Donna Barba Higuera Matney, an optometrist in Bellevue, Wash., received the 2022 John Newbery Medal for “most outstanding contribution to children’s literature” for her middle-grade science fiction book “The Last Cuentista.” The story follows Petra Peña, a 12-year-old with retinitis pigmentosa, who becomes the only carrier of her grandmother’s Mexican folklore and a destroyed earth’s forbidden stories when she wakes too soon from suspended animation on her way to a new planet.

“For me, writing has never been about being successful. It was something in addition to optometry that fulfilled me,” Dr. Higuera Matney explains. “So, for the book to win the highest honor in children’s literature was a complete shock to the system.”

Dr. Higuera Matney, who unknowingly began her optometry career at age 12 doing patient recall for a neighbor OD, says she based the protagonist’s eye condition on her mother, whom she helped diagnose while Dr. Higuera Matney was a student at the Southern California College of Optometry, in Fullerton, Calif., in the mid-1990s.

“Optometry follows me everywhere!” she points out, excitedly. “My book ‘Lupe Wong Won’t Dance,’ as another example, mentions square dancing and how it was believed Cotton Eye Joe might have chlamydia or a cataract.” That book, incidentally, won the 2020 Pura Belpre Honor Award from the American Library Association; the 2020 Sid Fleischman Award; the 2020 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award; and it was named to the list of Best Books for Youth from the American Library Association.

Dr. Higuera Matney, who sold Bel-Red Vision Clinic last year, continues to see 27 years-worth of patients there two-to-three-times-a week. She says she has no plans of hanging up her ophthalmoscope.

“The eye is the most complicated organ in the body, so I’m always learning something new in my day profession,” she explains. “On top of that, my patients are like family. I’m seeing three generations of patients now, and I get to hear their stories all day long, which is a treat.” OM