The little girl optimistically and proudly recounts different ways her eyes and her family's eyes look the same. Ho tries to keep her “author life” and her “school life” separate, but sounds equally passionate when she talks about her upcoming projects - three picture books and a young adult novel - and a recent invitation to speak at a school-wide assembly in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.The unnamed main character notices that her eyes are not like 'sapphire lagoons' but instead more like 'eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea.' She praises her mother, grandmother, and sister for all sharing similar eyes. The experience has indeed been surreal for this author who doubles as the vice principal of a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Eyes That Kiss in the Corners” is now in its 12th week on the children’s hardcover picture book list. HarperCollins purchased the manuscript and brought on Dung Ho (no relation to Joanna) as an illustrator.

“She said, ‘We’re going to find a home,’” Ho recalled.

Ho’s agent, Caryn Wiseman, encouraged her to stay positive. “Every few weeks or months, I’d get another rejection, so I was wondering if it was ever going to be published.”

“The book was on submission for over a year and a half,” said Ho, whose debut is about a young Asian girl pondering the shape of her eyes and realizing that, although she doesn’t look like her friends, she shares a visage with her mother, her grandmother and her sister. So it was refreshing when Joanna Ho, the author of the best-selling picture book “Eyes That Kiss in the Corners,” broached the subject in a phone interview. What isn’t talked about enough are the rejections, and the long periods of limbo while a writer awaits word on a publisher’s decision. There’s a certain celebratory flurry, a dependable repetition of the word “surreal” and, as with an athlete’s appreciation for a coach, an abiding sense of gratitude for the editor and agent who helped lift an author onto this literary podium. NEW VIEW Talking to a writer who has vaulted onto the best-seller list is a bit like listening to an Olympian who has just won a gold medal.

The eyes that kiss in the corners