. And when we got into middle school and high school, my mom learned all the gossip around town from the library. Like, kids would come in on Saturday and she's like, I hear so and so is dating so and so. How do you know that? So, libraries have always been such a big part of my life. I can't imagine life without them.
Thank you so much, Omar and Victoria, for joining us today. This has been a lovely conversation.
JAMIESON: Can I say real quick our colorist was Iman Geddy and she was fantastic, such a wonderful colorist.
Yeah, colorists don't get a lot of attention, but they do some really heavy lifting for graphic novels, so thank you for mentioning her. Thanks also to our sponsor, Penguin Young Readers, for making this interview possible! And, we'll see you next time.
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The Shelf Care Interview: Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

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Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people. This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Penguin Young Readers. In honor of Graphic Novels in Libraries Month, we're presenting a series of special Shelf Care Interviews. Today, we're kick

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In Guardian Australia's series, Ask A Children's Author, writers open themselves up to questions from their young readers - about their books, about their characters, about anything at all, really.

First up was Andy Griffiths - theauthor of the Bad Book series, the Bum series and, of course, the number one bestselling 13-Storey Treehouse series - who answered all manner of questions about writing, about his next book, and about whether or not his bum has ever come off.

Then we had Garth Nix, whose bestselling books, including the Old Kingdom, Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series, are read by fantasy enthusiasts of all ages. He talked about queer representation, perfectionism and his writing tips - and answered some very curly questions too.

Now we have Alison Lester, who has been delighting younger readers - and their parents - for more than 30 years with her beautiful illustrated children's picture books including My Farm, Imagine, and Magic Beach, as well as her board books and young adult novels.

If your child loves her stories, her illustrations, or both, and would like to ask her a question, please post it in the comments along with their first name, age and city.

Or you can film them asking the question and email the video to australia.culture@theguardian.com with the subject heading "Alison Lester".

The question might make it into the video we publish with all her answers - so long as you send it before Monday 6 July.
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Are We There Yet? Alison Lester, beloved author, is here to answer your child's questions

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In Guardian Australia's series, Ask A Children's Author, writers open themselves up to questions from their young readers - about their books, about their characters, about anything at all, really.