- Latino artist Rocky Casillas Aguirre founded Rokaturas, an arts and <a href="https://comicvibe.com/movie-concert-tickets-to-get-costlier-in-mumbai-bmcs-proposes-up-to-570-entertainment-tax-hike/” title=”Movie, concert tickets to get costlier in Mumbai? BMC's proposes up to 570% entertainment tax hike”>entertainment studio dedicated to creating mental health resources for kids through books and comics.
- Aguirre’s children’s book “Where did Anxiety Go?” and comic series “Twitch and the Mystic Weenie” help kids process and express their emotions through relatable characters and stories.
- Aguirre self-published the first two books and is working to find a publisher to reach more kids across the country, while also creating a 170-foot mural in Northfield celebrating authors and emotions.
For Rocky Casillas Aguirre, mental health wasn’t a topic of conversation growing up, and his story isn’t unique.
“Having grown up in a Latino household, we never talked about mental health as a kid,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre is a Latino artist who founded Rokaturas, a Northfield arts and entertainment studio dedicated to creating mental health re
He created this space because the pandemic hit him especially hard, but he took refuge in sketching.
“During that time, instead of like journaling about my emotions and like trying to make sense of the world around me, I started drawing. I was personifying my feelings as a way to understand them, giving them their own identity, turning them into their own characters and in the process of doing that I was able to overcome anxiety and panic attacks and created books based on my own personal experience,” Aguirre said.
Art was his way of coping, and he wanted to help others do the same.
“There are a lot of kids who grew up in households like mine where they’re not talking about it with their parents,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre said there is so much terminology for mental health that it’s hard to simplify it to make it more digestible for kids and teens. So, he wrote a children’s book, “Where did Anxiety Go?” and a comic series, “Twitch and the Mystic Weenie.”
“Twitch is the main character, he’s a little flame and he represents the spark in all of us,” he said. “Being able to read something that’s so highly visual [like a comic] helps them connect words with pictures, so it deepens that understanding of a message you’re trying to present in the book.”
Aguirre said that along Twitch’s journey to find his parents, he meets Mystic Weenie, a 5,000-year-old hot dog. Together they go on a journey of self-discovery.
“Twitch doesn’t like being a flame because everything he touches he turns to dust, and I think a lot of us can relate to things about ourselves that we don’t like or would like to change, but in the process of this journey he finds that the thing he likes the least about himself is actually his greatest superpower, and so it teaches kids how to accept themselves and learn about themselves and live authentically,” Aguirre said.
His books help kids process and express what they’re feeling. Aguirre said when kids get nervous, they’ll say they don’t feel well, or their stomach hurts because they don’t have the words or know how to express that they are nervous. In one of his comics, Twitch gets nervous about traveling.
“Every time he’s nervous or experiencing a lot of anxiety or feels like he’s going to have a panic attack, Mystic Weenie tells him to slow down, to sit with him like, let’s take this moment to breathe and do some meditation or mindfulness exercise,” he said.
Other superpowers in the book are patience, kindness and compassion.
“We don’t describe them or talk about them as superpowers in the real world, but when you think about it there’s so much you can do when you are patient or compassionate toward other people,” he said.
He said there are 17 total issues for “Twitch and the Mystic Weenie.” He self-published the first two books and is working to find a publisher, so he can reach more kids.
“I really would love to have these in stores across the country, not just here in Minnesota because I want to reach as many kids as possible with these messages,” he said. “Being able to read something that’s so highly visual helps them connect words with pictures, so it deepens that understanding of a message you’re trying to present in the book.”
Aguirre hosts library workshops and visits classrooms to talk about his books and mental health.
In Northfield, the city and library commissioned him to create a 170-foot mural in 2025 that’s still on display.
“This mural celebrates over 100 authors who have either lived or currently live in Northfield,” he said.
Aguirre said he had to do a lot of research on the books. He said the city wanted the mural to be whimsical and for him to incorporate his books. So, his characters are the ones reading the books, and many of them are personified emotions.
“All of these characters that are holding the book are all feelings, so anxiety is reading his own book,” Aguirre said.
The mural will be up for an indefinite amount of time, which means it will be on display for Hispanic Heritage Month. A month, Aguirre said, is a celebration of immigrants and refugees who live in our communities.
“It’s a cool way for us to show our customs and traditions in ways that people might not be able to experience unless they actually visited those countries,” he said.
Aguirre said he’s writing and illustrating the fourth comic, and hopes his books will one day be more accessible for kids outside of Minnesota.
