YouTube screengrab
/
WUSF
On “Florida Matters Live & Local,” author Andre Frattino talks about the influences behind his graphic novel “We are Pan.”
The Cuban Revolution might not be the first thing to pop into your mind when thinking of a graphic novel for young adults.
But one author is informing younger generations about a big part of both American and Cuban history.
Back during the revolution, thousands of families in Cuba decided to send their children to Miami to escape the Fidel Castro regime. It became known as Operación Pedro Pan. More than 14,000 kids evacuated without their parents between 1960 and 1962 — ranging from 4 to 16 years old, according to the Smithsonian.
On “Florida Matters Live & Local,” author Andre Frattino talks about his graphic novel “We are Pan.” It tells the fictional story of teens living on an island starting in the late 1950s and their subsequent journey to America.
The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.
So tell us about this book. It’s historical fiction, right?
Yeah, a little bit between historical fiction and nonfiction. I like to write about stories that are lesser-known or lesser-told, and my wife is Cuban American, and she was the one who kind of enlightened me into the whole experience of Operation Pedro Pan.
Top Shelf Productions
/
Courtesy
She had a teacher in grade school who was one, and through her, she introduced me to some of her community members — other Pedro Pans who came here and never got a chance to go back.
I spent about 2 or 3 years meeting with them, interviewing them, researching their experiences, and that was the formation of “We Are Pan.”
That’s a lot of background to go into a graphic novel. Is it usually like this?
I think a lot of people think graphic novels and comics are just superheroes, but I mean, there’s definitely more to it. It’s been growing in popularity to find subject matters on anything and everything these days.
I think history and comic books have a real great intersection where you can learn a lot through the visual medium, and it makes it an easy jumping-on point for anyone across ages, not just kids or teenagers, but adults and even grandparents.
The book revolves around the story of four teenagers on one island and a revolution that sort of tears their world apart. So it starts in 1959, travels with the teens to Florida into their senior years.
The illustrations by Yasmín Flores Montañez burst at one point with tropical colors, idyllic images of Cuba before Fidel Castro’s revolution, and then contrast with violence and tension. I also sort of note there’s a bit of a difference between some of the panels that are sort of black and white or sort of monotone, and then the really intense colors there. How does the book sort of communicate the story more powerfully with those images?
Unfortunately, Cuba is cut off to America in many ways, and because of this, it’s 90 miles away from the coast of Florida. But it might as well be another world for a lot of people here.
So having to transport readers into the past and have them see what Cuba was like in the heyday of the 60s, or the 50s, really. And the way that we decided on how we wanted to tell this is Cuba is a vibrant community and culture and history, and so we wanted to show the architecture, the culture, the beauty.
“It’s very unlike other books I’ve written in the history world; this one was characters that were real, people who are alive today. It’s their story.”
Andre Frattino
The black and whites that are interspersed with it. I mean, those are taken from the scenes of the newsreels at the time that Americans would experience and see. And in fact, the words that we use in those sections from the newsreels are straight from those ones at the time. So we captured those images to try and really just show the true sobering experience that was going through the revolution.
Did the real-life Pedro-Pans, as they call themselves, how did they influence those characters that you created?
All the characters in the book are composites from the interviews that I conducted with the Pedro Pans that I met with. So there are moments and their stories that do appear in these characters, but I think it was a situation of having to interview these people who came here at a really young age, many of them not really having a choice in the matter, and then having to grow up in a different world that has become their world, has become their country.
And it’s very unlike other books I’ve written in the history world; this one was characters that were real, people who are alive today. It’s their story.
So having to translate it and steward this as a graphic novelist, I met with people who across spectrums experienced their time coming over here as a new chapter of life. Some of them being ripped away and from their families, and many of them never having a chance to see home again. So the characters I wanted to create in here, I wanted them to illustrate the different varieties of children that came here between ’60 and ’62.
In a recent interview, you talked about the importance of preserving history while telling a compelling story, and you said, I don’t sacrifice history for drama. So why is the historical accuracy so important, and how do you ensure that in your book?
I think that history really has so many interesting characters and moments that haven’t been explored — haven’t really been experienced.
And we think again, like I said before, comic books, we think of the Avengers, we think of Batman and Superman, we think of things that have to be fantastical and fictional. But really, there are some amazing moments in time across every era.
And I think that when you really do your research, I was never really a big history fan growing up. It was not my like class of preference when I was going to grade school. But now, as an adult, when I read about almost any subject matter, you can discover the drama is already there.
And I think that if you are using graphic novels as a way to both entertain and educate, you have to be really mindful of what you’re putting in front of people’s eyes so that they don’t misconstrue the facts.
And that is the importance of being a historical graphic novelist is making sure that you’re creating that strong jumping-on point. You can have a little bit of entertainment in there, but really, at the end of the day, I think it’s important that we don’t glamorize or over-dramatize anything when it comes to the actual history.
Andre Frattino is talking about his novel at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg on Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, at 7 p.m. You can RSVP attombolobooks.com.
This story was compiled from an interview by Matthew Peddie for “Florida Matters Live & Local.” You can listen to the full episodehere.
