Tyler R. Quillin

Tyler Quillin writes books for kids who are still figuring out where they fit.

He started his career in a classroom as a Teach For America corps member, where he learned that the questions children ask about themselves — Am I enough? Do I belong here? — rarely get answered by adults telling them the right thing once. They get answered slowly, in stories kids return to. His lived experience as a multicultural, second generation Mexican-American comes through in his storytelling.

Today Tyler is a corporate attorney in the technology industry, where he spends his days on contracts and regulations that look nothing like a picture book. But the work that matters most to him hasn't changed: helping others, particularly young people, see their own worth before the world gets a vote.

Mateo's Superpower is his first children's book. It's about a boy who discovers that the parts of himself he thought made him different are the parts that make him strong — a story shaped by the students he taught, and by his own kids, who are the first and most honest readers of everything he writes.