Alas al Borde / Borderland Wings is an illustrated bilingual children’s book that follows a least tern (a native bird), and a cinnamon teal (a migratory bird), who meet at the border wall and journey together across the shared binational landscape. The story grew out of an interdisciplinary process combining design research on the border landscape with educational workshops in which children’s drawings were incorporated as visual textures into the story’s main characters.
Co-authored by Adriana Cuellar (illustrations) and Javier Fernández (text), the book emerged through an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Border Design Lab and Promotora de las Bellas Artes, with support from the San Diego Foundation.
By translating academic research into a poetic and accessible form, the book invites new generations to imagine border landscapes through connection, care, and interdependence. It positions learning as a shared and relational process across species, communities, and territories.
The book’s first edition, published in summer 2026, is intended for distribution to schools, libraries, and community educational programs in the San Diego–Tijuana region.
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