There are almost 400,000 children in foster care in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families. But a statistic not often cited, said local author Steve Rios, is that there are more than 12 million Americans who lived in foster care at one point in their life.
Rios has been working with foster children for the past 30 years, and has spent the last eight as the senior director of Positive Pathways, a Florida Department of Children and Families Program that helps children in foster care pursue higher education. A former features reporter for the Miami Herald, Rios initially dreamed of becoming a public speaker.
“In the early ’90s, I was just graduated and was trying to figure out what to do with my life,” he said. “And I listened to Les Brown, and Willie Jolly, who are wonderful motivational speakers who just said, ‘Live your dream.'”
So when Rios, who splits his time between Ormond Beach and South Florida, decided to begin writing again, he found himself gravitating toward children’s books — and his characters, Oly and Opi, a pair of dumbo octopus twins, were born.
He’s since written five books in the Oly and Opi series, which eases the readers into the topic of foster care. The books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Observer recently spoke with Rios about his children’s book series.
Tell me about Oly and Opi.
Well, Oly and Opi are little dumbo octopuses way down in the sea, and these particular guys are about 3,000 feet down in the area of the Puerto Rico trench, and that’s why they are with a foster toadfish named Tia Pinky. Tia means aunt in Spanish, and the characters are very unique in that they’re pretty much born ready to go, but they are not born with their mother nearby. She’s already gone because it’s so far down, deep and dark that the mother octopus of dumbo octopuses doesn’t have to do what the other octopuses do, which is nurture hundreds and thousands of eggs until they’re born. So she puts a few of them here, a few of them there and moves on, which plays perfectly into my background, which is in foster care.
So these little Dumbo octopuses, they’re so cute. The reality is that the real ones look just like cartoon characters. And so we have these books.
How does your background in foster care contribute or add to your love of writing?
For me, it’s writing with a real purpose. It’s not necessarily to make a lot of money. It is because the message has to be delivered, and if you see the books, Tia Pinky tells the little octopuses, “Look, I know I don’t look like you. It’s hard for you to be here in this home, but I want you to know that your mom loves you and that I love you, and that it’ll be okay.” And this is what a lot of these little children need to hear, and so my writing is truly an outgrowth of my passion and my mission.
Is there a central message you’re trying to communicate to the readers of your books?
These little boys and girls — or in this case, little octopuses — they’re very sensitive, and it’s not easy for them to ask even the most basic questions about, “Why am I here, in this home, instead of being with my home,” right? And so it’s really to help the people who take care of these kids, give them a way to communicate with them. When the little ones see these characters asking Tia Pinky, “Where’s our mom?” That might give them an opportunity to say, “Do you ever think about that as well?” But then we move on from there and then the other books are just wonderful, fun adventures that just happen to be with these same characters. So it doesn’t harp on the foster care thing after the first book is done. Then we just go on to other books that are just regular children’s books.
What has been the most rewarding experience so far now that you’ve been writing?
About three months ago, I made a presentation to a group of foster children and they were from 1 year old to like 11 years old, and so it wasn’t easy to make the presentation. It was like a one-room schoolhouse and so I had to do a variety of different activities, but I did have the chance to share with them, especially the little girls, that a lot of these scientists who work with these animals in real life are female and so one of the little girls at the end said, “You know, before you came here, I thought that I wanted to be a scientist, but now I’m 100% convinced that I want that,” and she came up and she gave me a hug. So that’s exactly what I’m hoping, that these children earlier in life will be inspired by these characters and the people who help us all learn about these characters.
