Jordan Thierry and Ben Sand, A KIDS BOOK ABOUT

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Jordan and Ben, to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for doing this interview together.

Ben Sand: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Jordan Thierry: Thank you for having us on, Zibby.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Ben, you're the author of A Kids Book About White Privilege, and Jordan, A Kids Book About Systemic Racism, in the new series of kids' books which are fantastic, educational, inspiring, all the rest. First, how did you two end up contributing to this series? Jordan, take it away.

Jordan: I can go first. I know the founder of A Kids Book About, Jelani Memory, from youth. We played basketball together growing up. We had done some work together as adults. He reached out. He wrote A Kids Book About Racism. We had touched base and were thinking about a topic for me to write. Then after the murder of George Floyd, we reconnected and decided that A Kids Book About Systemic Racism would be a really great topic to help people understand why these racial injustices continue to thrive in our society that explain that phenomenon beyond the individual one-on-one racism, as I think a lot of people like to think of racism, but looking at the systems that allow these things to continue.

Zibby: How about you, Ben?

Ben: In a way, similar. Jelani Memory, the CEO of A Kids Book About, is a friend of mine. He and I have been in a conversation now together over a decade really about what we're experiencing and are going to continue to experience in our country and in our culture as white people continue to resist their own exploration on the topic of their ethnicity. What does it mean to be white? While we've been talking about it for quite some time, I think in this particular moment in 2020 and as we look ahead, Jelani feels that this is an incredible pivot that's taking place. Now's the time to make sure that we're having this conversation. He asked, and I said yes.

Zibby: Amazing. Have you guys met before?

Jordan: We haven't.

Zibby: No? Oh, my gosh. Ben, this is Jordan. Jordan, this is Ben.

Jordan: Thank you, Zibby, for bringing us together.

Zibby: [laughs] No problem. I'm surprised that Jelani hasn’t organized some sort of meetup with everybody.

Jordan: It's been crazy. It's been very busy over the last few months. With the pandemic, obviously, we haven't had a chance to do an in-person mixer or anything like that, but hopefully soon.

Zibby: I get it. When you were both writing your books, what were some of the things that you wanted to make sure to include? How did you figure out how to get them into bite-size information for kids? Obviously, writing for adults is way different. What's your experience been like talking to kids? I know, Jordan, you did a whole deep dive on fatherhood, so I know you're familiar with that. Ben, you're part of this contingent, so you're actively organizing people, but what about kids?

Jordan: For me at least, it was really, really challenging and really uncomfortable, somewhat, of a process because this is such a deep issue. There's also just a lot of nuances. Writing a children's book forces you to make a lot of generalizations. That's the one part that I really struggled with, was making the generalizations. Of course, there's exceptions of all of these things. I have to have confidence in the parent or the adult that will be reading with these children and helping contextualize what's in the book and offer some of that nuance themselves based on their own lives and their own family experiences. I just have to trust that process. I haven't gotten too much critique or pushback yet, but I'm steady waiting for it. That was definitely the hard part, was making those generalizations and knowing obviously there's exceptions to all these things. The Kids Book About team, they have this process down pat. They really supported me in being comfortable with that and trying to tell the story and also not shy away from some of the harsh realities. I wasn't sure how to phrase some of those things about genocide, about slavery. I was very grateful that they were not shying away from those things.

Zibby: It is hard to package up genocide in a very -- when other books are about sleeping sheep. Those are the choices at the end of the day. How about you, Ben?

Ben: I have three children, two biological white girls and my son is half Vietnamese, half Mexican. We've been having a conversation about their whiteness for as long as they really can remember. That really was, for me, where this started to percolate as someone that lives in a very multicultural community. The work that I do intentionally engages communities of color. Part of what I was longing for was a method to try to translate our internal family conversation to a conversation that could spread with the world. I live in Portland, Oregon. When George Floyd was murdered and the protests began, of which those protests continue, I think the white kids in my city were seeing these protests and were asking questions about they meant for them. It struck me that there are not a ton of resources out there to talk to white kids about their white privilege in a manner that actually asks them to acknowledge it, to give it up, and to use it for the benefit of others. So much of the narrative around white privilege has been co-opted by a cultural war that's questioning whether or not white privilege even exists. When you ask the question, what does it mean to be white in a moment when we're asking big questions about race? it felt like now was the time to do that. For me, it was a bit of a translation of taking evening pajama conversations and putting them in a book that could be brought to homes across the country.

Zibby: You did it.

Ben: I hope so.

Zibby: Congratulations. Even the format, I feel like this is totally digestible for kids. I have a six and seven-year-old and then two thirteen-year-olds. Although, forget about getting them to do anything. The little guys, I can still read to. The colors, the message, the questioning, it's an engaging versus didactic type of read for kids, which I think is so important. What is really exciting you guys? Is it that this content is getting out there? Is it that you're a part of it? There must be something that made you stop and feel passionate enough about this that you were like, yes, I'm dedicating all this time to writing it and marketing it and getting it out there. What is it for you personally that made you the ones to do this?

Jordan: For me personally, I'm just really excited to be in company with folks like Ben and the other authors. We're all really focused on this really positive message for our young people about love and hope and resistance and change and acceptance. At the end of the day, that's probably what the Kids Book About legacy is going to stand for because all the books to date have been in that vein. I think it's going to have a really positive impact over the long term. I'm also just really excited to be equipping parents and teachers with something to help get these conversations started with their kids and their students.

Ben: Zibby, what's exciting to me about the book and a kids' book about any of these topics that are being discussed, but particularly the topics around race, is it feels that we are pushing conversations with a generation of kids that are going to be in leadership in a really critical moment in our country's history. I imagine that we're looking at a twenty-year arc in this conversation. Some of the elders, some of those generations that have gone before us, are not prepared to have this conversation at scale. We're seeing a polarization as a result of that. There are many leaders that have huge concerns about our inability to have a conversation about race and the wealth gap in our country. As a result of that, the inability to have that conversation, what it's led to is those that are in previous generations rejecting the idea of critical race theory or systemic racism altogether. To be able to make a deposit into a generation of young, white kids to ask these questions in critical moments of their formation, for me, feels like it's a very strategic move for a twenty-year conversation that has to take place with a quickening pace for the days ahead.

Zibby: In twenty, thirty years, we'll be watching the election. They’ll say, it all started when I read this children's book.

Ben: Yeah, that's right. I'm sure that's what it will be.

Zibby: It's going to be that. I had it on my shelf. I kept looking at it. There you go. You never know. I think about different children's books all the time. It's a good time to really get in there. If you can learn a whole new language without even trying that hard, it's a good time to learn a lot of concepts that when you're older, maybe they're too challenging, or not too. I'm not saying anyone should give up. I'm just saying the impressionable brain at the young age is a good time to get positive messages around. Do you think that getting to a place where kids don't see race is where you want things to go? Would your goal be having kids today grow up acknowledging -- when I was growing up, I feel like everybody was like, we don't see race. In all my education and all that, I didn't even realize it was a thing until I was older and people were polarized around it. I grew up in a really diverse education environment and all this stuff. I didn't think twice about it. There's so much focus now on race that I feel like, especially for little kids, they might not have even really noticed it before. Is it better to notice and probe the differences, or it is better to just be like, her skin's a little darker than mine, but I don't know, whatever? Do you understand my question? [laughs]

Ben: Yeah. I'll take a crack at that. Jordan's book really addresses this even uniquely beyond mine. I think it's absolutely essential that we have conversations about the black experience in America and the experience of what it means to be a part of the Latinx community. What we have not done historically is taught white kids about their whiteness and helped them to understand that their whiteness has been rooted in a systemic unearned advantage that they benefit from and have been benefitting from for some time. When we think about race and whiteness in particular, which is what this book is certainly focused on, we won't be able to have a conversation about race that builds bridges until white people learn about their whiteness. I do this a lot. When I talk to white people, I ask them, when was the last time you ever thought about what it means to be white? The vast majority of white people can't answer that question. They're not thinking about their whiteness. They don't understand where the terms came from. They don't understand how deeply rooted the systemic unearned advantage has been. They certainly are uncomfortable with exploring the topics in Jordan's book around slavery and genocide and the laws that were created. From my perspective, we won't be able to move forward until white people understand their whiteness and then begin to wrestle with it in a way that's critical. That means that to understand your whiteness, you have to understand how whiteness has created an adverse effect at a systemic level for people of color in our country. That needs to be named and parsed out carefully in my view. Jordan, what do you think?

Jordan: I agree with everything you said there, Ben. Thank you. For me, this is not about trying to work towards a colorblind society. It's about trying to work towards an inclusive, vibrant society where these inequities and injustices don't exist. The book, for me, is helping encourage young people to take into consideration the history behind the inequities that we see today. That goes not just for race, but I want them to understand that too for gender, for sexuality so we can contextualize these inequities and then work our way backwards to try and address those root causes. If the book helps train that mental framework for young people, then I'll be very, very pleased.

Zibby: As authors in addition to, I would say, advocates and almost history teachers and documentarians and all the other amazing things you guys do, as authors when you sat down to write this book, what did you learn about yourselves in terms of any sort of advice on writing children's books, on getting your messages out? What would you tell someone else who was like, you know what, I want to, A, help this problem, and B, do so through reaching kids? What would you tell them? How can they do a good job?

Ben: I would say the key here is let your life speak. Look back on your life and try to identify that thread that brings you to this point where you have a longing to write, you have a longing to communicate. So much of an author's experience is really about exploring their own identity. For me as a white person and my own white experience being able to write about whiteness and then to want to talk to other white people about this is really a culmination of a journey that I've been on that pivots me to this moment to enter into a new chapter of that journey. It was just as important for me to come to the text looking for my own growth in light of my own journey. Any aspiring authors or anyone that wants to communicate to kids I think needs to also imagine how that topic impacts them and to write from that intimate personal space.

Zibby: I'm feeling like, is there a memoir coming on the heels of this, Ben?

Ben: A Kids Book About...

Zibby: A Kids Book About Ben's Life. Is that in the works as well? [laughs]

Jordan: I agree with everything Ben said there. Picking up on those notes as well, I think people should value their own lived experience. A lot of people just don't. They don't think of their own experiences. Their own stories have value for other people to know and learn from. That's one of the biggest things I'm always pushing for as someone who does documentary work. Share this story because someone is going to benefit from it. That's one thing. Like Ben said, write from that place. Explore your own identity, your own experiences. The other is a more practical, tangible thing. There's a lot of fantastic children's books out there that deal with issues of race, gender, sexuality, culture, but they don't get out there because the children's publishing industry is so rigid. There's just only a few big players. There's a lot of these really fantastic books that just don't have this type of reach. What I'm learning from A Kids Book About, because they’ve created a really valuable pipeline for new kind of content to go directly to consumers instead of having to go through the big players in the children's book publishing industry, the marketing that they're doing is just incredible. With some of our books being included on Oprah's wish list, the kind of reach that that's getting is just -- I never would've imagined for this children's book. Trying to pull from some of the lessons from what A Kids Book About is doing in terms of the marketing and the outreach and not having to go through the big players in the industry, I think people can learn from as well.

Ben: Well said.

Zibby: Yes, great point. Definitely, the advice is get on Oprah's list. I'm going to put that at the top of my list.

Jordan: Easier said than done.

Zibby: That helps. That definitely helps. First, you have to have great content. That's the first stop. Thank you both. I'm glad I could be here to introduce you to each other. Maybe now you guys can go have a nice, interesting, dynamic, thoughtful conversation of your own without me bothering you with my questions. Thank you for contributing to society and trying to help the next generation. That's really admirable of you. Big thumps up as a parent and whatever I am these days, as a person. [laughs] Thanks. It's awesome.

Ben: Thanks for having us on your show.

Jordan: Thank you so much, Zibby.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Jordan: Take care.

Rio Cortez, THE ABCS OF BLACK HISTORY

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Rio. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Rio Cortez: Hi. Thanks so much for having me, Zibby.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. I loved this children's book, The ABCs of Black History, not that it's even just for children. It's just really an awesome book. I should call it this illustrated work, picture book. How about that? Illustrated picture book. [laughs]

Rio: That's very generous of you.

Zibby: I know you're this Pushcart-nominated poet. Now you've written this book. By the way, we have to talk about your essay about your pregnancy. Just put that in the backburner because I was obsessed with that essay. Tell me first about this book and how it came to be, The ABCs of Black History.

Rio: Like you mentioned, I mostly write poetry, and for adults. This book is also a poem. It's a long poem. It's told in rhyming verse. It came to be through a conversation with my editor, Traci Todd who's at Workman, about what's missing in the children's book world. I started writing this when I was pregnant with my daughter who's now two years old. We worked on it collaboratively. Now it's in the world. It was mostly because I was interested in presenting more lesser-known figures in black history to younger children. I feel like when I encountered black history as a kid or in elementary school, I clung to every little crumb. I grew up in Utah. I feel like perhaps those crumbs were even fewer or smaller. I just wanted to provide better morsels for young readers. That's what this book is.

Zibby: Tell me a little bit about growing up in Utah and what was the black community was like there. Tell me about that.

Rio: Small. The black community was small. [laughs] I think it always has been. Growing up in Utah was great in some ways. It's a beautiful place. I grew up in Salt Lake City. My family is all still in Salt Lake City. They’ve been there for a really -- well, my mom's side. My mom is black American. My father's Puerto Rican from New York City. My mother's side's been in Salt Lake since reconstruction. They went after the abolition of slavery. They were enslaved in Louisiana. They traveled west by coach and train. They are part of the first black settlers in the state of Utah. They’ve been there for a really long time, but it didn't make growing up there black any easier for me, unfortunately. I feel like there are just generations of my family who have been really some of the only black students in schools there and in their communities and neighborhoods. It was an interesting place to grow up. It's informed a lot of my poetry. Probably some early interesting black history, trying to figure out why we were there were some of my earliest questions.

Zibby: That's amazing that your family knows, that you have all the details of that piece of history and that you've retained that over all the generations. Do you have artifacts or anything else from that time?

Rio: Yeah, a little. My family isn't of the Mormon faith, but you might know that the Mormon church is really good at genealogy. To our benefit, there's just a lot of recordkeeping in the state of Utah and really good historical records. Yes, one relative of mine, who is my great-grandfather, was a famous black Mormon, a singular conversion in our family. His story through the church and their bookkeeping has really made it easy for us to know a lot more about our family. He testified to the Mormon faith. He traveled on behalf of the church. He wrote a pamphlet called The Negro Pioneer in which he even names the family that owned our family in Louisiana. I feel really lucky in a way to have so much access to our family's history. I think a lot of black Americans aren't able to access that.

Zibby: Wow. That feels like another book to me in there. I feel like you need to maybe pine those archives a little for some more stories. That's really powerful. You don't often hear about that in anybody's family, frankly, but just how people got there. I'm always so interested, how did you end up in Salt Lake City? How did your New York, Puerto Rican father fall into this family? How did they meet?

Rio: That's a longer story. My dad grew up in the Lower East Side. He was in the Lower East Side and he got into a little bit of trouble and ended up going west. He ended up in Utah. He met my mother. They’ve been together for thirty years. It's lovely. His family is a little bit more -- it's very different. He's Afro Puerto Rican. I still have a lot of relatives in New York City. It made it a little nicer living here for so long.

Zibby: I'm in New York City too. One of these days we can meet up. Sorry, I didn't intend to delve into your family business, but I'm so interested in hearing all of that and how everybody came to be.

Rio: No, not at all.

Zibby: Thank you for all of that. In this book, my favorite page was the diaspora page. I don't know why. I'm showing this for people listening, you can watch on YouTube or whatever, just how far everybody traveled and all the bigger spots for the community in the United States even. PS, there is no Utah on this map. I don't know. I think you need to go back. Even just seeing how far everybody traveled and just all the amazing accomplishments like all the sports, rockstars, and the musicians, from Jesse Owens, Gabby Douglas, and the queens. I love that you included Michelle Obama in there. That was a nice touch. The organizers, newspapers, holidays, really awesome. How did you end up collaborating with Lauren Semmer, your illustrator?

Rio: Through email back and forth. We actually have never met in person, which is probably the story of a lot of author/illustrators, but I don't know. I wrote the manuscript. Then she would do a draft of illustrations. Then between our mutual editor, we would make changes through text and image. We might say, "Actually, I don't think you need to say this. It can be shown." It was all through email. She's really wonderful and talented. This is her debut also, so it's exciting.

Zibby: That's amazing. Tell me about your book of poetry which now I have to go back and read. I'm sorry that I haven't.

Rio: It's a very limited press edition. It's from Highlight Books out of Miami, so it's not easy to grab at your local bookstore. It's a lot of poetry about Utah, to put it quite simply. It's not just about Utah. It's also about longing and racial identity and finding yourself in worlds that aren't meant for you. That's a little bit about my adult poetry.

Zibby: How did you become a writer to begin with? When did you start writing poetry and books? When did you know that was your calling?

Rio: I wrote when I was really young. I feel lucky that way too. I think poetry really found me when I was in the third grade. It kind of saved my life. Poetry has been there through every up and down in my life. It's actually how I met my partner. We're both part of a black poetry fellowship called Cave Canem. We met there. To be honest with you, in the third grade, the John Singleton movie, Poetic Justice, came out. It just spoke to my little broody heart. It was the first time I encountered poetry. I didn't grow up in a household with people who read poetry. I don't think a lot of people do, but some lucky ones. Poetry found me through film, which is kind of funny. It just stayed with me my whole life. I ended up studying poetry at Sarah Lawrence and at NYU. I was lucky enough to do that too. It never left after that John Singleton movie.

Zibby: Wow. You should do a party where you screen the movie to debut your book or something. You could do a Facebook watch party of the movie. That would be fun.

Rio: That's brilliant. There's some scenes, I feel like, that we could definitely watch together.

Zibby: All right, send me the invite because I haven't seen that movie. I would love to. That would be a really cool way to promote a book. I also want to talk about your essay, which was so beautiful, in Mother magazine about being a black mother, but it could've been any kind of mother. It was about how as soon as you become pregnant, you basically become a receptacle for everybody's story. You're not necessarily prepared for that. Then you become sort of the story keeper. You even referenced the security guard in your building and her episiotomy and just how much detail people would share with you as soon as they saw your belly. Tell me a little bit about that.

Rio: When I was pregnant, it was such a new experience to me. That was really fascinating also. I've had a woman's body my whole life. Everybody goes through the experience of being born, but it felt like I had no information whatsoever about being pregnant. It felt like I was cramming for an exam that was imminent. It felt like over my life I should have known about the birth experience. For me, it felt illicit and really quiet. You see a woman -- I think I talk about this -- on Instagram or something. She's pregnant. Then seven days later, she's holding a baby in a hospital bed. It all seems just so perfect. I think that's part of what I was experiencing as a pregnant woman. Women want to tell these stories. It doesn't feel like there's a really welcome place for them in the world to talk about the details of their birth and labor. It's monumental and lifechanging. To not really have an outlet for those conversations is just suffocating. When I was pregnant, it felt like an invitation to say to me, "Oh, my god, I went through this and this and this," and so many intimate details of women that I had worked with or seen every single day and now knew part of their medical history, which was so interesting. I think part of that gives you a little anxiety as a pregnant woman also, especially for a first-time mother like I was not knowing and not ever being able to know what your birth story will look like or your labor story will look like.

You're ingesting all of these other people's stories and applying them to yourself and seeing yourself in those situations and wondering how you would cope. There's a little bit of that. It's also gratitude that I felt because I felt like I was getting closer to all these women around me and that we had this thread between us that connected us. Again, on the other hand, it made me feel like they shouldn't be so silenced. There shouldn't be so much silence around the process of labor and delivery and childbirth and fertility and all of these issues. Those stories are coming more and more, but still between women. They should really be between everybody. That's sort of what I was thinking about when I wrote that essay. I think it started because I went to a fundraising gala. I found myself six months postpartum sitting next to a pregnant woman. I was doing the exact -- I couldn't stop myself from just addressing her pregnancy and my experience. I was like, wow, it really is, it's just a thing. I was asking her all these questions. I was telling her about my c-section. I'm like, this woman doesn't need to know all of this about me, but here I am never out of the house and had a newborn. I just was unloading on her and thinking about what drives that impulse.

Zibby: Was it the gala for the Schomburg Center?

Rio: It was called Black Girl Magic Gala. It was organized by Mahogany Browne. They do really great work in the urban word community and young poets and stuff like that. That's what it was for. It was really lovely. It was my first time out of the house. I had no idea what it was going to be like. I was without my child. I was just bothering strangers. [laughs]

Zibby: Not bothering. I'm sure it was super helpful to her. I think that happens to everybody. It was such a relatable story because all of a sudden, you're like, wait, what? This all happens to everyone woman who has a baby? Are you kidding me? There's so many. Everybody has their own particular journey. The medical stuff alone -- I have four kids. I won't even get into all that, but I can share a lot of stories with you too. I remember being pregnant with my twins. They said you had to have some sort of course on childbirth, which is so ridiculous. I couldn't leave the house. I was on bedrest. Someone came over and was telling me about all the options for childbirth. I was like, where is option C? I don't like options A or B. No, no, no. No thanks. I can't turn this around. They’ve got to come out somehow. Anyway, it was a nightmare.

Rio: People say this all the time. Another mother said this to me. She was like, "The only way out is through." I thought that the entire way through my pregnancy. It said a lot, but it never resonated with me more. Things are going to be inevitable one way or the other. I would just think that to myself all the time.

Zibby: If it's not already taken, that's another great book title by the way, the only way out is through. I feel like that could also refer to this year.

Rio: No kidding.

Zibby: You just have to keep going. How has the pandemic been for you, Rio? [laughter] Lovely time inside? What has this year done to you and your writing and your life and your baby and all the rest? Not a baby anymore.

Rio: She's active. It's just been odd. We spent five months in Utah which I never thought I'd be able to do. That, in a way, was kind of a beautiful thing that came from it. I feel really far away from our family, but at the same time, it's felt necessary for us to live in New York for career stuff and my husband's career and also for my sanity in some ways. It gave us this opportunity to be in Utah and not have those feelings of missing out, like the FOMO that I would sometimes feel. We got to be there in a really quiet way and be around my family. It's also been really hard. Now we're back in New York. We're in Harlem. We are both working from home. We have a two-year-old who I feel like we're just sitting in front of screens all day long which is not what I would like to be doing. It feels like we’re really surviving, just getting through the day trying to do the things that we need to do. Then with this book coming out, it's been one of those -- I keep calling it, it's like a year of horrors and delights. Some things have been just truly horrible. Then other things have been truly delightful. This book being published in the midst of 2020 is one of those delightful things. We're just getting by. I don't know what it's been like for you.

Zibby: I feel the same way. I think I just posted or put in my newsletter something about this year is all about joys and sorrows, highs and low. It feels so extreme to me, the depths. It's like a sine curve, instead of just going along, it's suddenly huge ups, huge downs. I'm just eager to be closer to that middle line. I have whiplash from this roller coaster ride of this year. I'm just getting a little seasick, if you will, a little motion sickness from the whole thing. I'm ready for normal life in so many ways to come back. I recently read this article in The New York Times about toddlers and the pandemic. My kids are older. I have now, ages six through thirteen, but how so many toddlers and infants aren't getting that socialization that they would have otherwise. There was some toddler in the article who saw a person on the street and they're like, "Uh, oh, people," and they ran away. Parents are now so worried about the long-term damage. The good news from that article at least -- I should reference the author, but I can't remember who it was -- was that actually makes kids more resilient to have gone through a period of time like this similar to kids in the Depression and other periods of time where there's immense disruption and everything. The good news is there won't be long-term damage. At least, that's what they want us to believe.

Rio: We don't know other children. We don't have a lot of people in our community with children that are our daughter's age. Kids on the street, when we're walking to the car and she'll try to talk with them, it's really heartbreaking. It's hard to watch. I'm like, I know that you want to -- you'd be such a good friend at this age. She's so chatty and curious. She just spends all her time with the two of us.

Zibby: Oh, I should say -- wait, caveat to my summary of the article. It also said you have to be part of a loving family. The strength of the bonds of the family that's isolated together is the protective factor for the kids. It's not just that they’ll be fine. It's that as long as they're with loving parents. Because of that age, the relationship with the parents is more important. As long as you're loving and all that stuff, which I can already tell that you are, your kid will be fine.

Rio: That's great news. I'm so glad.

Zibby: That's my download from the paper. Are you working on anything now? Tell me about your work now.

Rio: I'm finishing a collection of poetry that has been long on the backburner which I'm about done with. Then I have one picture book manuscript that I'm chipping away at. It's very near a first draft. Those are what I'm working on. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish the adult poetry first and get that into the world and then see where the second picture book manuscript goes. I think a lot about writing a little bit about my family also like you were saying. That's just longer-term things. It's hard to be focused and creative when you're working full time and obviously when you are a parent and balancing all these hats. I know that there's some really great examples of writers and mothers who have done it before me, so I look to them all the time. Those are things that I'm interested in finishing up, some projects that I'm working on.

Zibby: If you have any interest in adding more to your plate, I'm doing these anthologies. I have one coming out in February and one coming out in November. If you have any interest in contributing a poem to the anthology about -- there are different themes. I could talk to you about it after. It'd be really neat. I don't have any poems yet for the second collection. Let me know.

Rio: Yeah, for sure.

Zibby: Awesome. Excellent. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Rio: I suspected you were going to ask that because I've listened to your podcast.

Zibby: Aw, thank you. That means you listened to the end of a podcast. That's even better. Thank you. [laughs]

Rio: I do. Everybody's always saying be true to yourself. I think that's because that's really good advice. I think I heard Morgan Jerkins recommend writing what you're afraid of. That's pretty good advice too. I also think, be patient with yourself. I would suggest, too, as a writer, don't put pressure on yourself. Try not to compare yourself to other people. Find joy in your writing where you can. I would say that.

Zibby: Love it.

Rio: It's not super practical advice, though I think it's really good for your self-care.

Zibby: It's great life advice too, which is great. Everybody can use some life advice. Rio, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and talking about your experience. Now I really want to read the book you're going to write about growing up in Utah and your family's history. I can totally see that whole thing as a picture book, PS, so get to work on that. I'll follow up about the poem. Have a great day. Thanks so much.

Rio: You too. Thanks so much for having me, Zibby. It was lovely.

Zibby: My pleasure. Take care.

Rio: Take care.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Malcolm Mitchell, MY VERY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Malcolm. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Malcolm Mitchell: I'm excited. Thank you for having me. By the way, I'm a new father. Oakley, my son's mom looked up the podcast and told me I was on a superstar podcast.

Zibby: [laughs] Congratulations on your son. That's really exciting.

Malcolm: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Zibby: How old is he now?

Malcolm: He's going to be six months in a few days.

Zibby: Aw, that's good. You got the smiles going and all that.

Malcolm: Exactly. You have some experience, huh?

Zibby: I have four kids. I'm out of the baby stage, but I miss the baby stage. I love babies, oh, my gosh.

Malcolm: I don't know. I think I'm ready to be out of the baby stage.

Zibby: I love babies, but now I would be happy to hold someone else's baby. How about that? [laughs]

Malcolm: Okay, we see to eye to eye.

Zibby: Sleeping is nice. I don't miss having four babies. I had twins too, so that was really tough. Somehow, the days keep going and they get older. That's really fun.

Malcolm: Moms are incredible too. I always say Jasmine, Oakley's mom, does ninety-nine percent of the work, and then I complain about the one percent I have to do.

Zibby: That sounds about right. At different times, different parents step in. Who knows? Maybe at age five it'll be ninety-nine percent you, or it'll stay the same. Anyway, I'll let you two work that out. [laughter] Congratulations on your book, My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World, which is a fantastic book. For listeners who aren't familiar with this book yet, can you just tell them the basic story of it? Then what inspired you to write this particular book?

Malcolm: My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World was inspired by my personal experience. I grew up a striving reader, struggling reader. I believed some words were too big, some books too thick, some sentences too long and complicated. I was afraid of reading. My hands would get sweaty. My behavior really suffered from that in classrooms. Through my journey into literacy and finding a love for books, I realized how magical they are, how powerful they can be, and how much of an impact they can have on one's life. I committed to making sure kids understood the importance of reading. My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World documents this kid going on this search for this book that inspires him. Through his journey, he realizes that sometimes the best stories can be found inside of ourselves.

Zibby: Love it. I kept wondering the whole book, what's the book going to be? Then you had that nice twist at the end and wrapped it all up with a nice bow. I liked it.

Malcolm: At first when I wrote the story, I said, I don't know, it could come off a little corny. It's such a truth, though. You go on this search for this story or you search for purpose to find yourself. You realize the answer was always there. I guess that's a more philosophical look at it.

Zibby: It's true. That's the way it is with most things in life. The things that you strive the hardest for are often found within yourself anyway. I'll carry the corny theme on extrapolating it to life in general. I read that you were reading at a middle-school level when you got to college. What happened then? Also, were you ever diagnosed with any sort of learning disability, or was it just a lack of education in the reading arena that caused that? What was that about?

Malcolm: Let me start by saying I was not diagnosed with any learning disabilities. I think my community promoted sports and entertainment over education. I was just like every other child. It was no one's fault. It's just the way the community was structured. I had this intense draw to sport and football, which worked out. I was able to go to the NFL, played in a Super Bowl. I had that unworldly experience, but it was really restricting. It kind of placed me into a box only relying on that natural skill set. Once I got to the University of Georgia, I realized how limited my thinking was. My exposure was not wide or broad, and I wanted to change that. I wanted to feel empowered not just physically, but mentally. Through a series of fortunate events, I discovered that if I wanted to be more emotionally intelligent, more cognitive, a better decision-maker, I needed to be literate. There are different signs that I'm more than willing to dive into, if you want, that led me to that conclusion. I started trying to read. When I started, I actually started with this book. It's titled The 48 Laws of Power.

Zibby: That's what you started on? Maybe that was your problem. [laughs] I don't even know if I could get through that book, and I read a trillion books.

Malcolm: I started with this. Of course, I was discouraged. I was terribly discouraged. I put the book down. I said, forget it.

Zibby: For people listening, by the way, Malcolm just held up a thousand-page book with the tiniest font and a trillion words per page called Power which looks incredibly intimidating. Although, I'm sure it's fantastic.

Malcolm: It is fantastic, but it's still intimidating. It took me a year to read that thing. I started off with this. Like I do everything else in my life, I just jump in, had no thought. Got into it, realized it was terribly difficult, kind of shied away from it, but had this revelation that, no, I need to read. I started reading picture books and took my athletic approach of you start with fundamentals. Then eventually, you get better. Then you become your own version of the athlete you want to be. I thought to myself, maybe if I do this same thing with reading, it'll work out. I started with the fundamentals. I went back and started reading picture books.

Zibby: You taught yourself? You did it by yourself?

Malcolm: I'm in my dorm room reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, writing down notes about sentence structure. I did that with books like The Giving Tree; Exclamation Mark; Cat in the Hat; Oh, The Places You'll Go. Eventually, my theory played out like I thought it would. I gradually got better and better and better. I think I started with self-help because they're really easy to read. Then I moved to graphic novels because they were very simple. Then I moved into young adult. I started with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Eventually, I was writing down vocabulary words and such-and-such. Next thing I knew, I was reading The 48 Laws of Power.

Zibby: Wow.

Malcolm: It was a fun journey to even go back and think about. Funny story. I'm glad this is causal because I'm rambling.

Zibby: Please ramble. I'm really enjoying it.

Malcolm: Funny story. I started reading these books. I figured if I enhance my vocabulary, I'd be a better reader. One of my biggest struggles, I couldn't identify the words. I didn't have the skill set of sounding them out. What I would do is I'd read the book. If I came across a word, I'd jot it down. I'd go to Google, let Google say it to me. Then I'd challenge myself to use that word in a sentence three times a day. Now, I'm in a locker room full of other athletes just like me that had similar backgrounds who didn't have this overwhelming appreciation for education. I'm using words like superfluous and evanescent. They're looking at me, what are you talking about? It was a fun journey.

Zibby: That's really impressive. In the middle of college, and you're playing football in college and you're soon to be drafted to the Patriots, you could've been doing anything. You could've just been partying every night. You could've been relaxing, anything. Instead, you've chosen to completely improve yourself in every way by teaching yourself and pushing yourself through all these stages. What was the huge inspiration?

Malcolm: If I go back to the root, it would probably be my mother. I grew up in a single-parent household in a small town. My mother has this infectious way of encouraging and uplifting and empowering. She was limited due to her own personal challenges. She really enforced this unwavering faith and almost blissfully ignorant belief that you could do anything you set your mind to. I adopted that. That's what helped me be a professional athlete. That's also helped me never -- bad sentence structure here -- never stop striving to be a better version of myself even today. I always want to search for more, not monetarily or materialistic, but just trying to really reach my full potential. I'm not sure that's even possible, but my mom made me think that it is. I still believe that, so I still go. When I realized that I would be capped if I wasn't literate, I needed to be literate to stay on track of evolving into a better version of myself. My mom is the answer to your question.

Zibby: Have you told her that?

Malcolm: Maybe not like that. In my first picture book, The Magician's Hat, the forward is, "To my mother for always allowing me to believe dreams can become reality." Then in my second book, My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World, I wrote, "To my mom, my very favorite person in the whole wide world."

Zibby: I know. That was so nice.

Malcolm: Maybe not directly, but indirectly I think I've tried to acknowledge her.

Zibby: You should just call her when we finish doing this and say what you said. As a mom, if my kid were to call me and say that -- I'm sure she's insanely proud of you to begin with. Just to hear it, I bet it would make her day. Just saying, if you have a free minute, you'll make her smile.

Malcolm: For my mom, I have all the time in the world.

Zibby: Aw. Are you an only child?

Malcolm: No, I'm the middle.

Zibby: Did your siblings grow up with the same drive as you, or was it just you? Yeah, same way?

Malcolm: I have an older brother and a younger sister. I'm the middle. I would say they have the same drive as I do. They took different direction, of course. We didn't go all in the same direction. We are all on our own individual journeys, but that philosophy of never giving up and pulling the best out of yourself is something I think my mom instilled in all three of us.

Zibby: You must have hit so many roadblocks in different areas in your athletic career, in your teaching yourself to read, now writing, forming your nonprofit. How do you push past those moments where you feel like you can't keep going and then you do anyway?

Malcolm: I've had several of those moments. In college, I went through a series of injuries that kept me out of football for a year and a half. I went through the same situation once I got to the NFL. I ran into that issue in reading, forming the nonprofit. Problems are everywhere. It's just the way of life. I heard this powerful message this past weekend that said, how can you have victory if there's no battle?

Zibby: That's good.

Malcolm: Right?

Zibby: Yep, that's a good one.

Malcolm: It's the way I live my life. Once it gets hard, it almost energizes me because now I have something to conquer. Now I can get out of bed and say I'm after something. I think that's just maybe a part of my personality. I can't really take credit for it being that way because I don't know how I became that way. It's impossible to be a winner or -- that's a bad word. Let's use a different word. It's impossible to have victory if there's no battle. There has to be some type of confrontation to accomplish anything. I'm sure you've even had your own set of obstacles with this brilliant podcast.

Zibby: Thank you. [laughs] Yes, I've had lots of obstacles and lots of setbacks and losses and things in life that happened that knock you down.

Malcolm: How did you overcome yours?

Zibby: Thank you for asking. That's nice of you. How did I overcome mine? One thing I always try to do is focus on the things I'm grateful for even when I'm going through things that are really awful. It could always be worse. That's sort of my mantra. It could always be worse. Yes, this is terrible. Yes, I'm devastated. Yes, this is awful. I worry about stuff all the time, so then I just start thinking about the eight thousand other things that could be really bad. Then I feel a little less bad about what's going on.

Malcolm: Reverse psychology.

Zibby: Yeah, something like that.

Malcolm: I got you. Cool.

Zibby: That's how I do it. [laughs] I want to talk about your nonprofit, but I have to ask about your career-ending injury because I always wonder about athletes who -- my husband's a football fan, but I have to say I don't really follow football. I didn't know too much about your career ahead of time. He's not even home right now, but he'll make fun of me for this, not that he makes fun of me. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, I didn't know the trajectory of your career. When I heard about your injury, I thought about all these athletes of all different sports who I hear about who all of a sudden, they have an injury and they have to stop. I think, oh, my gosh, how do you deal with that? After a lifetime of training and your body fails you when everything else might be in line, what then? How did you deal with that?

Malcolm: It's heartbreaking. To be honest with you, it's still terribly difficult to get past that emotionally. I'm trying to, for those who are listening, give a good -- it's like you have a fifteen-year career and you wake up one day and someone says, no, you can't go to work. You can never go back to that job. You say, why? They give you this answer that's out of your control. I'm doing a bad job of explaining, but it's kind of like -- I think this is a testament for how difficult it is.

Zibby: It's not a bad job explaining. It's something a lot of people can relate to. It's not your fault. It's not fair, and it happened anyway.

Malcolm: Yeah, but you have to accept it. You have to move on. You can't stay stuck in the mud or life will pass you by. It is really difficult. I advise anyone going through any catastrophic changes to get a counselor and help you work through it. For me, it was just really tough thinking -- I had been playing sports since I was nine or ten years old. I was fifteen years in. I just had no understanding of how the world worked without athletics. Imagine being on a different planet because that’s the reality. I'll be honest with you. The way athletes think, perform, their daily schedule is so different than ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world. When I was done being that athlete, it's kind of like I got thrust in this environment where I didn't even understand it. What do you mean people can't yell at each other and move on? What do you mean you can't tackle somebody if you're mad? [laughs] How do you handle your problems? Handling my problems were in the form of some physical exertion on another human being. You'll go to jail for that. You can't do that anymore. I had never dealt with anxiety because by the time I'd become anxious, I'd go out on the field and make this extravagant play. It's filled with this euphoric appreciation that, okay, I'm no longer sad or anxious or depressed. Now I have to deal with those real emotions. It's like reprogramming or evolving. Depends on how you want to look at it.

Zibby: How is your knee now? Are you functional in your body? Can you go for a run, or are you done with everything?

Malcolm: Yes, I can do basic workouts, but no more cutting left or right. That phase is over.

Zibby: No more Tom Brady catches and Super Bowls and all that.

Malcolm: No more of that. Maybe some backyard catch. I can handle that.

Zibby: So he just has to come to your backyard. There you go.

Malcolm: Exactly.

Zibby: Tell me about Read with Malcom and your whole foundation and how you're helping all these other kids read.

Malcolm: I started Share the Magic Foundation in 2016 as soon as I graduated from the University of Georgia. I wanted to start the foundation because, like many kids in my community, millions of kids around the world don't understand the importance of literacy. I don't think I was an anomaly by any means. I couldn't have been because there are hundreds of kids that I grew up with that thought the same as I did.

Zibby: By the way, nice use of anomaly. Keep going.

Malcolm: [laughs] I went through this transformation through literacy. I had become empowered. I wanted to give that gift to other people. I did not want them to feel they only had these two options of being an athlete or entertainer to live a sustainable lifestyle. In some communities, that’s just what you believe. I'm a picture book author. That's the strangest thing if you go back to my community. That's not even talked about. I started the foundation because I wanted to spread this magic that I had discovered with other kids around the world hoping that I could unlock their potential just as reading had unlocked mine. That's the simplest reason of why I started Share the Magic Foundation.

Zibby: How involved are you? Is it something you do every day, or you just check in on board meetings?

Malcolm: Every day. Every day, I'm doing something to further the mission. Right now, we have virtual reading challenges that go on annually. Our next one is Read Bowl. We get on the phone each morning. We talk about how to make that accessible to kids and communities where it may be tough. We also talk about book ownership, how to make sure kids who can't afford a book has one. That and being an author is what I do.

Zibby: How do you distribute the books? Do you raise money? Then how do you allocate where the books go? I'm assuming that's how it works.

Malcolm: We used to do it through in-school programming. That's been affected by COVID. Now we raise money. We purchase books from third parties. We distribute them into communities that are poverty pockets and book deserts. Usually, it's to a Title I school. We do it through schools versus individual households just because we can do a better job of managing the process. All money raised goes to book ownership and making sure that our virtual programs stay free. That's something that is important to me. I have this belief that necessity should not come at a fee. I'm really bothered that we have to pay for water and food because without it I wouldn't survive. Literacy falls in that category. That's just how strong I believe in it. Without it, you're kind of stuck in the cycle of poverty. You're caged by not having that social mobility that literacy can grant you. That's just as deadly, to me, as not having shelter. It should be free. That's my philosophy with the foundation.

Zibby: Do you teach people with your virtual programs how to read? What if they get the books but they can't even read children's books yet?

Malcolm: We don't do -- let me talk about what we do and not take a negative spin on it. What we do is we provide the tool, which is the book. Then we inspire. We don't have the bandwidth today to productively teach reading. What we do have for now is the financial capabilities to make sure those who don't have a book have one. That's part of the biggest challenge. It's hard to tell a kid or any person to read if they don't have a book or any form of language to read. Then through the sport-like enthusiasm, we encourage. That's what the virtual reading programs are really there for, to encourage reading through this very sport-like mentality that obviously I gathered from years of playing sports. If anyone wants to check it out and get a better understanding and not hear me ramble about it, you can go to readwithmalcom.com, just like it sounds, readwithmalcom.com, and look through it. Let me know if you like it.

Zibby: I want to get involved now. I'm going to donate. I think that's amazing. I connected with this schoolteacher in an underprivileged community in Texas earlier this year. She was talking about if maybe I could give away a copy or two of a book. I donated just to her. I don't even know her. This is probably not the smartest thing. Now we're BFFs. I just wrote her a check. I was like, "Here, go buy everybody some books." She gave all these kids books. She's like, "Some of these kids had never owned a book before in their lives. Now they could bring home a book. They were so excited to own their own book." I was like, that's amazing. That's one of the things that made me happiest this year to do. Put that on a much bigger scale, that's probably a better -- [laughs].

Malcolm: I'm telling you, when we go into these Title I schools in very low-income communities, you give a child a book, they're trying to give it back because no one's ever given them anything. It's astonishing, even what I've experienced coming from a similar community, but there are some communities that are way more needy that what I experienced. Doing it for them is a big part of why I do it. Tell me why you started the podcast. I'm curious.

Zibby: Why did I start the podcast? I didn't even mean to the start the podcast. The short answer is I am a writer. I love to write. I've been writing since I was eight years old. I had been writing, recently, a lot of parenting essays, not how to, like, I'm crying on the bathroom floor, are you doing that too? More like that. My husband one night said, "You should put all your essays into a book." I said, "Ugh, moms don't have time to read books." Then I thought, oh, that's funny. I'll make that my book title. Turns out, publishers didn't think that was funny. The advice I got is that they wouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't have listened, but I listened. Then another friend said, "While you're building up --" I wasn’t even on social media. I had no following. I had nothing, just some freelance articles. She said, "Why don't you start a podcast?" I said, great, I'll use the title for that book, and I'll do a podcast. I was going to start by reading -- I'm always sending articles to friends and things. I'll start by just reading great articles and essays. Then I realized that was illegal. I couldn't do that without permission. I thought, well, I'll try interviewing authors. I knew two authors. I'll see how that goes. I just started. I was like, oh, my gosh, I love this. I love this so much.

Malcolm: That's impressive. So where's your book?

Zibby: I have an anthology coming out in February. I actually have two anthologies and two children's books that I have deals for now.

Malcolm: Congratulations.

Zibby: I'm doing that, but I have lots more writing that I want to do. Now I don't have time. [laughs]

Malcolm: Since I know you, do I get a free book? No, I'm kidding.

Zibby: Yes, you do. I'm giving my book to everybody who's been on my podcast.

Malcolm: Really? That's nice.

Zibby: I'll ask for your address through email later. I'll send you one. If you want to contribute, my next -- it's all written by guests who have been on my podcast, writing essays. I would love you to do my next one. It's not coming out until next November. We're still getting some submissions for that if you have any interest.

Malcolm: I have a ton of interest. That's really cool. Isn't it amazing how that takes place? You start this journey with no anticipation or -- expectation is the word -- expectation to go anywhere. By the time you look up, you're like, wow, I have three books that I'm responsible for sharing with the world. It's kind of cool. I had a similar experience. I self-published originally because I wrote the story in college. I wrote The Magician's Hat while I was in college. Because of NCAA rules, I was restricted from signing with publishers and taking money and stuff like that. That's why I decided to self-publish. I wasn't very patient. I did it with no expectation. I just had this belief that -- I'm an athlete. For some odd reason, people think I have something worthwhile to say, so maybe I should think of something worthwhile to share. That's what got me into writing. It's me realizing where I was positioned in life and trying to find some valuable way to inspire someone else outside of catching the pass.

Zibby: Why have you not written a memoir yet?

Malcolm: I don't think I'm that interesting.

Zibby: Yes, you are. You have a great book in you.

Malcolm: I don't know. I get bored with myself, actually. That's why I do so many different things.

Zibby: I think there's a story in there. It doesn't have to be that long. I'm sure you have a ton on your plate, but I think you should write a memoir. I think it would be really inspiring. It would get more people reading, get more people helping.

Malcolm: Maybe your books will inspire me.

Zibby: Okay, fine. I will let you go. Thank you so much. I will text you about writing for this anthology. Stay in touch. I'll send you a copy of the book. Thank you for coming on my podcast. Now go relieve your partner and go spend some time with your baby. [laughs]

Malcolm: This was fun. I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. I'd love to stay engaged however I can. This is cool.

Zibby: I love this too. This is great. Thank you. You're really inspiring. You're hardworking and driven. I love it. It's awesome.

Malcolm: Same to you. Give yourself credit. You're doing it with four children. I'm doing it as a lazy dad. More kudos to you than me.

Zibby: [laughs] I don't think so, but thanks a lot. I'll be in touch. Thanks, Malcolm. Buh-bye.

John Allman, BOYS DANCE!

Zibby Owens: Welcome, John. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

John Robert Allman: Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: Thank you for these amazing children's books which are really impressive. You have three. I have three, I should say, in front of me, which are amazing. I particularly love Boys Dance. All of them are through the American Ballet Theatre. I'm sure you can tell me more about that. Then there's B is for Ballet and A is for Audra: Broadway's Leading Ladies from A to Z. Tell me how you became a children's book author.

John: It's actually a little bit of a fun story because it was completely by accident. I was working one job ago at an advertising agency that focused on live entertainment. Most of our clients were Broadway shows. I'm a huge theater fan. Grew up doing theater. Love living in the city to be able to see theater, which has been one of the horrible things about this time, is that none of us can go do that. I thought it was funny that some of my coworkers didn't really know their Broadways divas even though they worked in theater. It kind of was a gag gift. The idea just popped into my head. I ended up writing it out over the course of a couple days to give it to a coworker of mine as a gag, basically. Then that somehow coincided with another one of our colleague's baby showers. I just put two and two together and couldn't let go of the idea. I ended up just chewing on it for a while, telling a bunch of friends about it. Eventually, enough of them had said, "You never know what can happen in publishing. This is so funny. I would love to be able to give this to my friends' kids too. You should go for it."

I didn't really know much about the process or the industry at that point. I did a little bit of research and realized that all you really had to do was pitch it around and cross your fingers. I really went into it totally blind. I cold emailed a bunch of agents. One of them, my amazing agent Kevin, got it immediately and offered to rep it. Then after going back and forth on a proposal over the course of the summer, one of the first two editors that he pitched it to turned out to be a huge theater fan herself and bought it instantly. He was like, "Settle in. It'll probably be a year before this lands anywhere." It was a week into pitching it, it was sold to Random House Children's Books, which was crazy. I still don't feel like that alone is real. I would've written it for free and been so happy for anyone to put it out there just to educate people about these dames that I love so much.

The fact that someone else saw that and then convinced somebody else to see that who had to convince a whole team of people to see that and then put up with having a very surreal, wonderful meeting at one point where we just sat there and went through every diva in the book and decided what show we'd draw her in and what costume she’d be wearing -- it was this business meeting to do that. It was just truly amazing. Then from there, I lucked out. Knowing that I have a background in dance and theater and performing arts, my editor and her team did a deal with ABT to do a handful of books, not all children's books, over a bunch of years and had a couple of ideas that they felt like because of A is for Audra, I might be right to take a stab at. They offered me to noodle on two of them. I couldn't really decide between which one to do because I had just done an alphabet book. Following up A is for Audra with B is for Ballet felt fun. I also grew up doing dance and was very often the only guy in dance classes in Houston, Texas. There was a personal connection to Boys Dance that I felt like would just be too perfect to pass up, so they let me do both. These both just dropped this past September. They're the first two books in Random House's series of books with ABT.

Zibby: Wow. That is such a cool story. I love that. Good things happen to good people. It's really nice to hear.

John: I think it's a very good lesson in just following the North Star of your passion too. I never wanted to be a children's book author, but I love theater. I love musical theater divas so much. The little kernel of wanting to be able to package that up and share it with friends' kids, which I think tapped into something that so many musical theater fans feel which is that it's something that they're passionate enough about that they love to share it, there's never really been something like this that you could give to someone to open their eyes to the breadth of all of these amazing performers in such a concise, kid-friendly way as opposed to the classic taking them to shows, which isn't accessible for everyone and you have to be a certain age for, or listening to cast recordings, which is a little bit of a different experience too. It's cool to have been able to just stitch it all together and package it up like this and be able to introduce people to these ladies that I love. Just sticking to your guns when an idea takes you, running with it, and seeing how far you can take it is definitely something I have learned the easy way.

Zibby: I'm curious, you reference in all the books -- you have more bio information. You mention them, but then you go into more detail a lot at the end, like in Boys Dance for instance. I'm flipping through now just to find you the page. You have all these pictures and bio information on people like Calvin Royal III and Eric Tamm and James Whiteside and Arron Scott, then obviously in A is for Audra and even B is for Ballet. These are hilarious. I love this.

John: Our Sardi's wall.

Zibby: Yes. I'm holding up the wall of the head shots at the back of A is for Audra, which is hilarious. You make it look like one of those signatures outside of a show or in the playbill or something. Did you send these books to those people?

John: We did. Part of the fun of when A is for Audra came out was just crossing my fingers and hoping that everyone in it was flattered and would share it and be an advocate for us. So many of them were. As a theater fan and a huge dork, to have Kristin Chenoweth blurb the book and then Instagram about it and say that it was so cool was just crazy, and two years in the making too. As I'm sure you know, picture books take forever to get done. Not only from the process of writing and then finding an agent and going through the sales process, but once it sold, it was over two years from that week in September that Random House bought it to it actually coming out. That entire time I was crossing my fingers that it would actually even happen and just holding my breath. Then for it to drop in such a big way with all of these women being so supportive was really crazy.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I feel like that would be such a dream. Maybe I should do a children's book with authors. I feel like those are my heroes the way that Broadway performers are for you. That would be kind of fun.

John: Totally. The cool thing about the back matter for Boys Dance is that -- for A is for Audra and for B is for Ballet, I wrote the bios in the back just to give people a little bit more information, a tiny bit more information about each person. For Boys Dance, my editor and I actually went down to ABT after one of their core rehearsals. A bunch of their dancers stayed around after, their male dancers, and were gracious enough to just talk to us for a couple of hours over pizza and beer about their own histories growing up as boys in dance, how they found ballet, the obstacles they overcame to getting to the point where they are as professional ballet dancers now, and who their heroes were, what their dream roles were. As a dancer casually but not a professional-level ballet dancer, I would never know what turns they were most excited to finally nail or those littlest things like that. We were able to bake a lot of that into the book. Then ABT actually tapped a bunch of them to write their own mini memoirs which are what are in the back of that book. I didn't even write those. They're kind of personal essays on these dancers' backgrounds and their encouraging love letters to young guys who might want to get into dance and haven't had role models before. It's really special. It was just so amazing that they not only gave us their time, but wrote these amazing blurbs for the back.

Zibby: That's so great. In the back of Boys Dance under your bio, it says, "John Robert Allman, he was born and raised in Texas where he was often the only boy in dance class." I was like, that's a book right there. I would like to hear that story, please.

John: [laughs] No story, really.

Zibby: What was it like growing up in Texas and being a dancer? What was your background like? What was it like for you?

John: I was lucky in that I had an incredibly supportive family. I had an incredibly supportive school environment. I mostly did all of my performing arts stuff, for the most part, at school, whether it was school plays or school dance classes or dance concerts or choir or any of that. I was lucky to be in an environment where there was tons of options. It was all amazing. I had these incredible teachers who didn't bat an eyelash at any of my very young theatricality or interest in dance or any of that. I actually dedicated Boys Dance to my two dance teachers from Houston. They put me in class and saw things in me that I kind of knew I could do. I actually met one of them when he was new to our school and choreographed a musical. They gave me a little tap solo even though I didn't really know how to tap. He just worked with me alone and really encouraged me to come out of my shell and master that in a way that I don't think I could have if he hadn’t done that and was just so amazing.

Then from there, it snowballed. He drew me into actually taking class even though I was the only guy in those classes. Ended up doing concerts at the end of the year where, again, I was always the only guy in front of the entire school. Then eventually, we did a student choreography showcase. I think because I just really wanted to be him in a way, I choreographed a piece. I set it on three of my girlfriends who were also dancers for this student choreography showcase and then ended up -- for some reason, one of them couldn't do it in this big end-of-the-year performing arts celebration. I ended up dancing it with them again in front of the entire school and just loving it so much. Then went to college, and I didn't major in theater, but I choreographed four shows at school. Now in the city, take dance class every now and again just to take up space and feel big and use my body in that way and see dance all the time. It's really turned into a real lifelong passion of mine. It's all because of Aaron, my dance teacher from freshman year.

Zibby: Aw, that's so nice. I feel like teachers need to know, especially now. I feel like teachers are just at their wits ends having left my remote school in the other room with the littlest guy to come in here and do this podcast. It is tough what they're doing with all of this remote, and to know that no matter what they're reaching these kids and making a huge difference for the contributions in the world. You and I wouldn't be talking. I wouldn't be holding these books. All these things would've been different. I wonder how many of the books around me wouldn't have been written if people hadn’t had encouragement, or the books that are lingering inside people who haven't yet had someone give them the boost that they needed.

John: Totally. I was insanely lucky.

Zibby: That's so nice. It's amazing. What other projects do you have in store now? I can't imagine you're going to stop, right?

John: It's funny because I really never set out to be a children's book author at all, but something about the seed of being able to share my passion and introduce young people to different areas of the arts I think has struck a little bit of a chord in me and also in people who want to be able to do that as well by giving books like these to young people. We are working on a few more in that vein. I don't know that I can say what they are specifically yet because we're still gestating on some of them and haven't announced anything officially. We are doing a couple more, knock on wood, that'll continue to flesh out just a little bit of arts intros for young people that I'm very excited about and feel very fortunate to be able to do.

Zibby: Did you feel like when you moved from Texas to New York that the world opened up in a whole new way for you with the live access to all the performances?

John: Yeah, kind of. Being a patron of the arts was always something that I was able to do even in Houston, which is where I grew up, mostly. It's a huge city, so there are amazing arts organizations. I grew up seeing pretty much every show at the Alley Theatre, which is Houston's Tony Award-winning regional theater that does incredible, first-class productions of plays and sometimes musicals. The Houston Ballet is obviously a world-class ballet company, where I saw my first ballet. I was fortunate to be immersed in it and have access to it then. It's definitely clicked into a new gear when my family moved to New York City. The year that I went to college, actually, my parents moved to New York just by coincidence. I was going back and forth for breaks and at Thanksgiving and all of that. I was coming back from Chicago to New York and able to see like ten shows in five days. That was all I would do. It would be like, bye guys, and meet up with my friends in midtown or wherever and see as many shows as we could cram in before going back to school. That has stayed a huge part of my life. I was just reminiscing about how crazy it is to not have been in a theater in so long now when I probably hadn’t gone longer than a week before in eight years. It's just crazy. I feel very lucky to have been able to see as much as I saw when they first moved and been able to make that such a big part of my life.

Zibby: Have you been watching any virtual things like the Hamilton thing on -- the virtual productions versions?

John: Yes. There have been some amazing moments, especially early on, where I feel like all of us were so shellshocked that being able to kind of commune together and watch some of these virtual events was such a needed faux substitute for the feeling of being in an audience. You'd be online tweeting with people about what was happening in real time. It just felt similar to a big lightning rod moment like when a show opens and everyone's chattering about it. There was a Sondheim Birthday Concert early on where they had all of these incredible Broadway actors and actresses performing from home in a series of Zoom performances. Then obviously since then, there have been so many amazing workarounds for being able to share live theater and arts during this time, including Hamilton on Disney+, which I loved. Actually, just last night I watched -- City Center's gala this year is a brand-new concert that they filmed in the theater with Audra McDonald. It was so crazy and kind of jarring. As a substitute in between these events that have been produced for this moment, I've been binging older canned performances from people every now and again just to feel something and feel like I'm watching a live performance.

She programmed the night and chose her songs and wrote her banter for this moment. All of a sudden, after months of really not seeing anyone in concert like that, you have Audra McDonald opening her concert with a song called "Solitude" and speaking to the moment that we're all feeling of being so alone right now, and then shifting gears and doing some other rep, and then coming back to it and doing "Some Other Time" from On the Town, which is this gorgeous song about catching up down the line since we're out of time now, but I'll see you later, or "A Place For Us" from West Side Story, these amazing standards that take on such a crazy new meaning in this context. To see her perform them so beautifully and really cater the evening towards an audience that's all over the place, at home alone or with their families, was just really special. I highly recommend it to anyone. I think it's available for another week on New York City Center's website.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to go do that with my daughter.

John: Hopefully, they do something else with it. It's stunning. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Zibby: Wow. Have you thought about teaching kids dance or teaching kids about this whole world in any other way?

John: You know, I haven't. I work in TV by day. I'm in marketing. I've been thinking a little bit just with how much is blowing up in the content space across all of these different streaming platforms about what it could be like to look at some of this through a lens of kids' TV sort of like CBS Sunday Morning for kids that teaches them about all of these different arts areas and people. I don't know. We'll see. It's fun that it's such a ripe area to have tapped into and be able to explore in different mediums. I haven't thought too much about anything concrete beyond the books.

Zibby: I know a school where you could get involved in [indiscernible/laughter] including a couple of mine. Maybe you could start by rolling it out on Zoom.

John: Totally. I did choreograph a few musicals for local elementary and middle schools growing up. I would love, if I ever had the time and could be there during the day, which is tough on a nine-to-five work schedule to do something like that again, just to move around and be able to share a love of performing with young people in the same way that it was shared with me.

Zibby: My two little guys are doing an after-school Frozen II Zoom class, which has been very tricky to get them to focus on the computer and having them say their lines. They're six and seven. It's really cute. They have their whole dress rehearsal and then performance next week.

John: That's amazing. They're putting together the whole show on Zoom?

Zibby: Oh, yeah.

John: Wow.

Zibby: It's been a semester-long project.

John: That's incredible. The creativity of the way that folks have been able to use that to string together really, really phenomenal programming has been blowing my mind. That's amazing.

Zibby: I'll send you the link.

John: Please do. I would love to see.

Zibby: John, this is amazing. I'm so impressed with you. I feel like you should be running a theater and you should not be in marketing for TV. I want to guide you to the calling that you probably [indiscernible/laughter]. I'll stay out of your business. You should certainly be on the board of a theater or something.

John: I don't know about that, but thank you.

Zibby: All right. Well, I'm going to follow up with you about this. I feel like there's such a, not waning interest, but so much of the theater-going population pre-COVID was becoming a much older audience. I was actually on the board of Lincoln Center Theater for the young people when I was young, trying to counteract the aging thing and inject some life and excitement into younger people to go into the theater. Not that you need that. You're obviously totally on board. To spread that contagious joy and excitement, it would be awesome.

John: It's definitely an energy like none other for me. I feel like if anything, if these books encourage anyone to go take a dance class or to listen to a cast recording for the first time or to see a show, I feel like even one, then my work here is done.

Zibby: I'm about to stand up and dance right now. Watch out. [laughter]

John: Not to get overly sappy about it, but I think now more than ever, really, we're a society so in need of empathy. I think live performance and theater especially are so uniquely positioned to foster that if you're open to it. Just getting more people into seats to experience things live and communally and to let them chip away at them a little bit, it's just so important. I'm very hopeful that we can start getting back to that as soon as we can.

Zibby: Yes, sounds great. Do you have a favorite play or anything, favorite musical, just to leave us with? Can you pick one?

John: I hesitate to because I feel like it just ebbs and flows with my mood. I love so many for so many different reasons. If I had to, Gypsy is probably my favorite show. I'm a sucker for a good diva turn. I'm also a sucker for theater about theater. I don't think either of those things get better than that show.

Zibby: Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on this podcast. Thanks for all the books. I'm just so excited to have connected.

John: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Ditto. It's been a pleasure to chat.

Zibby: My pleasure. Take care.

John: See you. Bye.

Jarrett J. Krosoczka, STAR WARS: JEDI ACADEMY

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Jarrett. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Jarrett Krosoczka: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: You have written so many different amazing things. I almost don't know where to start. When I first got pitched you coming on this podcast, I was like, oh, my gosh. All of the Star Wars books, my kids have been reading for years. I was like, they're going to think that's really cool.

Jarrett: That's so sweet.

Zibby: Then, as I showed you, the picture of my seven-year-old who was reading Lunch Lady in bed and absolutely loved it. Then I loved Hey, Kiddo, oh, my gosh. I've never really read a memoir in graphic novel before as a grown-up. I just want you to talk about everything, but let's start with Hey, Kiddo. This was really moving and amazing. Your story, I know you've done this TED talk that a billion people have watched. Tell me about this memoir first. That was a long intro. [laughs]

Jarrett: I appreciate all of the effusiveness. Hey, Kiddo is a story about my life growing up. My mother was addicted to heroin. I was raised by her parents who were alcoholics minus the label. I didn't know who my father was. But I had art. I always use art as a way to rise above my situation. In 2001 when my very first picture book was published, I thought, here's the happy ending for this kid who always loved to draw. His mother loved to draw, but she had addictions. She was incarcerated. Then every time I sat down to write what would become Hey, Kiddo, I would stop because I'd find myself censoring it. What is this person going to think about how they're depicted? I realized that if I wasn't ready to be all in and really tell my story, I just wasn't ready to write the book. I went on to write more picture books and then the Lunch Lady books. As I was working on Lunch Lady -- the Lunch Lady was published initially between the years 2009 and 2012, which means in the early/mid-2000s, I was actively making the books. My mind would wander. I would start drawing my grandparents or who I was as a teenager. The idea of writing about my life was always there percolating.

You mentioned that TED talk. Actually, it was October of 2012 when I gave that talk. I was a last-minute replacement. I was home. It was a Friday afternoon, which is miraculous that I was home because I tour all the time giving lectures at schools and libraries. The fact that I happened to be home that Friday afternoon -- my phone rang. Even the fact that I didn't have the number programed into my phone and I still answered it, I'm really putting myself out there. Who is this? I don't know who this is, but it's a local area code. It was a producer at the TEDx talks happening at Hampshire College which is the next town over for me. They said, "We had a last-minute cancellation. Would you be willing to sub in?" I always thought, wouldn't it be cool to give a TED talk? I thought she meant it was next week or the next day. Then she said, "No, it's tonight. It starts in four hours." The thing is, my wife Gina and I, we had planned to go out to dinner. The whole family is constantly sacrificing their schedules for the demands of my work. I said, "You know what? Let me call you back." I said, "Gina, let's talk about this. Should I do it?" Then she got mad. "Why the hell didn't you say yes right away?" like I was dumb. "Say yes to the talk." I committed with four hours to go and immediately began pacing the floor of my kitchen out of, what am I going to talk about? Gina's like, "You're thinking too into it. The story's right there in front of you. You should write about your childhood." I started spitballing. "I'll get up there and I'll say, I love to draw and my mother loved to draw, but she was addicted to drugs." Gina stopped me. She said, "No, your mother was addicted to heroin. You should say that."

I had a slideshow that I had just put together for educators for a sixty-minute talk. Of course, now the TED talk can't be longer than eighteen minutes. Editing it down, jumping in the shower, getting dressed, and then of course our babysitter cancelled on us. Imagine if I had said no and then the babysitter cancelled. [laughs] There would've been no date night and no TED talk. Gina couldn't come with me, which was probably for the better because it was almost easier to be so vulnerable without making eye contact with her and seeing how that story pains her. I arrived at the venue. They said, "There's your seat." I took my seat. The lights went down. The first speaker went up. I didn't even go through that talk ever. I went up there and I talked about my mother's heroin addiction. The talk went viral. The response of kids at schools made me realize, okay, I have a story that I've been trying to write. I used to think I want to write this book. Now I realize I need to. That's something I've truly come to realize. Especially memoir, we don't write memoir because we want to, but we feel compelled to because our experiences can help other people through whatever they're dealing with or understanding other people's path in this life.

Zibby: Wow. After the TED talk when you had essentially outed everything in your history, did it even create a ripple? Did you worry at all about then releasing the book, or was it over?

Jarrett: What the TED talk taught me was how to deal with strangers talking to you about your private life.

Zibby: How do you do that?

Jarrett: It was good training. For me, it was good training. If I had just had the memoir, I think I really would've been overwhelmed by the response. Slowly over the years, I would connect with people. I learned how to also accept people's pain and still remain in one piece for myself. Then anytime something would come up, being an interview or something, there would be another wave of people reaching out to me. I learned how to find the right balance of making myself available to readers but then also exercising self-care. By the time I book-toured for Hey, Kiddo two years ago, I really was prepared for what was to come. There were grandparents handing me photos of their grandkids that they were raising at home. Hey, Kiddo's young adult. It's for ages twelve and up. As you've read the book, I didn't censor anything. My grandmother cursed like a sailor, used to be a trucker. At one of my book events, there was a ten-year-old there. I was known especially as the Lunch Lady guy or Jedi Academy, these young, fun stuff. Now I was really conscious of the fact that there might be someone who thinks this is going to be Lunch Lady, but I'm going to be talking about my mom's addiction to heroin. I didn't want anyone to feel unwelcome. What I would do is I'd have a slideshow of praise quotes. I explained what the book was before the event started. Then that family came up after the book signing. That ten-year-old was there because her thirteen-year-old elder brother had overdosed and died. Those are stories that I'll carry with me for all my days. Those are the stories that validate, for me, why I wrote this, so those young readers and older readers could feel less alone.

Zibby: Do you feel now, a little more pessimistic about how widespread this is as an issue for families in America today?

Jarrett: I don't know if I feel more pessimistic about it. I think people who are dealing with opioid addictions, not fully but more so than when I was young, are really looked at someone who's battling an illness versus having a moral failing. If I was growing up today, I would’ve had more resources to understand that my mother was ill and that she just wasn't a "bad person" as it was always painted for me.

Zibby: Then I read when you wrote at the end that while you were editing the book your mother passed away. That's so awful. Tell me a little bit about the timing of that and how you handled that.

Jarrett: We had been estranged for a couple of years at that point. When my second kid was born, she started getting arrested again. For a number of years, the only way I knew what she was up to -- I had to say, "I have a young family. I have a three-year-old. I have a newborn baby. You're getting arrested again. I can't have this in my life right now," the most difficult thing I could ever do. As much as I loved and wanted to take care of my mom, I knew that my most important role was that of a parent myself. These young children needed me. I couldn't get pulled into a lot of that stuff. We exchanged a few text messages. I saw her a year prior to her death at a different family funeral. We made peace with one another. When I got the news that she had died of a heroin overdose, I wasn't surprised. I was gutted and sad but then also relieved to know that she wasn't suffering anymore. I kind of liken it to when someone's had, maybe, terminal cancer for a really long time. She started using when she was twelve, thirteen years old. She lived well into her late fifties. She had a really long life for someone who lived such a lifestyle.

When I was cleaning her house after she died, I was really confronted the ugliness of her plight. That brought a deeper understanding of what she went through more than anything. When you're a kid and you have a parent who has an addiction, for me, I would always think, and I hear this from other people too, that you chose drugs over me. In seeing what she dealt with right to the end, I realized she only chose drugs once, and that was well before I was ever born. She wanted nothing more but to be a parent and be there and to be a grandmother. Even on my first kid's first birthday, she got in touch with me not to wish my kid a happy birthday, but to ask for money. It was things like that where, I mentioned this at the TED talk, it is like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. You keep trying because you hope maybe you make contact.

Zibby: You seem to be in such a psychologically healthy place talking about this.

Jarrett: Should I get Gina down here? She could tell you the whole other side of the coin. [laughs]

Zibby: That makes me almost feel better. You mentioned how you wish you had had therapy as a child, but you're lucky enough to have had it as an adult. That was just something your grandparents didn't really believe in and all the rest. You seem like you have made peace with this in such a profound way. Now all you do is basically give back to other people with your books and illustrations and even during the pandemic, all your drawing shows. Is that all because of this therapist?

Jarrett: No, no, no. It was because of my grandfather. My grandfather was a very altruistic man. He never forgot where he came from. He always would say to me, "Remember your station in life. Remember your last name." He grew up with nothing. A place that gave him a lot of opportunities was the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester. He, his entire life, would support them and donate to them. My grandparents raised me. They didn't believe in therapy, but you know what? They always gave me empty sketchbooks and art supplies. They, in their own way, provided me a space to work through a lot of that stuff. I will say, when I finished Hey, Kiddo, that was not closing a chapter, but it was very healing because it was a hard book to write. I liken it to in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Professor Umbridge is making Harry write lines with the blood quill and every time he writes "I shall not tell lies" it's getting singed into the back of his hand. That's kind of what it felt like at times.

Then when I finished it, I was like, wow, I lived through that and I'm stronger for it. Then it published, which was this other wave of anxiety and nerves. Weeks before the book published, I thought, I can't ask them not to publish it. I signed a contract. They’ve spent all this time and money to put the book out there. Then again, it's getting those responses from the readers that I say, okay, that's why that pain was worth it. Going through the challenges of writing the book was worth it for that. I was sixteen when I started working at a camp for children with cancer. It was that experience too that taught me there are so many different kinds of pain. I have my pain. These families have their pain. Being of service to somebody, that lifts your spirits more than anything. One of the camps that I worked at was the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp which was founded by Paul Newman. His oft-used quote was that the mathematics of the whole thing didn't really make sense because no matter how much you put in, you get so much more out of that sort of work.

Zibby: Wow, that's beautiful and so inspiring.

Jarrett: And totally paraphrased and butchered. He said it much more eloquently than I just put it. [laughs]

Zibby: No, not that quote. I mean, that's lovely. I just meant the whole story, the way you're able to channel your life into such a giving outcome, essentially. Tell me a little more about the drawing show that you launched recently.

Jarrett: January 1st, 2020, as we all looked to the great new year ahead of us and we think, what do we want to accomplish or what do we want to work on? my new year's resolution was, I would like to do more webcasting. I would like to do more live videos. I'd like to create more videos for my YouTube. Step one is, how am I going to achieve this goal? I have three kids. I thought the only way that I could really make this work would be to carve out a space that would be just for recording. I'm in a room in my basement. It's a small little room. I have my flat files over here. It was just a storage room. I said if I just take this little corner and I have an extra drafting table -- I would go on Facebook Live once a week for the adults. I would go on YouTube Live once a month for schools. Then when everything started shutting down in the middle of March, my mind was rapid-fire like everyone's. What are we going to do? Then also, how can we help? What can I do in this moment?

I have friends who are nurses and doctors and friends who deliver bread to all of the supermarkets in Central Massachusetts. They were all essentially putting their lives at risk not knowing what was going to come of this work they were doing which was to benefit people. I was actually in Pittsburgh right before the shutdown. I was traveling the first couple weeks of March, definitely being anxious. Definitely, I was masking up and sanitizing and thinking, I don't know if I should be here. Then the NBA shut down and Broadway shut down as I was flying home from Pittsburgh. I was staying across the street from where Mr. Rogers filmed his show. Even just driving by there, imagine, he went to work every day, and he walked through that door. That is really neat. That physical space is where Mr. Rogers would go to work every day. I had that in the back of my mind. Then I was at the airport nervously scrolling on my phone before the flight took off. A friend of mine, she pulled her kids before our town officially called it. She had a big whiteboard with the schedule that they were going to keep. It said, "Two o'clock: Art." I said, "I could teach your kids art. You know what? That's what I'll do." The neurons just fired away on that plane home from Pittsburgh.

I said it'll be called Draw Every Day because we're going to draw every day. Everything's getting shut down for two weeks. We'll just do this thing for two weeks. It'll be done. Life will be back to normal. Done. Where I am travelling to next? [laughs] Obviously, you know how that story ends. Over the weekend, we formulated, what would it be? There’d be different segments. I made little animations. I have an overhead camera, so you could see me draw. People were really counting on me. I would receive these messages of gratitude. Then, again, I felt a little bit of a responsibility, so I did it every single day for the next couple weeks and another couple weeks after that. Then I went down to two or three episodes per week. Then Labor Day hit. Summer came. I said, let me just put it on pause, take some time to take stock and reflect and recharge, and also realizing how as soon as the adrenaline leaves your body, you're like a marionette without strings. That's really what happened to me. I took the summer to relax. By relax, I mean stay in my yard with my kids and not go anywhere. [laughs]

Zibby: That's so relaxing.

Jarrett: So relaxing, and not have any childcare help or anything and not be able to see anyone I love. Other than that, it was a great summer.

Zibby: Dream come true.

Jarrett: [laughs] Then I picked it up again in middle of August. Also realizing that with Hey, Kiddo, I have this whole other readership that's older, so I started another web show called Origins Stories where I'm interviewing my graphic novelist friends about how they came to be. That is a show for teens and adults. Sometimes younger kids could -- there's an episode with Raina Telgemeier. That would be appropriate for everyone. I don't want to hold back. I'll be interviewing some other authors who have more older-skewing work. Draw Every Day is about two times a week. Origin Stories is once a week. I record it right over here. I'll turn this around. This is a tiny little room. There are my flat files. That is where I record Origin Stories.

Zibby: Wow. Basically, it is smaller than I even thought, but it looks amazing. It's amazing. It's fantastic.

Jarrett: If I stood up, I'd touch the ceiling, but then you would see my sweatpants. [laughter]

Zibby: That's okay. Nobody's standing up on this call.

Jarrett: That's just the illusion of TV magic. I shared some behind-the-scenes photos a couple months in. People thought I was in this attic with huge windows and skylights. It's a couple of ring lights and a microphone. I was able to do that so quickly because I had the ring light here because I had all of this stuff set up. I think we'll all be traumatized by that pivoting for so long now. I don't think I've even processed it all yet. I'm sure none of us really have, that spring. You know why? Because we're so busy mourning every new thing that we don't have. Now we're in the midst of mourning Halloween and making plans for how we can safely celebrate Christmas with my in-laws and all that.

Zibby: Even the marathon is coming up here. I'm like, even the marathon's not happening? That's outside. I know what you mean, every milestone. I'm in my head like, oh, my gosh, if we hit March 12th again, I don't know what I'm going to do. Are we still going to be in this state with no vaccine and no anything?

Jarrett: Every now and then Gina and I say, we miss the days of just Tiger King and new TikTok. That got us through. If there's a Netflix executive listening, if you could please make a Tiger King: Season 2 for us by March 12th, that’ll be the only thing I'll [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Now what is coming next on the book front for you?

Jarrett: I have a book called Sunshine which is a follow-up to Hey, Kiddo. It's actually not so much a follow-up as much as it's a companion. It totally stands on its own. It's about my time working at that camp with children with cancer. It actually fits into this book. It was originally a chapter from Hey, Kiddo. I'll show you the page. What was once a whole chapter became just this page here in Hey, Kiddo. I needed to explain how that experience informed my motivation to meet my father. You could read Hey, Kiddo up to here, stop, read all 240-something pages of Sunshine, and then come back and read the rest here. That was one of the greatest gifts my editor gave me. When I was writing this, he said, "Don't write this book like it's your only chance to write about your life." It's true because our lives don't unfold in a nice, neat, three-act structure. There are so many different tracks and so many things going. Even as I continue to think about life experiences that I want to write about, there were a lot of parts and things about my grandparents that just didn't fit into the narrative. I have these two wonderful tracks where I could write these heavier books for older readers. Then I could write younger goofy stuff for younger readers as well. I have another series in the works for that Lunch Lady/Jedi Academy age as well.

Zibby: Very busy. That's awesome. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, or illustrators I should really say, creators?

Jarrett: One of the greatest gifts my grandfather gave me, too, was my work ethic. He grew up during the Great Depression. That's something he always instilled in all of his kids, including me, that hard work is so important. It really doesn't matter what art college you go to, if you even go to college for art. It's just about your craft. You have to work on your craft. It's a constant journey in growth. I could look at any of these books and point out everything that I would want to change about every single one of them, but I can't. They're printed. It's done. I can only take that knowledge into my next projects.

Zibby: That's awesome. I had such a great time talking to you today, especially our little pre-chat commiserating on our dogs' habits and whatever else. You're really inspiring. It's amazing. I love all the good you're doing in the world and the entertainment mixed with emotion. It's really fantastic. I'm glad our paths have crossed in this world.

Jarrett: I am too, Zibby. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for all you're doing as well to throw a spotlight on books that you love. Thank you.

Zibby: No problem. Have a good day.

Jarrett: Have a good day. I'll see you soon, Zibby. Thank you. Be well.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Natalie Portman, NATALIE PORTMAN'S FABLES

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Natalie. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Natalie Portman: Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: I read Fables to my kids. They were obsessed. They loved it. I don't say that all the time. I have lots of children's books. Sometimes your kids just relate to ones or they don't. My daughter was like, "You're talking to the woman who wrote the new Three Little Pigs?" They thought that was the coolest.

Natalie: I appreciate that so much. Thank you.

Zibby: What inspired you to write Fables, to reimagine some of these classic fairy tales from our youth and do them over? What was that about?

Natalie: I was reading books to my kids. I have a boy and a girl. I realized that, first of all, for my girl, the kinds of presents she would get, the kind of books that were given to her were often feminist baby books. I was like, why didn't my son get any of these? I was like, the boys need it as much as the girls. I felt like, I want something that everyone will read. The classic books that I had been reading both of them, of course, I started noticing that all of the characters, or predominantly, were male. I thought, oh, my goodness, the books that both of them are reading are telling them to prioritize male character stories over other stories. I thought, what if I took some of these classics and just made it more reflective of the world where there's lots of genders in the animal kingdom and let the stories that are still morally resonant, the morals that really resonate today like The Tortoise and The Hare and The Three Little Pigs and The Country Mouse and The City Mouse, those could still hold up and even have new meaning in today's world?

Zibby: Now the bad guys are actually bad women. Is that really a good message? I don't know. The wolf is a woman. Are we happy to be including her in our clan here? What do you think?

Natalie: [laughs] I think that the more women are seen as human and capable of anything, capable of being good or bad, capable of being smart or not smart, or strong or lazy, the more possibility women have to just be human and be seen as human first and judged by their character, their virtue, their accomplishments, not by their gender, that's where we reach equality. It's like the RBG quote. Putting women on a pedestal is just another kind of cage. Paraphrasing, of course. That's not the exact quote. When people say women are much better than men, that's another harmful stereotype even masquerading as a compliment.

Zibby: Very true. I feel like throughout your Instagram, you've done such a good job of trying to highlight all different types of women in all different areas and talking about the things that are really important, everything from Serena Williams and why are there not as many women tennis matches per day than men's tennis matches? to different political candidates, to homeschooling, everything. You're just digging deeper and deeper into every industry. It's not about authors. It's about, really, critical thinkers. Tell me about how you started doing this whole interview series as well.

Natalie: Really, I've just been led by curiosity and the things in interested in. I thought, if I have this way of talking to people directly, then I might as well talk about what I'm curious about, learn things, and share what I'm learning or the people I'm lucky to meet, whether it's about food, which is super interesting to me, and obviously, the environmental impact of food is really interesting, but making it delicious and fun at the same time, or whether it's writers. I love reading. It's such a great opportunity to get to discuss books with writers after you read them. It's the coolest opportunity. Or activists from whom -- I feel like the big change for me on going on social media was it opened up my understanding of the world in such a new way. I was exposed to so many incredible people doing so much really world-changing, world-bettering work. That's been really wonderful too as an opportunity. It's been really interesting.

Zibby: Social media obviously gets a bad rap, but I feel like I've met people from all over the world. I can talk to an author in Nigeria about how they're handling COVID. I can talk to someone in LA. There are no barriers anymore. You can connect with people anywhere. I think it's one of the biggest perks.

Natalie: It's all how it's used, it seems. Also, of course, it can be very addictive. It can be very, living in a virtual state as opposed to the real-life state. If you're able to use it in moderation, it certainly is an incredible portal into so many different places we wouldn't normally have access to.

Zibby: Back to your cooking, by the way, now I'm feeling totally shamed. Not only do you have your whole professional life and all these great activist, thought-leadership type interviews, you're cooking all these amazing foods too. My husband cooks, and that's fine. Matzah lasagna, that looks amazing.

Natalie: Oh, my gosh, you're so sweet, but please, not at all. My husband is really the cook in the house. He really cooks well. I'm very amateur, but I really like it. For me, why I like sharing it is because I'm not very skilled. I know if I can do it, anyone can do it. I'm usually doing it in fifteen minutes holding a child in my hands. I'm like, this recipe, you can do. If I can do it, you can do it. It's not complicated. I feel like those are the kind of mom things we need to share with each other because that's how we get by. It's those tips that we spread from mom to mom.

Zibby: It's true. The whole whisper culture of, this is how we do it, yes, I'm upheld by comments like those and little tips. The messages in Fables, though, go beyond typical kids' books, I would say. You have so many things. I don't know if you intentionally put in all your values and just shoved them in a little children's book, if you started with the values and you were like, how can I fit these? There were so many things like, "See, you don't need all that stuff. True friends are more than enough." You have all these things. "Sometimes, more isn't better. A bragger cannot persevere. A life lived attentively is the completest. To have strong foundations, you cannot be lazy. Waking up early is an energy booster. You want to have friends who will stand by your side." I could be reading a quote book at the checkout line with little flowers or something. Instead, they're interspersed in the book. It's very clever how you did it.

Natalie: Thank you. That's really nice. I think when you have a clear audience -- here, it was for my children. I was like, what do I want to give them in tangible form of what I think is important? It's not all in there. Certainly, there's a lot that I care about that I wanted to give to them. Secondly, I find that reading books to kids, it's kind of the only time I read books over and over and over again. My kids both have had favorites over the years. They make me read a book a hundred times in a row. It really gets into you. As a parent, you kind of want that to be meaningful. There are certain things I feel like I even wrote for myself, like in The Tortoise and The Hare. "Honey, move slowly, and it is the sweetest. A life lived attentively is the completest." The attention, it's so noisy. It's so busy. You're running around all the time. You know that when you really pay attention, when you really focus, when you really spend time, when you take things slowly is a true expression of love and meaning. That's where your most fulfillment -- it felt like both for them and also for myself, I was like, what do I need to remember? Also, what do I want to imbue in my children?

Zibby: I know in the back of the book you included a portrait that your mom had done of you and your brother as kids. I think it's so sweet. You have this whole big shout-out to her.

Natalie: That's my kids.

Zibby: Oh, that's your kids. Oh, my gosh.

Natalie: Those are my two kids, yeah. It's my son and my daughter that she drew.

Zibby: Aw, so sweet. Tell me about, what did she do right? What do you think she did in her parenting to you that gave you the values that you're now passing onto your kids? Or maybe not. Maybe it's a reaction against.

Natalie: She's just the most attentive and the most focused with kids. She was like that with me. I'm an only child. Then she's like that with my children now. You couldn't even imagine. I feel like I'm constantly running through lists of stuff that I have to do and trying to fold laundry and cook dinner and get the kids homework done at the same time. I mean, not get their homework done.

Zibby: I can imagine.

Natalie: Supervise them doing it. I mean, him. I only have one kid doing homework right now. My little one is in preschool. I feel so scattered as a mother. I feel like that's the central characteristic. My mother, I always felt that she was just so focused and present and attentive. I try and conjure her energy, which I don't have. I'm more all over place.

Zibby: I'm the same way. Sometimes even when I'm with my mom, she'll be on her phone or something. I feel so hurt. It's so silly. I'm forty-four years old. I'm like, but we only had an hour together. Why are you on your phone? What are you doing? What is so important? I think it's the same thing. Let someone occupy a hundred percent of what you're doing. That's what great conversation is about. You just pay attention. There's nothing like it. When you don't feel like you're necessarily getting that -- I try to remind myself of that when I'm with my kids. How do I feel when my mom seems distracted?

Natalie: Absolutely. My husband always says it to me. These smart phones were supposed to make our lives so we could have more free time because you could kind of be portable and whatever. Then instead, it just makes us work all the time. It makes us half working all the time, half on our phones all the time, half not present all the time. It's one of the biggest challenges of modern parenthood among the other seven thousand things.

Zibby: Let's pick. I know. Every so often, I'm like, maybe I'll just try to email on a computer today. Let's see how that works. [laughs]

Natalie: It's actually really good. I've done that a few times where I've taken breaks and just taken email off of my phone. It actually makes a huge difference.

Zibby: You can be so much more productive on a computer with an hour than all day long, these little dribble drabbles of emails that never stop. Not that I will change my behavior, but you know. Tell me about this new LA women's soccer team. What is that about? That's so awesome.

Natalie: We're so excited. Angel City Football Club is our official name. We're launching in 2022. That's when we'll start playing games. It's just really thrilling to bring women's soccer to LA. There's two men's soccer teams. We have such incredible players in this country. We have the best players in the world in the most popular sport in the world. It's super exciting to get to celebrate them and amplify their virtuosity because they're extraordinary. It's really fun. It's an incredible group of people doing it. It's Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams and a bunch of actress friends I adore, Jess Chastain, America Ferrera, Eva Longoria, Uzo Aduba, and just countless others and sports legends like Billie Jean King and Lindsey Vonn and fourteen former women's national team players like Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach. It's an insane, insane group of people. It's so exciting.

Zibby: You all get a box and you can hang out every game? Is that how it's going to be? [laughs]

Natalie: That's the goal. Get through this pandemic. Then we can all hang, hopefully.

Zibby: Actually, I was chitchatting with my husband as I was coming down here. I was mentioning your soccer team. My daughter who we were putting to bed was like, "Wait, women have soccer teams?" I was like, "Yeah, women can have soccer teams." She's like, "Can women have football teams?" I was like, "No, not football." She's like, "Okay. Basketball?" We watch so much sports here. I don't. My husband does. Somehow, that was really inspiring. She's a great little athlete. You're setting [indiscernible/crosstalk] role modeling.

Natalie: I know. It's amazing for our girls to have professional careers to aspire to if they are extraordinary athletes, to have athletes to look up to and admire, and also for boys. It's the same things we're talking about with the book. It really had similar impetus. I was inspired to have the soccer team when I saw my son watching the Women's World Cup. He was looking at Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe in the same way that he looks at Messi or Ronaldo. I was like, that's change. That really feels like a completely new world. How many male athletes did we look up to as little girls?

Zibby: I had a secret girl crush on Chrissy Evert, I have to say, the tennis player. Everybody else is a blur of men. She was my childhood hero.

Natalie: We also had female athletes that you looked up to. I think women are often asked to empathize with or see themselves in men. I don't mind that. I think it just also should be that young boys see idols in women too, that they don't just have to look at greatness in male form.

Zibby: A hundred percent. Totally agree. Speaking of idols, tell me a little bit about Natalie's Book Club and the books that you've been picking and how that’s been going and all the rest.

Natalie: It's been so fun to get to share and hear people's opinions about books. It's brought me to so many interesting corners. I'm kind of an eclectic reader. I don't have a genre that people can rely upon. I hope that is okay for people following. Sometimes it's fiction. Sometimes it's nonfiction. Sometimes it's poetry. It's been really interesting to get to talk to all these different writers and understand more about their processes and, of course, read some great books along the way.

Zibby: Are you reading anything great now? Anything amazing by your bedside?

Natalie: I finally read Untamed. I know I'm so late to the game. So many people had told me how wonderful it was. They were all right. It's so rare when something lives up to the hype. It really did. Of the book club books that really have stuck with me in such a deep way, I would say the Lost Children Archive. That Valeria Luiselli book is amazing. That's really, really affected me deeply. Girl, Woman, Other was incredible, the new Elena Ferrante. I'm picking all fiction books. Then surprises too like the Robin Wall Kimmerer book, Gathering Moss. I was rapt. It was so incredible. Patrisse Cullors' memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, is really, really moving and world changing. It completely changes the way you see the world through one person's story. It's really a wonderful book. So many. Every one has been an incredible adventure.

Zibby: I have a whole new stack of books now. I have to make a new little shelf here for you.

Natalie: What about you? What are you reading?

Zibby: I recently read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett which, like Untamed, everybody had already read. I was so late to it. I almost didn't want to read it because I'm like, it can't possibly be this good. Then it was. I was like, how great is that? Lots of different books. I'm reading a new book coming out called The Push by Ashley Audrain about a mother who's been a victim of abuse through the generations, her mother, grandmother, and how she mothers. It's a thriller. It's really good. That's what I'm reading right now, and Fables. [laughs]

Natalie: Yes. I'm constantly reading a whole variety of children's books.

Zibby: We just finished Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast. That's really what I'm reading. I was reading that. That's a really good one.

Natalie: I don't know that one.

Zibby: It's good. Do you have any advice, I would say both to aspiring authors, and especially children's authors, but also just people who want to emulate your activism and how to make a difference in terms of advocating for women especially in getting equal footing?

Natalie: For kids' books, you just have to imagine and maybe practice with kids, what keeps their attention. I know I need to mention farts and burps and boogers. That's what keeps my children's attention. Not that you have to do that, but I think that the silliness always helps with the kids' books and practicing on them. I definitely read them the book so many times to find the parts I needed to change, what they understood, etc. In terms of activism, I feel like what I've learned the most is to listen to the people who've been doing the work and follow them and not trying to invent anything yourself. There are a lot of people who are doing it really well. Not to put anyone down. Obviously, if you want to devote your life to it, go do it. The thing is, when you're new to it, the best thing to do is find the people who've been doing it for decades, who've been organizing, who've been leading. Then listen to what they say and go with that. I mean, when you believe in what they're doing and their actions. I learned the most by listening. I guess that's always true.

Zibby: Can I ask one last perhaps inappropriate question? How do you stay looking so young? You do not age.

Natalie: Are you kidding me? That's so nice.

Zibby: I'm just looking at your skin. This so creepy of me. I'm like, what is she doing that I am not doing?

Natalie: All I do is go, look at all these -- I have lines everywhere. Every day, new ones. I'm trying to just embrace it and feel like I earned it. My best friend and I, we were talking last night. We're both turning forty this year. She was like, "Ugh, forty." I was like, "No. Forty, that's an achievement. You know how many people don't get to reach this? How lucky are we? How cool is this? Look what we did to get here. This is amazing." I don't want to look inexperienced. I'm not inexperienced. I am full of experience. I am full of joy and wisdom and curiosity. If that's what my lines represent, then great. Let that be a signal. Looking young is overrated. [laughs]

Zibby: Thank you. That was just what I needed to hear tonight. Thank you for that. Looking young is overrated. Wasted on the young. Forget it.

Natalie: Let them enjoy it. That's the best part about being young. You don't know anything at that point. Being young was so painful for me. I feel like it's such a painful, not knowing, searching, figuring it out, feeling uncomfortable in my skin time. Give them the clear skin. They can have it. It's the bonus prize for having to deal with all the --

Zibby: -- No clue what's coming next and nothing being settled at all. Every day is a question mark. Now we have everything settled. Here come the lines. So, fine, or for me anyway. Awesome. Natalie, thank you so much. Thanks for all your time. I really appreciate it. That was really fun.

Natalie: Thank you. You too. Be well.

Zibby: Thank you. Stay safe. Buh-bye.

Natalie: Bye.

Tami Charles, ALL BECAUSE YOU MATTER

Zibby Owens: Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," the Instagram version and eventually the podcast. Would you mind holding up your book so everybody can see it? All Because You Matter, so beautiful. You had an amazing unboxing video with your son, which was just awesome. Would you mind telling everybody what your children's book is about?

Tami Charles: All Because You Matter, really, it's the book of my heart. I wrote this book for my son, essentially. His name is Christopher. He's ten years old. It's really a tribute to him and to all children, especially children from black and brown communities, marginalized communities, to really just remind them of all the ways that they matter to us and in the universe. All Because You Matter, this is my book baby.

Zibby: Beautiful. Would you mind opening one to three pages?

Tami: Absolutely, yes. I'm going to read the intro. "They say that matter is all things that make up the universe: energy, stars, space. If that's the case, then you, dear child, matter. Long before you took your place in this world, you were dreamed of like a knapsack full of wishes carried on the backs of your ancestors as they created empires, pyramids, legacies, building, inventing, working beneath red-hot suns and cold blue moons thinking of you years ahead because to them, you always mattered."

Zibby: You're a poet. It's like poetry. Did you start out writing poetry? How did we get here? Where did you come from? Where were you born? How did you start writing? Let's back up.

Tami: I was born in Newark, New Jersey. What state are you in, actually?

Zibby: I'm in New York.

Tami: New York, awesome, so you might have heard of Newark, New Jersey. I was born in Newark, New Jersey. I'm the daughter of a technician and a retired teacher, vice principal, and principal at my school. When I was growing up in my elementary school, my mom was very, very key in developing my love of reading. I loved books as a child. That filtered into my adult life. The one thing was, for as much as I loved books, I didn't really think that I could be an author growing up because it wasn't something that I saw. I didn't have access to books that featured positive depictions of kids of color, so I kind of thought I couldn't be an author. I did the next best thing. I became a teacher. I did that for fourteen years. It was wonderful, but I always had that hidden dream tucked in my back pocket that I really wanted to be an author. When I began my career teaching, I started to notice that there were a lot more diverse books for kids today than what I was used to growing up. My students and I, we would read these books. We would write stories together. They would say, "Miss Charles, you should do this. You could be an author." It's almost like my students gave me the green light to follow my childhood dream of becoming an author, so I did. I got rejected along the way in the beginning, but I kept pushing and I kept pushing. Eventually, I was able to become published. It's really been such an amazing journey for me. That's where we are now. I no longer teach because I write full time. It's great. I became published in 2018. I'm still a baby with this stuff, but I'm loving it.

Zibby: Tell me about your first book.

Tami: My very first book that published, it was called Like Vanessa. That's a middle-grade novel that I wrote about a thirteen-year-old girl from Newark who shyly enters her school's beauty pageant even though the kids at school, there's some kids who think that she doesn't stand a chance. That's called Like Vanessa.

Zibby: This picture book that you just wrote is not only lyrical and beautiful, but so important for the times that we're in right now. When did you write this? Not that it matters month to month, but when did you write it? Was this always in the works? Give me the timing.

Tami: The timing is this. First of all, I want to say this was the book that, as a mom, I didn't want to write. The second I became a mom of this little boy, I just wanted to keep him small forever. I wanted to keep him shielded from the cruelties of the world, some sad realities that have been going on in our communities, especially communities of color. I didn't want him to even know about the bad stuff. As time went on, I knew that my son would grow up and he would experience things. Maybe he himself would be put in situations where maybe he feels like he doesn't matter. I knew that I had to write this story to have a starting point for conversation for those tough questions that I knew would eventually come. They started coming once he entered school. He learned things. He met friends of all kinds. I remember one of the earliest questions was, "Mommy, if Dr. King was such a good person, why did they hurt him?" He was five or six when he asked that. I was like, okay, I can't avoid it anymore. I have to find a way to get real with him, let him form his own opinion about things that have happened in our history, but all the while reminding him of how much I love him. I kind of put that off for years. My son is ten years old. In 2018, by this point, he was eight.

I had a dream one night. I literally dreamt of this book. I dreamt of all the words. That never happens, by the way, at least for me. I dreamt of all the words. I saw the art. I knew who did the art in my dream. I woke up that morning and I wrote it really, really fast. I remember my husband was on a business trip. I called him and I read it to him over the phone. He goes, "You need to send that to your agent now." I'm like, "No, that's not how that works. I need time. I have to revise it. I have to workshop it." I sent it to her that day. It was a Friday. I remember getting in the car to drive to the Boston Book Fest. By the time I was in Hartford, Connecticut, I stopped for coffee, I got an email from my agent saying, "We're going out with this on Monday. Let's go." I think by either that same day or the next day, we already had an offer on the table. This was one of the fastest projects I've worked on. It never works like that.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Now it's coming out in this time, congratulations, tomorrow. So exciting. First of all, how are you celebrating this? Second of all, how do you feel compared to 2018 when you had a traditional release of a book to now?

Tami: This COVID is keeping us apart. I can't take it any longer. I miss humans. I miss traditional gatherings for book-ish events, but here we are. At least we have this. I'm very thankful for this. As far as tomorrow goes, my son -- that is him on the cover. When he was eight years old, we did the cover. My son told me, "Mom, this is my book. I'm in charge tomorrow of our day." He claims it's a surprise, but I think I know what we're doing. The book is in Target, which is a big deal because I've never had a book in Target. I believe we're going to Target tomorrow. I think we're also going to Barnes & Noble because the book is there. It was selected as one of the best books for October by Barnes & Noble. We'll be going to those two places. I'm hoping there's going to be some kind of food involved.

Zibby: I'm always hoping there's going to be some sort of food involved.

Tami: I think that's what we'll be doing, and then just coming home and having a quiet little celebration at home. He's in charge. It's his book. I'm just the [indiscernible].

Zibby: The video you sent me, he asked you if he was getting paid for this book. You're like, "Yeah, with [indiscernible], essentially." [laughs]

Tami: That kid's a hustler, I tell you. Yesterday for the book launch, I had a virtual launch with Books of Wonder. I didn't have to bribe him to do it because he was really happy to do it, but you better believe that he said, "So I don't have to do my chores today, right?" [laughter] No, he didn't have to do his chores yesterday.

Zibby: I loved the basic premise of the book, which is obviously, people of all kinds, shapes, sizes, colors, whatever, we all matter. The people who came before you have been working in the effort to make sure you have better lives, which is for all generations to come. This word matter is so of the moment with Black Lives Matter. Yet in the book, you don't reference that at all, unless I missed it. It wasn't the introduction. It wasn't in the author's note. It didn't speak to that particular movement. Was that on purpose? Did you choose the word on purpose, or it just happened to be that way like matter in the universe?

Tami: I think I did a bit of a word play. When you think of matter, you think of -- at least when I first heard the words in my mind, I thought of the universe and all the things in the universe, everything that makes up this universe, the sun and the stars and the moon and even grass. In thinking of that and positioning that with the fact that there's been such an increase of injustices against people of color, particularly black people -- my son, now that he's getting older, he was seeing that. He had questions about it. If you think about the universe and if you think about what has been going on in our country, I had to write it in a way where I let him know that there's been a place for you in this universe from the moment that it was created. Of course you matter. You matter because the people that came before you worked hard and they made it so that you could be here today and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Absolutely, this is an homage to the belief that black lives matter. Of course we do. If all lives matter, then we matter as well. I have to say that in order for all lives to matter, we have to really acknowledge the ones who feel that they don't.

I know that there have been times where my son would see certain things and he would have questions about it. I said, I have to let him know that he matters because that's my job as his mom, to pour love into him, to let him know that as you navigate this world you are literally carrying on your backpack, the hopes and dreams of your ancestors. Someone asked who illustrated the book. Bryan Collier is the artist of the book. He did it so lovingly. If you look throughout the art, he uses ancestral petals. Within those petals, you see different parts of faces. Those are the voices and the faces of our ancestors. They're whispering to our children, you matter. You mattered before you even got here. Don't forget it. Carry that with you as you navigate this world. I tried to do that in the most loving way. I didn't want to do it in a way didactic way because you may see something in the text or in the art that is totally different than what another person may see. I wanted to write it in a way that opens up interpretation and conversation. You hit the nail on the head. At the end of the book, there is a spread of all the people and all the people marching and really amplifying the belief that our children matter. It's in there. It's in the art. If you hear it out loud, you can hear it whispered in between the words.

Zibby: Even the way you talk is so beautiful. It's so visual.

Tami: It's in there. I want my son to know that. As I mentioned, I'm a former teacher. I remember this very look, that look. It's the same look of all children. It's a look of a student who looks at a teacher and says, "You say I matter. Okay, tell me more. Tell me more about that." It's that look of longing. It's a look of hope. I'm really hoping to convey that to anyone who reads it, but particularly for those who need to hear it the most.

Zibby: That's the magic of a successful book. It's giving people what they need that they didn't necessarily even know they needed it. Then there it is in your hands, and boom.

Tami: I'm telling you, when you tell a child that they matter, there's a power in that. Something about that will lift them and catapult them forward in their future. I've seen it. As a teacher, I've seen it. I have students right now who are -- oh, my gosh, I have students who are business owners now. They're married with children. They own this. They travel here and there. I'm just looking back like, wow. I've had students come to me and say, "Miss Charles, because you told me this, I knew that I could do this." Imagine the power that you have as an adult to just whisper those words in a child's ear. You matter.

Zibby: It's so important. It's great. Can I steal that and use it on my own kids? I know I'm not your target audience.

Tami: You know what I love that Scholastic has done? They're really billing this as an all-ages picture book. I love that. Someone just wrote, can she give us a look at the artwork? I'll hold up a picture. This is one of my favorite images. You can see it. That is a child taking their first steps to their mom. It's supposed to be my son. One of my favorite memories is when he took his first steps. That's a moment that matters. Children have all these little moments in their life that matter. What a gift it is for us to be there and witness that. It's been such a great journey with this book. I really do think that anyone of any age can read this book and pull something out of it. Listen, I'm forty years old. I still need to be told that I matter. [laughs]

Zibby: When you were saying that about how good it makes kids feel, I was like, that would make me feel good too.

Tami: Exactly. Even now as a grown adult, I have moments where I feel a little less than. That kind of message is something that, really, anyone of any age can benefit from. I know first and foremost our children need to hear that, for sure.

Zibby: Are you planning brand extensions? I could just see this as a pillow because your artwork is so gorgeous, or a framed thing or "You Matter" T-shirts.

Tami: All of it. I want to show another picture. If you lift up the cover, check this out. I didn't even know this until recently.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Tami: Such a powerful image. That's my son with his eyes closed. Those lines, Bryan recently explained why he chose to put those lines across his face. Those lines are paths. They're roads and rivers. They almost represent interconnectedness, that connection, the ties that bind us together. I love that. I love what he did with the art. If you even look around his face, you see the word matter, just a little piece of it. Here are all the people surrounding this child whispering to him, marching for him, taking a stand for him, all because he matters. The art is spot on. I wish I could take credit for it. I can only credit for, that's my baby on the cover and in the book.

Zibby: You're the inspiration. You wrote it. You can take credit for as much as you want.

Tami: Yeah, there we go. [laughs]

Zibby: Are you working on anything else now?

Tami: I am. Let's see if I have it. I do. I write books of all kinds in all ages. I write young adult novels, middle grade, and picture books. I also write nonfiction. This book, All Because You Matter, publishes tomorrow with Scholastic. I'm really excited about that. I actually have some more projects forthcoming with Scholastic. My next book that's publishing with them is on the young adult side. This is a young adult novel. It's written in verse. It's called Muted. Little fun fact about myself, when I was a teenager/in my early twenties, I was in a singing group. This was in the late nineties when the music industry was saturated with girl R&B groups. We tried really hard to make it. It didn't happen, but we did have some good times. The music industry had and still has a bit of a Me Too moment. I noticed that it's been really increasing now. Full disclosure, my singing group, we came out unscathed. Even though we did not get the record deal and the Grammys and all of that, we came out on the other side okay, but there are people who don't. I wanted to explore that, the dark side of the music industry and what it takes to fight back and get your power back. Muted tells the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who does just that. That comes out February 2nd.

Zibby: I feel like if I spent a week in your house, I would leave feeling so great about myself. Everybody gets this boost of -- you just infuse confidence and power into [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Tami: Thank you.

Zibby: That's how I'm seeing it. [laughs]

Tami: I appreciate that. Thank you.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Tami: Yes, lots. First off, this is not easy. You got to go into that knowing it. I've had friends and family members along the way who probably thought it was, but after they’ve seen this, years and years of the journey, they're like, oh, this is harder than what I thought. It’s not easy, but it’s so worth it. It's so rewarding. If this is your dream, you just have to keep going. My biggest piece of advice is put your blinders on. Just focus on whatever those writing goals are for yourself. Focus on those because it can be very tempting to see how other people are doing, how other writers are doing and feel like, oh, man, I'm not writing fast enough or my writing isn't good enough. No. You have to put your blinders on. You can still clap for the other writers. There are so many writers that I admire and adore. Your process is your process. You have to celebrate every moment along your journey. Just don't give up.

Zibby: Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm so excited to have caught you right before your big pub day. Obviously, you have so much more in store. I look forward to following all of your releases. I think this book will be a smash hit. It has all the elements of a successful book. It really helps people.

Tami: I hope so.

Zibby: I think it's great. Thank you.

Tami: Thank you so much.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Tami: Bye.

Eva Chen, ROXY THE LAST UNISAURUS REX

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Eva. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Eva Chen: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I am super in awe of your rainbow stacks behind you.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you. They're all over. This is my pride and joy. They go all the way up.

Eva: You have the dream-state of a library.

Zibby: Yes. On Instagram the other day, I posted, I was like, I don't buy shoes, I buy books. You're all about fashion. I am not. That's not my strong suit. Books is my addiction.

Eva: The only thing you need to make that library even more perfect is a ladder like in Beauty and the Beast when Belle swings with her arm. You know the scene I'm talking about?

Zibby: Actually, growing up and still in my mother's apartment, she has a library that's a maroon-y color, and she has a ladder. In fact, it actually does this weird thing where it folds up. It's an antique. I don't know if I could go there. [laughs]

Eva: I think you should just embrace the Beauty and the Beast life and get a library ladder. I truly dream of having a floor-to-ceiling library with a ladder. With two very young children, three and five, not good to have ladders just hanging out.

Zibby: I have four children. My youngest is five. He likes to climb up this chair and try to grab books all the way at the top when I'm on Zoom.

Eva: My son does that too. I'll turn around and he would literally somehow be at the top of the bookshelf, but there's no climbing surfaces. He literally, like Spiderman, scales the bookshelves. It's constantly stressful. I'm always like, where is he? What's going on? One of the characters in my first book series, Juno Valentine, is named Finn Valentine. He's always getting into trouble. He was a little bit inspired by my three-year-old son, Tao.

Zibby: There's no lack of material when you have little kids. I feel like every day, I'm like, this could be a book. That could be a book.

Eva: It's really like a zoo. It's a constantly circus, zoo, anything chaotic. It's 2020, chaos.

Zibby: Chaos squared or something. So you have had this whole fashion career. You were the editor-in-chief of Lucky, which is so cool. I loved that bag. In fact, I went to some event once a while ago, and they gave out these free Lucky totes. I used it all the time. It had pink letters on a white tote. This is ages ago.

Eva: It was probably the event Lucky Shops.

Zibby: I don't know what it was. You know how sometimes a tote just makes it into your rotation for whatever reason? It's the perfect length or weight or something. Anyway, that was my bag for a long time.

Eva: Wonderful. I was at Lucky for two years. I was a magazine called Teen Vogue before that, which is the woke little sister version of Vogue. I was there about seven years. I was at Elle magazine before that. Now I'm at Instagram working on the fashion team there. Really, it's this been weird path from -- I'm a first-generation American. My mom was always very fashionable. I never thought I would end up working in fashion. Now to work in the tech world, it's all been this crazy adventure that I never would've predicted. It's a very windy path to where I am now. Now I'm writing children's books, which is a dream in life. It's come to true.

Zibby: I saw on one of your Instagram posts that you said that's really what you wanted to do. People were surprised by that. All you really want to do is write children's books.

Eva: I remember when I left, I think it was Teen Vogue that I left. That probably was about seven years ago. Amy Astley was the editor-in-chief then. She's now the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest. It was Amy Astley I did an interview with, and Anna Wintour who was the editorial director of Teen Vogue, being the editor-in-chief of Vogue. I remember both of them were like, "Tell us about your experience. Where do you see yourself? What is your goal? What is the dream?" Most people say something like, I want to be a stylist or I want to be a designer or I really want to be an artist or whatever it is. I was like, "I just really want to write children's books. It's my dream." They were both like, "Oh, we have not heard that one before." I think it's because I grew up kind of feeling -- as a child of immigrants in this in-between state of, I'm living in America, I'm very proud to be an American, but I speak Chinese purely at home. English was not my first language and still is not my parent's primary language. There was this sense of feeling like, I don't know where I fit in. I don't know where I belong.

I think that I always turned to books as a place that -- they didn't know my background. I just could fit into these worlds. I read books, probably like a lot of young ladies and now gentlemen read. The Ramona books, Beverly Cleary, they really informed a lot of my personality. Now as a mother, I remember reading those books and thinking this is the perfect little girl. I see those traits in my daughter where I'm like, I love her spunkiness and quirkiness. I think back, it's like, oh, my gosh, I wished this. I wished for this. I wished for a girl like Ramona Quimby. I read books like The Babysitter's Club. I got a signed copy of Baby-Sitter's Club, Kristy's Great Idea, from Ann Martin around the time Netflix launched their series. I think they sent out first editions because that would be just way too much for me. My brain would explode. Then when I got it, I was like, oh, my god, I can't believe Ann Martin touched this. I've always been a book nerd. It's truly so exciting. It's truly a dream come true to be writing children's books. Sorry, Zibby, I literally talk in run-on sentences. I talk a lot.

Zibby: I love it. That's the whole point, is getting to know you. If you weren’t talking, this would be a very awkward conversation. I am interested in what you're saying, so don't worry about it. This is great. I just want to hear. So Roxy the Last Unisaurus -- is that what it's called? So amazing.

Eva: Yes, Roxy the Last Unisaurus Rex. It's my new baby. I'm very excited about Roxy.

Zibby: It's adorable. I love it. I love the message and the illustrations and the whole thing. It's just so cute. It does come, again, from this place of feeling alone a little bit, like an outsider of sorts. Do you feel like that came from what you were just referring to, your first generation-ness?

Eva: It was interesting. I wrote Roxy when my daughter who is now five, almost six -- she's always loved dinosaurs, always gravitated towards dinosaurs, would see dinosaurs on a onesie and would be happy, plays with t-rexes and stegosauruses, always running into my room asking me, "Have you seen the triceratops?" I'm like, "I just stepped on it." Those three horns, not so comfortable on the feet. I really wrote Roxy because she had an incident with a friend who was like, "Don't you know that girls don't like dinosaurs? Girls like princesses and unicorns." She was kind of crestfallen. It was a cool, older friend who was probably seven at the time. She was like, "Is it true? Am I not supposed to like dinosaurs? Am I only supposed to like unicorns?" She likes unicorns too, but not like the passion she has for dinosaurs. That's how the idea of Roxy really came about. You can like dinosaurs. You can like unicorns. You can like both. Why not make a dino-corn like a unisaurus rex? It's interesting because when I announced the book, it must have been in March that I announced it, a lot of people found different meanings that resonated with them.

I had some followers reach out. They were like, "Is this an allegory for being biracial?" I was like, could be. Then I had other followers say, "I'm the parent to a non-gendered child. Is Roxy about that?" I'm like, honestly, okay. That's the magic of children's books. People read children's books and they’ll find what they need from it. In Harry Potter, the Room of Requirement, where Harry and his friends can only find this room when they need it and it gives you what you need at the time, I think that's the thing with children's books. They should allow kids to see themselves in a myriad of ways. Roxy is trying to figure out where she fits in. She doesn't fit in with the regular triceratops. The stegosauruses and triceratops don't want to hang with her. The velociraptors just run away from her. It's about finding her place in the school. Yes, dinosaurs go to school. It's, I hope, a story that a lot of little kids will take some comfort from. It's also funny and weird. There are lots of pop culture references. Of course, there's a Mean Girls reference. Of course, there's a Royal Tenenbaums reference because you got to have those easter eggs for the parents so that they're not bored out of their minds reading the same book for the six thousandth time.

Zibby: Thank you for that on behalf of all parents. Tell me about the publication of your first children's book. How did the whole journey begin? I know you wanted to do it. When you sat down and did it the first time, tell me about that.

Eva: When I was at Teen Vogue, a mutual friend introduced me to my now book agent, Kate. I was a beauty editor at the time. I was focusing on skin care and beauty tips and self-esteem. I wrote a lot about health issues for younger women. She was like, "I really want you to write a book that's a biography and then also tips on style and advice." I was super behind on that. Every year, it's like she had a calendar invite to remind me to be like, where's that book? Then finally, one day I emailed her. "I have my book. I wrote it." She was like, "Oh, my god, thank you." I was like, "It's a children's book." She was like, "Not what I was expecting." That book was Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes. It's about a little girl who loses her favorite pair of shoes. Then she travels through time and space to find her shoes and encounters icons from Gloria Steinem, Anna Wintour, Yayoi Kusama. It's kind of a fashion feminist fairy tale in a way. We have Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes. The sequel to that is Juno Valentine and the Fantastic Fashion Adventure. Then I have two board books. One is called A is for Awesome. The new one is called 3 2 1 Awesome! It's coming out on the same day as Roxy, which is a little -- did not expect to have two books coming out on the same day. I love these books. The board books have become -- I've seen a lot of teachers add them to their classrooms. I feel like that's the highest compliment as an author.

The new book has Megan Rapinoe and Rhianna and Greta Thunberg on the cover. There's a lot of diversity in it from Twyla Tharp and Temple Grandin to Sonia Sotomayor, Zaha Hadid. Spoiler alert, Sonia Sotomayor is in it, and Ada Lovelace. We try to have different women and their accomplishments. A lot of people say it's a little girls' book. It's a great book to give little girls. People should buy it for their sons too. I'm not just saying that because I'm an author and I want you to buy my books. I went to an all-girls school, as did you. I do think there's this element of the earlier you're exposed to the accomplishments of women, the better. That shouldn't just be for girls and empowering girls. You want little boys to grow up knowing, hey, a woman can be an executive. A woman can be a supreme court justice. She can do many things. She can be an activist. She could be a pro soccer player. It's just about exposure. Kids learn through osmosis. They learn when you expose them to things. I have strong feelings about this.

Zibby: It's true. Kids should learn that anybody who accomplishes something really cool should be celebrated and used as a role model, man or woman. It's absolutely true, a hundred percent. It shouldn't have to be like, look, women can do it too. It should just be natural, like, yeah, look, look at what these awesome women did.

Eva: This year is obviously a really weird, stressful, dramatic, traumatizing, let's throw in all the alarming adjectives in there. It's been a really rough year. Normally around this time, I'd be setting off on a book tour. For each of my books, I've gone on ten to fifteen city book tours. I go to these events. Really, you feed off the energy of these readings and all these young children, and especially young girls, and seeing that they see themselves in a book. I'm not doing that this year for obvious reasons, COVID. I realize on these book tours, honestly, that not every child hears that message that you should dream big, you should go after what you want, you can achieve great things. That's a luxury. I've been doing a lot of fundraising for public school teachers recently. It's a cause that's really close to my heart. I do hope these books send that message to children even if they're not hearing it in their personal lives and in their own lives.

Zibby: Absolutely. By the way, I actually went to an event of yours for A is for Awesome at Bloomingdale's with Darcy Miller. I brought my girls to this event because I've known Darcy for a long time. In fact, she was also on this podcast. I tried to get your book, but the line was so long. People were around through all the different aisles of Bloomingdale's to sign up and get your book. I was like, who is that? What on earth? What's the line?

Eva: I'll send you a signed book. Come on. [laughter] I really love signing books and writing messages. I had a lot of books growing up. My parents always were very generous with books. I didn't really have any signed books growing up. I met the author of -- I don't know if you've read the Dory Fantasmagory series. It's a great early reader chapter book for kids. My daughter loves them. The author's name is Abby Hanlon. It was at this bookstore called Books of Wonder, which is my local bookstore. It's this gem of a bookstore in the Flatiron District.

Zibby: I've been there. It's great.

Eva: So great. It's been open for like forty-five years. It's only children's books. I spent a lot of time there when I was researching my books. Also, it's this magical meeting spot for authors. I bumped into the author of Dory Fantasmagory. I fangirled out so hard. It was so awkward. I was like, "Oh, my god. Wait, I have to come back. I have to bring my daughter." She was like, "Okay." I was like, "I love you. You're such a great writer." Anyway, she signed all the books. It was very special to have something that the author touched and that has a special message for the child. I think that's the best gift.

Zibby: Totally. I went to this Brooklyn Book Festival event, Children's Brooklyn Book Festival last year. All these authors were there. My son had just gone to boarding school. One of his favorite authors who -- now I'm blanking on who wrote New Kid who's super famous. I cannot believe I'm forgetting his name. Anyway, he was there. I was like, "Hey, could you sign a book? You're my son's favorite author right now. Maybe even, could I video a message where you're like, 'Don't be homesick. It's all good.'?" He did.

Eva: That's so sweet.

Zibby: It was amazing. Vashti Harrison came over and drew a little monkey for son.

Eva: So cool.

Zibby: I know. I love all this stuff. I'm so into it. I have the coolest gig going here, I have to say. If you have a fangirl author syndrome as I do as well, this is the greatest thing.

Eva: I remember going to BookCon or BookExpo. For the people listening, it's like Comic-Con, but for books. I met Jodi Picoult who has written, as you know, just reems of books. I remember being like, "Oh, my god. How do you do it?" She was so nice. Now we're Instagram DM friends. It's always weird because I've had these books in my homes, apartments, etc. When you meet the person behind it, it's almost mythical. I am more starstruck by authors than I am by actors and actresses and models. I'm so used to meeting -- this sounds very -- I don't even know what it sounds like, but I'm very used to fashion and models and designers. When I meet an author, I'm like, oh, my god, it's Roz Chast. I can't talk to her, no, no. People will be like, "Go talk to her." I'm like, "I can't talk to her." I'm awkward. I don't know what to say. I am often like that. I met the author of The Day the Crayons Quit, which has literally been on The New York Times since like 1882. It's been on the New York Times children's books list forever. Oliver Jeffers is his name. I was super like, oh, my god. He's this cool guy with tattoos and a beard. He's Irish. I was like, I did not know these things about you. It's fun to put a face to a name on a spine.

Zibby: I could not agree more. Actually, I'm interviewing him next week.

Eva: Great. We share a book birthday, which is, not going to lie, slightly daunting. My new book, Roxy, comes out the same day. I was like, "What day does your book come out?" He was like, "October 6th." I was like, okay, my book is coming out the same day as literally one of the most celebrated children's book authors of this generation. Not that it's a competition. Little Roxy has spirit. She has glitter coming out of her unicorn horn. She has a tutu. She has a lot of things going for her.

Zibby: I actually think it's a good thing because people, if they're going to go get his book somewhere, your book will be out on the table if people go to a bookstore right there. It will bring them to shopping for children's books at that moment maybe more than on a random day.

Eva: Listen, your mouth to [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Zibby: We'll see what happens.

Eva: We'll see what happens. It would be amazing. I'm excited about this book. She's very sassy. I think that little kids will really like her.

Zibby: Absolutely. I actually have a two-book deal with Penguin Random House for children's books also. I have two coming out.

Eva: Wow. So exciting. When?

Zibby: Not forever. Probably sometime 2021/'22. I've already written it. It's a series about a girl named Princess Charming.

Eva: I love that. Children's books, I did not realize when I was going into the process that it is long and slow. People are like, it's a thirty-two-page book, why does it take so long? You have no idea. Literally, I'm talking with my editor about 2022. It also depends if it's a picture book. Yours sounds like a chapter book, maybe.

Zibby: No, it's a picture book.

Eva: Picture book, okay. It takes longer than you expect. Then all the details -- do you have the illustrator already?

Zibby: Yes, but she's working on something else. It's a whole thing.

Eva: It can take a while. Right now, because I'm sure by the time your book publishes, but the COVID delays have been significant. I know for, not this book -- the predecessor to 3 2 1 Awesome! is A is for Awesome. A is for Awesome was, and this is everyone's dream problem, but it was sold out nationally, literally. Even Amazon was like, out of stock. I was like, how does this happen? It took a long time even to get more because of the delays and because of COVID and the factories and what not.

Zibby: Sometimes being sold out makes it just on the top of everyone's list.

Eva: It's like a hot handbag that you just want because you can't get it.

Zibby: Exactly. Black market for A is for Awesome is starting. [laughs] I know we're almost out of time, but two more things. One, I wanted to know if you had advice for aspiring authors. I also have to just hear a little bit about what it's like being head of fashion at Instagram and what that even means. That is such a cool job.

Eva: Advice for aspiring authors, number one, as I was saying earlier, it's longer and more complex than you think. For children's book authors, I would try from two point of views. The six-year-old or seven-year-old that's hearing it or reading it themselves, is the language complex enough that's it's not boring but also easy enough that they can read themselves? I remember with my first Juno book I had the word cornucopia in it. It was a cornucopia of shoes. My editor and I tussled over it. I was like, "I love the word cornucopia." I want Ren, my daughter, to be like, "What's a cornucopia?" It's just a funny word. We ended up keeping it in. I love doing the reading. Reading it from the parents' perspective too, what pages are they going to open and it's going to be a huge surprise? What moments will have the best emotions? As one should, one should read a book in voices. This spread in Roxy, it's like, can I tell you a secret? Get a little closer. Closer. Too close. I don't know if it's because I have two young kids, but I literally read the books out loud as I'm designing them.

I also approach the children's book space probably in a little bit of an unconventional way. I work very closely with the art director to design it because I came from a magazine background where I would say, move the caption three millimeters over. I'm not into this type that we have on this cover story. Can we do something that's a serif? I think that it was an unconventional experience for the good people at Macmillan Kids, at Feiwel & Friends, my publisher, because most authors are a little bit more hands-off. I just couldn't be. Even down to the color of the sparkle, I looked at glitter swatches because I wanted something that would reflect it a certain way. The number of little glitter stars, sparkles, coming out of Roxy's horn, I was kind of obsessed with. Aspiring authors, honestly, this is stolen advice. Stephen King has an amazing book called On Writing. I put a Post-it note on one of the pages where he said that the first draft you write for yourself and the second draft you write for the reader. I think that's true as well. Just get that first draft out. Then you go back and look at it from a different perspective of the editor or the reader.

Then the second question was, what's it like working at Instagram? It's great except right now we don't have an office. I've been work-from-home since February because I was in Milan at Fashion Week in closed spaces with people who, now confirmed, are to be COVID super-spreaders. Got to love that. I came back from Milan. I used to go to the shows twice a year to build on the relationships that I have with, whether it's an editor, whether it's a model, whether it's a stylist, a designer, or a creative director. My role is basically to help these people storytell on Instagram and figure out their strategy on Instagram. It's been five years there. Now a lot of my job is based around a strategy of, what is next for fashion on Instagram? I very much think it's shopping on Instagram. Actually, there are some authors who are doing, the way people drop the new pair of off-white sneakers or the hot new hoodie from the brand -- well, Supreme isn't doing this yet. The way people drop clothing and do these limited edition launches, people are doing that with books now on Instagram. I remember a few months ago when we rolled out Instagram Live shopping so that you could be live on Instagram and buying a book.

There's these authors called the Compton Cowboys. It's literally these guys in Compton who created this horseback riding movement. They just ride around on horseback in Compton. Check it out. They have an amazing Instagram. It's meant to build community. It builds self-confidence for the young people who are learning how to ride horses. It's awesome. They did this Instagram Live ride-along where they were horseback riding through Compton talking about their book. I was watching this. I was like, this is brilliant. As an author, imagine doing an Instagram Live and talking through the details of every book where I can say, for this spread, it's a reference to Mean Girls. In this book, there's a secret clue that's related to Juno Valentine. There's a picture of a shoe that we put in. That is a shoe that we have in Juno Valentine. Imagine being able to do that while someone can just tap a button on Instagram and buy the book at the same time. It will probably be fully rolled out by the time your book comes out.

Zibby: I was like, did I miss that that's a feature? I want to do that right away.

Eva: You're with Random House or HarperCollins?

Zibby: For the children's book, Penguin Random House. I do tons of Instagram Lives with authors. I had a whole Instagram Live series during the pandemic. I would love to have them on and then be able to have them sell their book or I'd link to where you can buy the book.

Eva: It's a work in progress. That's the team that I spend a lot of time on right now just dreaming up, how we will -- I don't know about you, but I am often on Instagram; I'm like, oh, my god, I love the tote bag that Zibby's carrying. Where's that tote bag from? The current experience is, you tap the tote bag. You're like, okay, she tagged the brand. It's the brand, let's say, there's a brand called Kule, K-U-L-E. I'm like, ooh, it's so cute. Then I'll tap it and then I'll go to their -- it's just very [indiscernible]. I think that what people really want is to see it, tap it, and just buy it. If I see the pillow that you posted on your Instagram in your library, to be like, I love it, and just pick it up and buy it. That's what we're working on.

Zibby: That's so cool.

Eva: That's a full-time job, obviously. Right now, I'm working from home. If I have a fifteen-minute break between video conferences, I run the two blocks to Books of Wonder. I grab a stack of books. I personalize there literally three times a week. Then I'll run home with a stack of books. I'm signing these books. Then I run back or I'll give them to my husband and be like, "Go! Go!" I spend nights doing the book stuff. As a mom, you learn to divide your time very carefully. I think that's how I've been able to write six books, working on a seventh, by now while having an extremely full-time job.

Zibby: Wow. It's like what you said before. Didn't you say this before? Give a busy person something to do? No? Somebody else said that. Whatever, it's an expression, but it's true. [laughs]

Eva: You know what? I actually would take that expression to another level and say if you need something done, give it to a mom. It's not even a busy person. Give it to a mom. Literally, the mom's going to be like, I don't have patience for this. Boom, get it done. Or the mom will be like, that's not important. We're not going to do that.

Zibby: I love that. It's so true.

Eva: Do I need to label every folder for my child's Zoom school? No.

Zibby: Are you kidding? No. [laughs]

Eva: Someone asked me on my Instagram. Someone was like, "What are your top tips for organization of the child's work-from-home space?" I'm like, dude, literally, box of crayons, some paper, and the laptop. They were like, "How do you color-code the folders for her different assignments?" I'm like, I'm not doing that. Sorry. As long as we can do the assignments, that's all we need.

Zibby: Yeah. Maybe one giant binder for everything if we're lucky and I can find a whole binder.

Eva: My kids are younger. We went to The Container Store. They had these big bins in neon colors. I was like, "You get to choose a bin." It was like two dollars. I was like, "You can choose some stickers." She was like, "[gasp]." I was like, yes, school's so exciting on the computer. It's so great on the computer. You got to drum up that excitement and hype them up. Stickers and a big pink tub will do that.

Zibby: It'll do it. It'll do the trick. Amazing. Thank you, Eva. This was so fun. I really hope to meet you. I know we're both in the city here. Maybe when things get back to normal or something.

Eva: One day we shall meet in person. Maybe we'll even be four feet apart not six feet apart. So shocking.

Zibby: Dare to dream.

Eva: Dare to dream, exactly. It was so nice to meet you again.

Zibby: You too. Congratulations again on Roxy. Best of luck with the launch. I hope this helps you.

Eva: Anything book-wise as you embark on your own book journey, let me know, I'm happy to help.

Zibby: Thank you. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.

Eva: Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Eva: See you later.

Brooke Hecker, LETTERS FROM MY TOOTH FAIRY

Zibby Owens: Welcome. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Brooke Hecker: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Zibby: I think you're the first -- is this true? I think you're probably the first school mom friend I've ever had on the podcast, which is really exciting.

Brooke: Oh, wow. That's amazing.

Zibby: I can't even think of any other mom friends who have written books. Can I? I don't know. Of course, something will come to me, but it's pretty awesome.

Brooke: Oh, yeah. There's a lot. Thank you so much.

Zibby: I just literally finished reading out loud your whole book to my two little ones. They were like, "Read it again. Read it again," which is always the best sign.

Brooke: That's good. It's a long one. Apologies in advance.

Zibby: No, it was great. Explain how you came up with the idea for your book and how it became a book, please.

Brooke: First, I don't know if you need me to do this, but this is it. It's called Letters from My Tooth Fairy. It's from real life. When my older daughter lost her first tooth, she got it knocked out at school. It was this big drama. The whole school knew about it. It was very exciting. She went to bed that night. Right before bed, it had been a long day, it was nine o'clock at night, and she said, "I wonder if I'm going to get Priya's tooth fairy," a school friend who lived around the corner. I said, "Probably. She lives around the corner." She said, "That's great because Priya gets a poem for her teeth." I was like, "Oh, great. That's great." [laughs] I spoke to Priya's tooth fairy who told me that it's a form letter from the internet. She gave it to me. I thought I just could probably whip something up really quick. I started writing poems for each tooth. They rhymed. They were very cutesy. It had to do with every single story of the tooth. Every tooth seemed to have a story. It also reflected a specific part of her life. After a bunch of these -- they were really cute. They were a big hit. I'd share them with friends and family. It was like, maybe this would make a cute book idea. That's what the book is. It's a collection of letters from the tooth fairy for every single tooth. You're really following throughout this girl's life. I like that it gave you a snapshoot of her life and the different parts of childhood, but through this very narrow and specific lens of the tooth fairy. That was how it came about.

Zibby: It was great. By the end when she says goodbye and all the teeth had fallen out, it was so sad. [laughs]

Brooke: It is sad.

Zibby: It's emotional because you go along the journey. It is sad when your kid loses their last tooth. It's the end of an era.

Brooke: Mine has not lost her last tooth. A lot of this is just made up. Thinking of these scenarios when your child is still young, it was kind of sad to go through and think about it. My younger one still doesn't like to read the last one because she gets really upset. It's very cute.

Zibby: That's so sweet. Each note was so clever. I was wondering as I was reading, did you have to do dental research? I don't know the names of all the different teeth. Did you have to do any sort of googling or dental digging to know the name of all the different teeth?

Brooke: I did do research. My cousin's an oral surgeon. I asked him just timeline, when you would lose teeth, when you would get braces, all that sort of stuff. I definitely did a little bit of research. Then the illustrator, who is not me, went ahead and did little diagrams of each thing. She did her own research separately because we worked completely in silos. It was very interesting to see what she came up with. We definitely did research. I asked certain questions. One question that my daughter asked me -- a lot of this was made up because I talk about teeth that she's never lost. Some of it is real-life questions. One of them that I got was, "How are my teeth going to fit? They're huge. The first two teeth that you get in the top are so big. How are they going to fit?" What we learned was that they're full size when they come in and your mouth grows around them. When they're ready, that's when your other teeth come out. Things like that, I learned as a forty-year old.

Zibby: The drawing of the walrus. [laughs]

Brooke: It was very cute.

Zibby: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] walrus forever. It is such a funny thought that your teeth are the same size forever and you grow around them like [indiscernible/crosstalk] or something.

Brooke: Yes, it's quite fascinating.

Zibby: What you should really do now that this is out is a companion journal/keepsake thing which has all [indiscernible/crosstalk] teeth and [indiscernible/crosstalk] the same way. Then it'll become a whole thing that you have to write your tooth story in these books.

Brooke: That's a really good idea.

Zibby: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] scrapbook. You could put the note from the tooth fairy. You could write your own story or drawing or something.

Brooke: That's a really cute idea. There's a lot of things that you can do. It came out last month right when COVID really hit. It was kind of hard to do all the things that we planned to do around it. It's an underserved market too. There's not a ton on the tooth fairy. I think there's so many fun things that you can do.

Zibby: The only one that I feel like we read a lot, or we used to read a lot, is Purplicious. Was it Purplicious?

Brooke: It was one of the Pinkalicious books. Yes, we have read that quite a lot.

Zibby: Right?

Brooke: Yes. [laughs]

Zibby: As I'm saying this, I'm realizing we haven't read any of those books in ages. Now we're onto Dog Man and I don't even know. Yes, those books, there was one with little notes. Aside from that, not too many.

Brooke: The tooth fairy wrote her back, but also the easter bunny.

Zibby: Oh, that’s right. You know, you're absolutely right. You're right, yep. You could even put a little map. I'm talking about your keepsake journal that now I want you to do. Then you could [indiscernible/laughter] out a map. My daughter just lost her tooth in Montana. Her first tooth, she lost in Mexico. This is making us sound very spoiled. I'm sorry. She was with her dad in Mexico and lost her first tooth and wrote a letter to the tooth fairy saying, "I know I'm in Mexico, but could you please leave my money in dollars and not in pesos?"

Brooke: That's so funny.

Zibby: Which the tooth fairy did. Dollars, I mean. Then the next tooth she lost at my brother's house in Montana. She was determined to write a note for a toy. I was like, "You don't get toys from the tooth fairy." "So-and-so in my class gets toys from the tooth fairy." I was like, "No, no, no. Tooth fairy only leaves money." [laughs] Anyway, it would be neat to see, even in your book, at school and all these different places.

Brooke: That's exactly part of the book. You have a different tooth fairy when you sleep at your grandma's house. We've had the same thing too. Hannah had lost a tooth at an airport. At LAX, she knocked a tooth out. Both my kids have knocked teeth out. She had an airport tooth fairy that followed her on the plane. It's true. People lose teeth everywhere. It's a good idea. We should do one branded for this.

Zibby: You could do it. It's easy.

Brooke: There's so much to do. There's nothing out there.

Zibby: It'll be like the baby book equivalent. Then pretty soon everyone will use it.

Brooke: It's a really good idea because right now we hide everything in a vase on a bookshelf.

Zibby: You don't have to save the tooth. You can still maintain the illusion. I'm sorry to waste our time talking about this.

Brooke: No, it's true.

Zibby: It's like you're telling your own story. The kids are basically writing their own story. Then they’ll have it to look back on. Then I wonder if there are other rites of passage that you could somehow brand. It's perfect, the twenty teeth. Why did no one think of this before?

Brooke: They really haven't. There's not a lot out there. It's twenty teeth across a very profound part of your life.

Zibby: Where there's so much change. [Indiscernible/crosstalk] so well with all the moving and the baby sister and all of it. I can't think of even anything comparable.

Brooke: It's a really good idea. We should do it.

Zibby: I don't have to do it. You do it. [laughter] You and your team, you take it up. Take it and run with it. So do you have plans for other books aside from the one I just suggested?

Brooke: Yeah. This is my first book. This was a big swing for me. I didn't ever think to do this. It came at a time when I was working freelance for years and years at a television network and sort of stalled out because I was working part time. I was like, what do I have to lose? It's an advanced age to start something new. It's a slow process. This is a very slow industry. It's hard for someone that works in a very fast-paced industry to slow it down and realize we're talking two years ahead right now. I started working on more now that this has actually happened. It's opened up a whole new world. With everything that's going on now and being -- I'm doing remote with the kids. Being home all the time and not having any sort of alone time, it's stalled me out a little. I've been working on something. It's been a lot of fun.

Zibby: Sometimes, though, when you have so much time, then there's more material to pull from.

Brooke: I do a lot more reading now that we have found time. I feel like that always helps too. Just reading more lets you write more.

Zibby: Every time I'm doing something, especially, I don't know why, with my little guy the most, I'm always like, "Oh, we should write a story about this. Oh, wouldn't it be funny if we wrote a story? That would be a really great idea for a book." I'm like, you know, there's going to come a time where you're gone, I'm sitting at my desk trying to think of ideas for picture books. Now they're coming so fast and furious that I don't even stop to take the time to write them down. I'm like, oh, I'll remember it. Meanwhile, now I'm talking you, I can't remember any of them, and it was like two days ago.

Brooke: I keep a notebook. It's true. You're reading these books every night now. Soon, you won't. Our girls are already doing it on their own. It's getting less and less of me reading to them. Now is the time.

Zibby: We just reorganized my little guy's books. He was like, "These are the books from when I was little," the little board books. When you read the other books, do you approach them differently now that you're writing one yourself? Are you looking more for pacing or structure or anything more analytical?

Brooke: I know what styles I like more. I tend to like things that rhyme or flow. All the Julia Donaldson books, they're fun to read. I think that kind of book is fun to write too. I like humor. There's humor. That's getting to be more and more prominent in the marketplace too, which is really fun. We laugh so much with books nowadays. Some of my favorites are Grumpy Monkey. I don't know if you guys have that one.

Zibby: Yes, we have Grumpy Monkey.

Brooke: Every time, it cracks me up when the vulture suggests eating dead meat. I don't know why. I've definitely found the things that I like more to read. That's part of the journey too, just figuring out what you like.

Zibby: It's nice because for so long everything is centered around the kids. Will the kids like this book? Let me read the kids a story. Starting with Go the F to Sleep, I feel like that's when picture books were like, wait, what? We can do this?

Brooke: We can be funny too?

Zibby: Maybe there's another way to use these pages. Yes, I feel like the tired parents who are reading the picture books are often looking for something funny.

Brooke: Something funny and easy to read that flows off the tongue, those are all things I've come to appreciate. Sometimes your throat hurts at the end of the third story that you've read.

Zibby: Yes. Those five-minute stories together, it's like six hours. It feels like a hundred hours. Having successfully sold and had this book come out and everything, what advice could you give both on the writing process and the publishing process aside from warning that it's slow?

Brooke: My only advice could be for someone just starting out because this is me and I'm just starting out. There was two lessons that I probably learned the most. One was, rejection was not something that I'd ever had to experience because I worked in a corporate world. That's just not the way it worked. You did your work. You moved up. Everything was fine. We went out with this book first, and it rhymed. My letters had rhymed. The book rhymed. I absolutely loved it. My agent had told me, "Rhymes don't sell as well. Would you consider rewriting the whole thing in prose?" I was like, "Well, I love it. Can we try it first like this?" She tried it. It got rejected across the board, and not a very quick one, but very slow because everything is very slow in publishing. It was a very slow trickle in to get rejected. It was the first time in my life I had been told no. I just assumed, well, I tried. I guess it's just not going to happen. My agent was like, "No, no, no. Then you go out to the next batch of people," or whatever. I rewrote it. We went out with it again. When it sold, it was a very good lesson. I was ready to just walk away and be like, I tried something new and it didn't work.

That was the number-one thing for someone that's completely out of the industry to get used to because that's something that is just going to happen. It's very hard to get rejected and have that confidence in yourself with no basis, basically, to say that I'm going to keep trying and I believe in myself. That was a really good lesson. I think that was a good lesson for my kids to see happen. That was just very foreign to us in the work that my husband and I do anyway. It wasn't part of our everyday. The other thing is just the patience. It takes a long time. It's all self-discipline, which you know. We have a mutual friend. She writes. She churns out five, six books a year. That's because she sits in her office and has the time and dedicates it and gets it all done. Not a lot of people work that way. That's been a lesson too, of trying to get the self-discipline to do something where you're accountable for yourself. It's all about you. Those are the two things that I've learned, to really set aside the time and to believe in myself instead of what three editors might have said.

Zibby: You never know what is going on with those editors, what else they have in their -- they might even have liked it and thought it was funny, but they have other books or their quota's met or whatever. You don't know.

Brooke: Exactly. It was just such a foreign concept. My first instinct was like, she said no and she's an expert, so that means that I guess I tried. Especially for someone who's starting this in midlife, it's a whole new way to operate.

Zibby: When you said that earlier, I was like, I don't think it's late at all. I don't know how old you are, but I'm forty-four. I feel like most of the people I talk to are not -- I don't know. I feel like your forties are somehow the best time ever to write books, I swear.

Brooke: Really? Well, because you have more experience. You're right. You have more life experience.

Zibby: You have enough experience. You're in it in so many levels. There's so much emotion in your forties. You don't have to be parenting, but you're usually caretaking either your parents or friends or kids or something. You've had loss. You've had caretaking. You've had love. I'm picturing a mixing bowl in the kitchen. You've had enough ingredients thrown in that you can bake something that tastes a little better than maybe the really pretty cake from your twenties, but it didn't actually taste that good. You know what I mean?

Brooke: You're absolutely right. You are. I think it's just, I come from an industry where, I'm forty-two, when you're in your forties, you're kind of past the prime a little bit, unfortunately, or you're at a really successful level and why would you start something new? To try something new, of course you can. Of course, you can do something new and different, but it's a big step.

Zibby: Writing, it's like an outgrowth of you. I know it is something new, but it's not like you're trying to get into mortgage-backed securities or something. It's a creative expression of who you are in some way. The more you define who you are as a person, the clearer your output becomes.

Brooke: A hundred percent. It was a good thing to learn because obviously I was wrong.

Zibby: [laughs] I don't mean to say you're wrong. I'm saying this to try to be more encouraging than not. It's never too late.

Brooke: No, it's not.

Zibby: A memoir I'm about to read by someone who's seventy, and I can't wait to read it because I'm like, this is an interesting point of view. How neat is that? It's just never too late.

Brooke: You're right. It is never too late, but I had to learn that, definitely, for myself.

Zibby: This was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for the great new book for the repertoire. [Indiscernible/crosstalk] enough not to feel babyish, but still a picture book. It's perfect. I hope to see you back at school.

Brooke: I know. I can't wait. I hope so too. Fingers crossed.

Zibby: Fingers crossed. Bye.

Brooke: Bye.

Alyssa Milano, PROJECT CLASS PRESIDENT

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Alyssa. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Alyssa Milano: I am so excited to be with you. I totally agree. We don't have time to read books.

Zibby: Right? It's impossible.

Alyssa: It really is. It makes me super sad because I love to read. Then again, something to look forward to once the kids are big and grown.

Zibby: Exactly. That's why I do this podcast, so we can get glimpses of different books and hear more about it. Then people will be so convinced that they have to run out and buy the book and find time.

Alyssa: I love it.

Zibby: Thanks. Speaking of books, your middle-grade novel about Hope running for president is so timely given the upcoming election and everything else. Your series is fantastic. Tell me about starting the series in general and then this particular book in it.

Alyssa: It's actually a pretty amazing story. I became friends with our illustrator first. His name is Eric Keyes. He's a brilliant illustrator. He's also the character designer for The Simpsons. I DMed him once because I was starting my Patriot Not Partisan website, which is a website filled with all essays from both sides of the political spectrum. I asked if he had any political art that he wanted to share. He had this character that he designed that was this little girl, she was more like toddler age, marching with a bullhorn and doing really incredible things. I said, "Oh, my god, who is that? What are you doing with her?" He said, "Nothing, really. You can do whatever." I said, "Can we try to sell a children's book using her?" He said, "Yes, let's do that." I created this whole character. He's like, "What would her name be?" I said, "Hope. Obviously, her name is Hope," and had this whole story idea in my head. We were able to sell the idea to Scholastic as a series. The one that just came out is book three of four. I just love this character so, so much. She was originally a toddler. I was like, "Are we going to do a picture book?"

I left it up to Scholastic to give me some kind of direction because there is no one better in the children's book genre and world as far as publishing. They said something which I found was really interesting which was that middle school is such a rough time and rough transition for kids. It's really this untapped market because not a lot of people are writing books specifically for that age range when there are such specific issues that that age range goes through. I thought it was a perfect idea to age her up a little bit because when you look at -- I have two kids. I have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, a boy and a girl. The thing that's been so interesting in raising them is that they innately have this sense of empathy and compassion and wanting to help and wanting to do good. I was just always so curious about, when does that go away? Obviously, the teenage years, it becomes a lot more self-consumed. I think it goes away around middle school because their entire life changes. It is such a rough time for kids. They're usually in a new school. They have to make new friends. They're going through puberty. Their bodies are changing. They're becoming more self-conscious and self-aware. The thought was, how can I create this character that combines all the things that children go through in middle school personally but still cultivates what they naturally have inside of them as far as wanting to be helpful and to do good and to change the world?

That's how Hope was born. I found this amazing cowriter, her name is Debbie Rigaud, who's just been awesome and fearless and such an incredible partner to have. The way I describe her is she wants to change the world, but she has to go through middle school first. The first book was all about Hope finding her voice and using it. That can sometimes be super uncomfortable but a necessity. Then the second book, Hope: Project Animal Shelter, is about Hope becoming a community organizer in raising money to keep her local animal shelter open. It's really cute. The illustrations are amazing. This one's called Hope: Project Class President. Basically, we wanted to give kids a real sense of a civic class, almost, embedded in this fun story of Hope running for class president. Kids will learn terminology like town halls and debates and canvasing and things that we are hearing a lot about now when you turn on the news with the election coming up. It's been a really rewarding experience, one that I am super proud of. Just to have something that I'm able to give my kids and say, "This is for you and your friends," has been really, really great.

Zibby: That's amazing. I have to say, not all young kids are empathic.

Alyssa: They aren't?

Zibby: I don't think they all -- I've met some...

Alyssa: Really?

Zibby: Yeah. [laughs]

Alyssa: I don't know. My kids just came out very concerned and empathetic. When I think about what happens when one baby cries and then another baby cries, to me, that's empathy. That's feeling a shift in the environment that causes some kind of emotion. I think all kids sort of have that a little bit.

Zibby: Maybe I was just thinking of some of the meaner kids who we've crossed paths with.

Alyssa: I think those are the kids that never had their compassion nurtured at all and is probably lacking that in other areas of their lives, not just in taking care of other people, but how people treat them.

Zibby: I totally agree. You're absolutely right. I have four kids. My oldest kids are twins. They're thirteen. We are in the middle school years as we speak. I'm only a couple years ahead of you. I have to say that, at least in my case, I feel like the empathy doesn't totally go away. Nothing happens overnight, but it is so essential at this time to get books like yours and show leadership and kindness and how you can help and just get out of your own bubble of worries into the world, which, frankly, a lot of adults could use as well.

Alyssa: Yes. Isn't that the truth? Yes, for sure. I really wanted to nurture the beauty that I saw in my kids. It's so amazing that they always know how to reduce something that seems so complex to its most basic emotional place. That goes for political issues too. The way in which their minds think about the issues has nothing to do partisanship politics. It has to do with humanity and being a good person. I think that it's very interesting to watch them process what's happening right now. I think for a lot of parents it's very interesting to try to figure out how much to tell their children about what's happening and in what way to say it. It's very hard.

Zibby: It is a very loaded time to be a parent.

Alyssa: It really is. Then you have the pandemic. It's hard enough being a parent and knowing that you're making the right decisions with your kids. Then you add the pandemic part on top of it. It's like, I don't know, is this going to affect them for the rest of their lives? Are they going to want to wash down packages forever? Are they going to grow to be neurotic or more neurotic or have worse anxiety than they would've normally had? There's just so much to it. Is it bad that I'm keeping them home from school and homeschooling them even though there are kids in their class? Is it worse if they get sick? It just feels really big. It all felt big before.

Zibby: That is the similar reel I have playing in my head. The only thing I have turned to, and you're probably the same way, is you just have to listen deep down, what you feel is right. This isn't about, should my kid be on travel soccer? Things that seemed like big deals before, now it's like, all right, this is what my comfort level is, and I just have to go with it because I've got nothing else to go on.

Alyssa: Right. I did not have the easiest childhood being a working child at the age of seven. I always fall back on, I was okay, and the only reason why I'm okay now is because I have parents who loved me. It was so important for them to make me feel safe and loved. I feel like that's the biggest part of this. As long as we can continue to allow our children to feel safe and loved, they're going to be okay no matter what.

Zibby: Now that you have kids of your own, do you look back on that period of time any differently than when you were going through it? Do you think, how was I able to do it? How could I pull it off? Any regrets?

Alyssa: My son is nine. In one year from my son's age now was the age when I shot the Who's the Boss? pilot. I look at him and I'm like, what in the world? How did I ever -- it is really crazy that we expect kids to be able to perform for -- I was on that show for eight years. It was such a big part of my life, but it was hard. It was hard. I was working and going to school and trying to be a good daughter and friend and sibling. It was definitely a thing. My point is just that I think children are incredibly resilient as long as they feel loved and safe.

Zibby: Very true. I love how you even give role models in the current Hope book of how leadership can change institutions. Even something as simple as changing the entrance of a building and making people feel special with a VIP sixth-grade walkway and all these little things that she did, and even helping her friend and saying, "You know what, you be my campaign manager," and just all these she does to bring everybody together, it's great to see a girl doing that, honestly. It's just nice to have such a great role model in a middle-grade book. That's all.

Alyssa: Often, we teach our young girls about leadership through historic women or celebrity women. To be able to create a character who was a peer of young children who could show leadership qualities and not be those terms that we seem to use when girls show leadership qualities like bossy or snobby or self-centered, but to really give her this warm, beautiful strength and to lead from a place of service, which is the thing that I think women do incredibly well -- we lead from a very different place. I feel like men lead, often, from a place of wanting something like power or notoriety or fame or money. I think as women, when we're at our best and our strongest, we're leading from a place of service. What does that look like in middle school? Creating an entrance specially for the sixth graders. It's been really rewarding working on that project.

Zibby: Did you ever think you were going to write books for kids? Has that been a goal of yours, or it just happened this way?

Alyssa: Once I had my own kids and I saw what was out there -- there are some beautiful children's books, but there's also some really silly children's books. For me, wanting to contribute to that place was important, especially since I had -- when you have kids, all of a sudden you're like, I'll do an animated movie and play a squishy or whatever, because you just want your kids to like what you're doing. I'm really happy. Just the fact that I get to dedicate books to my children and my nieces and nephews is pretty cool.

Zibby: Tell me just a little about how all of your activism plays into this. You're doing so many different things. You're saving the world here from Time's Up to UNICEF to directing and acting and writing and your kids. I know we're all busy, but I think that seems like a particularly heavy load to bear.

Alyssa: I realized that this idea of women having it all is kind of something that we are made to feel like we need to do. Once I put the pressure off of me, that's when everything fell into place. I realized that there is no such thing as balance. It does not exist. The most important thing we can do as moms and women is do the things we love, the things that make us feel fulfilled, and be really present and in the moment when we do those things. When I'm with my children, I am concentrated on being the best mother I could possibly be. When I'm writing whatever, I'm concentrated in that moment in writing. When I'm being interviewed, I concentrate on that moment. I found that that is the best way to manage the chaos of it all. It's a lot of chaos. It really is. I think every mom feels it at some point where they just feel overwhelmed. It's six PM, they're like, I'm going to go lay down by myself. [laughter] We just need that decompression. I don't believe in balance. I don't think it exists. I think you just have to manage your time well and in a way where you are in the moment in every moment.

Zibby: That's great advice. I'm envying the moms who can take a nap at six o'clock. That's not happening in my house.

Alyssa: That wouldn't be a nap. That would be going to sleep at six o'clock.

Zibby: Oh, going to bed for the night. Okay, yes.

Alyssa: For the entire night. You're dealing with dinner, honey. I'm going to go do whatever I have to do, whether that means be on the treadmill and take a hot shower and get into bed early, whatever that means. I really try. I think it's so important that we all try to have those moments.

Zibby: I just started this new Instagram community and a second podcast called "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight" because I felt like so many people, especially with the pandemic, have just felt like things have gotten a little out of control.

Alyssa: Oh, yeah.

Zibby: I feel like I hear all day now just how hard it is to even get in a walk or a workout or whatever just to stay --

Alyssa: -- I bought one of those little recumbent bikes that I can put under my desk. When I have five minutes, I'll just do that or kick the soccer ball around with the kids or jump in the trampoline, something that at least gets my heart rate up. I try once a day, but it's hard.

Zibby: It is hard. The trampoline is a hidden gem. That's the best.

Alyssa: I don't know what it is about the pandemic. I was sick. I had COVID in March and April. I have a lot of the long-hauler symptoms, just tired all the time. Even my friends that haven't had or didn't have COVID are just tired all the time. I think that's there something about -- it's almost like our bodies just go into protection/hibernation mode.

Zibby: Yes. When an entire planet is fearing for their lives, something happens.

Alyssa: Like a collective worry or a collective pain.

Zibby: I'm sorry about your experience. I know I read about that. Are you okay now?

Alyssa: I still have symptoms. I'll be totally fine some days. I don't have an autoimmune thing that I can compare this to, but it feels like -- you know how people who have Lupus or MS, they’ll talk about flare-ups? They’ll be okay some days. Then they’ll have flare-ups. That's what this is like. I'm totally fine, feel strong, have energy on some days. Then other days, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, joint aches and pains. I don't know one person who has recovered from this that has been totally fine. I have one friend who felt good. Then they found a blood clot in his leg. It seems like nobody just gets the acute sickness and then is out of this. The doctors don't know. I got this new symptom a little while ago, not burning palms, but kind of a bubbly under my skin feeling. I called my doctor. I was like, "This can't still be new --" He said, "Yeah, that's probably your small blood vessels leaking." I'm like, "Does that go away?" He said, "Well, we'll see." We'll see? That's it? That's all I get?

Zibby: My mother-in-law was very, very ill with COVID and ended up passing away. For six weeks we were --

Alyssa: -- I'm so sorry.

Zibby: I know. It was awful. I was on the phone with doctors all the time. We would say things like, "What comes next? What do you think?" When the doctors are even like, "We're not sure," what else can you do? We don't know. My whole life, you're brought up that the doctors know most of the answers. There are some things that are incurable, but for the most part, they’ve got it under control.

Alyssa: Or that there's at least some article somewhere that they could go back and refer to that will tell you how to deal with respiratory viral infection. This was so, so new and so raw. I'm so sorry that you were affected that closely. That is brutal.

Zibby: Thank you. I'm sorry you were, and so many other people. It's insane. It's everywhere you turn. Anyway, on to happier things. Back to Hope, are you expanding the series? Do you have other big projects in the works? Are you doing more TV/movie stuff? What's on the next six months for you?

Alyssa: The election is first and foremost. We just announced a Who's the Boss? sequel.

Zibby: Oh, that's right. Yes, I saw that.

Alyssa: Which I'll be doing with Tony, which will be really, really, really fun and exciting. We don't know anything about it yet except that he's probably going to come visit Sam for a weekend and never leave. Then the chaos will ensue of him taking care of my kids. Then the holidays will come up. Then I'm not sure, really. I'm in the process of writing a book of essays right now. I'm super excited about that. I'm hoping to take a little bit of a vacation and just rest for a little bit. My idea of resting is just not doing things back to back to back every day, but have a half a day where I get to paint or do something that I'm not trying to crank out. That's it. We're all just playing it by ear right now. There's people on sets. They're all masked up and with shields and these little dressing room pods. Not only does it not look fun to go back to work on a set right now, but also, it looks like it would totally make me anxious because there's a constant reminder that this thing is in the air just by the way in which you have to function for twelve hours a day. Being home, we could sort of isolate ourselves. We're so adaptable that we can, I feel like, at least shut off what's happening on the outside a little bit. If you're on a set for twelve hours and seeing how everybody has to sanitize and put on protective gear, I think that would really mess with my anxiety.

Zibby: Yeah, in your face.

Alyssa: There's no avoiding that.

Zibby: I feel like even just to go to a doctor's office -- I had to go to some building today. I'm in New York City. First, we walked in. Then I had to go to a computer. Then I had to get my temperature screened. Then we had to wash our hands. I kind of wasn't emotionally prepared for that. It's everything, everyday life. It's just a bit crazy. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors or just aspiring creative people? You're an artist in a lot of different ways from acting -- what advice would you have?

Alyssa: I think to nurture your creativity is important not only to keep it alive, but also to spark other ways in which you can be creative. It feeds off each other, I feel like. I just started, during the quarantine, doing watercolor painting. It's amazing how just sitting down for twenty minutes in the evening and really being mindful and doing something that is so fluid, so unforgiving can spark ideas about an essay I want to write. I really think creativity breeds more creativity. You don't have to do just that one thing that you're think you're creative at. You can start something new. It will still feed the thing that you think that you're good at. Just keep doing it. Keep forcing yourself to sit down and have that time to allow that part of your brain to work. At least for me, I know that different parts of my brain will supersede my creativity sometimes. I have to really slow it down and try to find that again. Sometimes that means listening to great music. Sometimes it means watching a movie that I love. Also, the idea that there's beauty in everything, that idea that there's this perfect system that's at work here, there's something about just that mindset that lends itself to more creative thinking, thinking outside of the box, thinking in new ways how to share a part of yourself. Ultimately, that's what art should be, sharing who you are. Hopefully, that resonates. It can resonate in different ways for different people.

Zibby: Very true. Thank you. Thanks for sharing this time with me and for using this limited focus time here.

Alyssa: Of course. Thank you for allowing me a chance to be on your podcast.

Zibby: Of course. I hope you feel better and that all the symptoms go away and that your kids keep loving your books. I think that's the coolest.

Alyssa: Thank you. Be well.

Zibby: You too. Buh-bye.

Alyssa: Bye.

Kwame Mbalia, TRISTAN STRONG DESTROYS THE WORLD

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Kwame. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Kwame Mbalia: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Zibby: Your latest book, Tristan Strong, part two essentially, Tristan Strong Destroys the Universe, follows the award-winning first book, Tristan Strong Punches the Sky. Did I get that right? Yes? Tell me about this series. Tell me how you started it. Tell me about why this happens in the second book. Just give me the whole backstory of this phenomenal series.

Kwame: The Tristan Strong series, wow, it's something that I've always wanted to create and be a part of, this idea of bringing forward these characters and stories that I listened to and that I read growing up as a child, bringing them forward for a new generation of young readers, but also for older readers who might not have had a chance to be exposed to the same material that I did. I love this idea of contemporary fantasy, this idea of magic existing in the time right now because it's almost like an escape. We get to imagine. We get to enter this different world, this different realm through the eyes of a middle school student. We all know that the world expands for us when we're in middle school. What more perfect hero could we have than a middle school student who travels through this fantastic realm and learns of his own magical powers?

Zibby: Totally. I have two middle schoolers. My son in particular, this is right up his alley. He will be happy when I give him this whole series. I read, also, your Last Gate of the Emperor, which is coming out in May of 2021.

Kwame: That it is.

Zibby: I got a sneak peek. I loved how it was described as an Afrofuturist journey to a galaxy far away. This whole theme running through all your books is sort of taking -- maybe I should ask you. What do you think the theme is coursing through all your books? before I opine on it myself.

Kwame: I am fascinated and enthralled with this idea of exploring non-Western fantasy and science fiction, building magic system, and imagining scientific innovations for future worlds through the eyes of African and African Americans. It's a way for me to explore and learn more about my own culture while also sharing it with the greater world, while also just having fun and telling jokes and letting my immature sense of humor shine throughout the tales.

Zibby: I saw in an interview with you did with Rick Riordan Presents, who's your publisher, that your parents used to tell you these types of stories all the time, which is so nice. Tell me about more of the African folklore that you grew up with.

Kwame: They did a fantastic job in scouring this country, and when they traveled to Africa, scouring bookstores over there, looking for books that centered on the African and the African American character. I always tell this story. One of the reasons why I wanted to include and talk about Anansi, the spider, the trickster god, is that when we were growing up, me and my siblings -- there were four of us. We were sharing a bedroom. If you've ever had to put multiple children to bed at the same time, it can be chaos. One of the ways they got us to calm down is they would play cassettes of the Anansi tales. We would fall asleep listening to Anansi trick or be tricked in all of his different stories. It holds a special place in my heart and one reason why I wanted to make Anansi be such a central figure in the Tristan tales.

Zibby: Wow. Tell me about growing up more. That sounds interesting, four kids in one room. I have four kids in my house, and I can barely do it. What was it like being so close with your siblings like that, not having any personal space? Did that make you want to turn to books for an outlet that you could have yourself? What was it like?

Kwame: I don't think you really think too much about it when you're younger. When you're younger, it's just like, hey, I have playmates. They're here all the time. As you enter middle school and high school, yes, you definitely want your space. For me, one thing special that I can remember is -- I'm the second oldest of the four that we shared the room. The younger two, they would fall asleep. It would be me and my older brother. We were a little older. We're not ready for bed yet. We would play this game called Brothers. Basically, it's a storytelling game. We would tell the story, but at the beginning of the story you have to choose, what animal friends do you have? What kind of cars do you have? You're setting up the setting, the world building for this story. It got to the point, that's how we counted sheep. We never actually got to the point of telling a story. We would just talk to each other about, what is this story about? Who's in the story? What type of cool moves and stuff will we do? That is one of the most special memories that I have, is falling asleep to this idea of telling a story.

Zibby: Then were you a big reader growing up?

Kwame: Oh, my goodness, I was a voracious reader growing up. My parents heavily encouraged it. My mother, what she would do is every Friday, she would take us to the library. She said you could check out as many books as you want to read. You just have to carry them and be responsible for them. Of course, I'm walking out carrying bundles of books. No matter what, Sunday or Monday, all of the books would be read. I would be anxiously waiting for the next Friday to come around. What's hilarious is that my parents, they had this little thing that they would do for me and my older brother. I don't want to call it tricking us, but to encourage us. They would say, "It's quiet time. It's nap time. You can either take a nap or read a book, one of the two things." I'm seven, eight years old. I'm like, I'm going to read a book. I'm not going to take no nap. Now it's all I can do. I just want to read. I want to read. I want to read.

Zibby: I thought you were going to say all you want to do is take a nap.

Kwame: That too now. Now I miss those nap times. I really regret not taking advantage of them.

Zibby: Me too. How old are your kids?

Kwame: They are twelve, nine, five, and a four-month-old. Now I'm really regretting not taking advantage of that nap when I had the chance.

Zibby: Are you already reading to them all the time and trying to encourage this in them? How is that going?

Kwame: Absolutely. For us, books have been the one thing where it's like, it's not that we don't say no, but it's like, all right, you want a book, let's get you a book. We encourage reading and literacy from a young age. Even my five-year-old who's learning to read, going through the motions and the act of opening a picture book and telling her own stories as she interprets the pictures, that's an act of learning to read. That's an act of reading. It's something that we've always encouraged. My nine-year-old is reading my book, too, right now and telling me what her favorite parts are, which is cool. It's fun. Seeing her laugh at some of the things that I laughed at while I wrote the book, it's fun. It's rewarding in a way.

Zibby: Tell me about how you got into writing books to begin with. You loved to read as a kid. You found your place in the world in middle school realizing what was going on around you. Then what happened?

Kwame: I've always also been a writer. The difference is, I didn't write for others. I wrote for myself. Writing was, for me, an act of sharing and expressing my emotions that I may have not felt comfortable talking about. I would just put them in a little story with a little character who was definitely not me. I've always been a writer, but it's only, I would say, within the past fix, six, or seven years that I've thought or dreamed about becoming an author. That's because I received encouragement. I received feedback from people who said, "Hey, some of this stuff that you write is really good. Have you ever thought about becoming an author or publishing it and sending it out?" I hadn’t until that point. That's when I really began to think that maybe this could be a career for me. I never dreamed it would be my only career because I'm a scientist. I went to school for biology, chemistry. I worked in the sciences after I graduated. It was always like, this is a hobby. I can make a little money from it. Now it's a career which just goes to show you that you never know where you're going to end up in life and to never self-reject, never gatekeep yourself out of trying and doing something.

Zibby: I read you were a pharmaceutical metrologist. What does that even mean?

Kwame: Metrology is just the calibration of instruments. Basically, I would travel around to different people who manufacture drugs, Tylenol, Advil, inhalers, and stuff like that. One of my kids has asthma. I would travel around and I would make sure that the instruments that they use to manufacturer the medicine worked right. The box says you're taking five hundred milligrams of ibuprofen, and then you're only taking four hundred and you're wondering why the pain isn't going away. It's because maybe the instruments weren’t working right. That's what I did. I traveled around. I loved it. It was a great job. I was sad to leave it, but I'm happy to say that I've been able to incorporate a lot of the characters that I met along the way, a lot of the dialogue that I had, the conversation, and a lot of the settings into my own books and stories.

Zibby: Then how did you end up writing the first best-selling Tristan Strong? How did that happen? Then what was it like when you found out that it was such a success?

Kwame: We learned that Rick Riordan and Rick Riordan Presents, the imprint, were looking for African American stories, African American storytellers. It was over the winter break, for five to seven days, I sat down and I wrote the opening three chapters and then a synopsis of what would become Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky. They came back immediately. They said they loved it. I had written the now infamous Gum Baby scene where Gum Baby breaks in and tries to steal Tristan's journal. Gum Baby was a fan favorite. From the very onset, from the very beginning, there was truly something special about these two characters and the way they interacted throughout the story. Disney and Rick Riordan Presents, they loved it. They said, "We want you to be a part of the imprint." I said, yay!

Zibby: [laughs] That's amazing, oh, my gosh. What's your process like when you're working? Do you work right there where I'm seeing you? Where do you like to work? How long does each book take and all that good stuff?

Kwame: Just to let you know that I have a four-month-old, so I write in fits and spurts. My wife, she's gone to back to work. A lot of the times, we'll pass the baby back and forth. We'll take care of him. She's watching him right now. I'll watch it when she gets on her meetings. It's really about, right now, taking advantage of time when it becomes available. Sometimes that might mean writing one hundred to two hundred words. Sometimes it's one AM in the morning and I'm writing two to three chapters. You never know. There is no schedule right now. It's take advantage of what you have and try to create the final installment in that story and do the best job that I can with it.

Zibby: I feel like the combination of pandemic plus infant must just be -- I don't know how you get anything done.

Kwame: It's fine. I love it. It's a dream. That's sarcasm.

Zibby: Oh, okay. I'm like, we're no longer friends here. No, no, no. [laughs]

Kwame: It's difficult. There was a definitely a period of time there, a month or so, where I absolutely struggled. I maybe wrote all of a chapter throughout that whole month because it was so difficult. A lot of creative people were dealing with that at the time, quarantine, being restricted, having to adapt to new ways of handling life both professionally and personally. Thankfully, we're out of -- I shouldn't say we're out of it, but I've become accustomed to it, working around it. We're going to get this story done. We are going to get it finished one way or another.

Zibby: I heard that you are hard at work on the next book in the series. True? Finished?

Kwame: No, not finished. I'm so close. I'm so close. That last five percent is going to take the most time because you're wrapping up a series. You're putting a stamp and concluding a character's journey and their growth. You want to do it in a way that closes the door on that story arc, but it doesn't close the door on the world. You can still imagine them having adventures and going off. There's no finality. It's the end for now...

Zibby: Is this going to be a movie? You mentioned Disney earlier.

Kwame: Rick Riordan Presents is an imprint of the Disney Books Collection. I don't think there's any author out there who doesn't want their story to become a movie. I'm really, really, really hopeful that it will be. It's just, hey, we need more readers. We need more fans to shout about it and to draw attention to it. The more you read and share and the more people like you have me on to talk about it, the more the chance there will be that it'll be a movie.

Zibby: Good. I'm glad I could play a tiny piece in that. When it comes out, I will be like, that's all me. That was because of my interview right there. [laughs] What advice do you have to aspiring authors?

Kwame: I mentioned it a little bit in the beginning. What I would say is that as writers, you will meet so many different what we call gatekeepers, the people who will either allow your work through to the next level, to the next rung in publishing, or will reject it and send it back. You will meet so many of those gatekeepers who control access. The very first gatekeeper you will meet will be yourself. You cannot self-reject. You cannot gatekeep yourself. You cannot say, my story isn't good enough to go here or my writing isn't great enough to do this. You have to be your own biggest fan, promoter, publicist, and really energize yourself. Don't self-reject. Submit your work. Submit, submit, submit. You say yes even if you think everyone else will say no. You say yes.

Zibby: Okay, we're saying yes. Just out of curiosity, what ended up happening to your other three siblings? Are any of them authors? What did they end up doing? Are you guys still close?

Kwame: We're still close. My sister just recently finished -- she got her doctorate. She's Dr. Mbalia. She's the third Dr. Mbalia of the family after my parents. It's really cool. She's definitely an inspiration. My brother is off doing amazing things. I don't even know what he does. We look at pharmaceutical metrologist. He worked with the NOAA, the National Oceanography Association of Americas. He's just off doing wonderful things. Then my other brother is a teacher. Coming from a family of educators -- both my parents were professors. My wife started off as a kindergarten teacher. As someone who interacts with teachers on a daily basis as an author, teachers get so little credit for what they're doing both especially right now during this pandemic and just in general. My siblings are off being awesome. I am out here just writing them into books and making fun of them.

Zibby: That's amazing. You can write my son's teacher in, my five-year-old son. We had curriculum night last night. His teacher said that she has now gotten certified in both sky diving and scuba diving. You would never know from looking at her. I felt like that was a James Bond story in the making.

Kwame: So she just teaches -- to go from --

Zibby: -- I don't know if it's the same day, but she does them both now regularly.

Kwame: That's fantastic. I will live vicariously through your son's teacher.

Zibby: Thank goodness for summer break for the teachers. Although, not these days. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I'm so glad I could help this become a movie. [laughter] You will be entertaining my son at boarding school very shortly when I send him all this. Have a great day. Thanks so much for coming on.

Kwame: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I really appreciate it. This has been a blast.

Zibby: Good. Have a great day. Buh-bye.

Kwame: Bye.

Kathie Lee Gifford, HELLO LITTLE DREAMER

Kathie Lee Gifford: Thank you for having me today.

Zibby Owens: Thanks for coming on. I'm so excited to talk to you about your many exciting projects you have going on starting with Hello, Little Dreamer which I read out loud to my two littlest kids. They just loved it. Thank you for that entertainment for my family.

Kathie Lee: I am so happy to hear that. It's been a long time since I had little ones, but I'm still a little kid at heart. I'm grateful to hear that from you because that's the whole point. We wait too long with our children to instill extraordinarily important values, the most important things, the most important truths. We wait too long. Frank and I rarely fought over things. The one thing we disagreed on was how long we should wait for our little ones to learn how to say please and thank you and I love you and I'm sorry and all those things that you're going to need in life many times. He'd say, "Kathie, he's only two. Cody's two." I'd say, "Yeah, and pretty soon he'll be twelve and it'll be too late." [laughs]

Zibby: I know. That's the thing.

Kathie Lee: Now I have the most polite children. Cassidy was terrible because she just took it so to heart. I'd say to both of them, "You say please or you do not get it. You say thank you or I take it back. Then we start all over again." They believed me. Cass was better at it. Cody was really good. In the middle of the night when he would go potty, I didn't care if he hit the toilet or not. I just wanted him to say thank you after I got back with him. [laughter] He'd wake up and he'd go, "Mommy, potty peas. Potty peas." Potty please. I'd go, "Yes, I gotcha." Then I'd put him back to sleep. He'd go, "Thank you. Thank you." Frank came to believe that it was true, but Cassidy took it way further than that. We'd be a restaurant or something. She’d give her order. She’d go, "Thank you." The waitress wouldn't respond, or the waiter. Cassidy would go, "Thank you." She’d just be yelling it until finally the waiter or waitress, they'd go, "You're welcome, kid. Geesh." Or they'd walk away and Cassidy would look at me and go, "They didn't say you're welcome." She was insane about it. I guess I did go a little overboard.

Zibby: No, at least you did your job well. Check-plus on that.

Kathie Lee: I was raised that way. Little brats grow into bratty adults. They just do if nobody takes them aside and teaches them what's right. I'm not saying how to vote and how to believe in your whatever. I'm just talking about the basic decency courtesy things. Kids today just have not been taught them from what I see. Some have. It's so rare that I go, gee, somebody raised you right. It's been lost in our culture like so many other things.

Zibby: It takes a relentless focus on it. You can't just say, all right, say please and thank you. It's every single interaction. When they say it, you have to catch it and say, thanks for saying please, or whatever. Then you have to catch it when they don't. It's constant.

Kathie Lee: That's right. You've got to reinforce it. Reinforcement, I call it resent-less.

Zibby: I love that.

Kathie Lee: Because they're going to resent you, but you got to be relentless about it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I'm coming to you for all my parenting advice from now on. When I'm feeling all my reinforcement is making no difference, I'll remember that it actually works over time. [laughs]

Kathie Lee: It totally will. It's a guarantee. The Bible says raise up your children in the way they should go. When they're older, they will not depart from it. I've seen that with my children. One of them's thirty. One's twenty-seven now. My son's getting married in two weeks. My daughter got married two months ago. It's a whole new world. If they don't teach their children these common courtesies, grandma will. Glam-ma, I want to be called. Glam-ma will teach them gladly. [laughter]

Zibby: That's exciting to have so many huge milestones happening in your life all at the same time. That's great. Congratulations.

Kathie Lee: Thank you. I think people tend to believe that because of the COVID the world has come to a standstill. That’s not true at all. Certain things have, of course. God's spirit has never stopped moving. The Holy Spirit's never stopped moving in our own lives. There's lots of good stuff to be seen and to be experienced if we have our spiritual antenna out for it. God is doing great and mighty things in spite of it all just as he has through all of time. He never changes. It's the world that changes and people that change, but never, never God himself.

Zibby: My mother-in-law right now -- I know this will air later when who knows what will have happened, but my mother-in-law is in the ICU with COVID and has been suffering for a while.

Kathie Lee: I'm sorry.

Zibby: Thank you. She's only sixty-three and all the rest.

Kathie Lee: That's too young.

Zibby: I have been asking so many people to pray and to reach out. It doesn't matter what religion and whatever. When I was reading Hello, Little Dreamer and on your Instagram and your whole faith and even in the book how your neighbor sold you the house because they just felt it from God, anyway, I was like, there's a reason why I'm talking to Kathie Lee Gifford today when I have so much God in my life at the moment.

Kathie Lee: I'm sitting on that same porch right now. I was talking to her yesterday because she's just now moving into the home that they recently built. They could've moved in April, but the COVID kept them at their lake place. A great friendship came from that. I'm literally five feet from the spot where she yelled out to me on my little balcony across the way. I didn't put this in the book because it was too much, but really what happened, as soon as I bought the house from them, I was walking home to my brownstone to call my real estate guy to say I've got to put mine on the market now when my dear friend Angie, whom you've read that book obviously, said, "Kathie, don't call your real estate agent." I said, "Why?" She says, "I think I have a buyer for yours." I went, "I just bought the other one five seconds ago." She goes, "No, no, no. Can they come buy this afternoon?" I went, "Yeah." These people came by and bought it immediately for a hundred thousand dollars more than I had bought it the six months before. God knows it's a miracle. Nobody would believe that. I don't want to make people feel bad like their prayers aren't answered or something. I thought it was enough of a miracle that these people sold me their home just because God said sell it, sell it to Kathie Lee. The blessing it has been since, it's just extraordinary.

When I'm tempted to have a pity party, which we all are in this world, I just look around and I go, really, Kathie Lee? You're going to have a pity party? Are you forgetting all of God's faithfulness to you through sixty-seven years of life, really, so you can have a pity party right now? No, Lord, I'm not going to do that. Look at the Israelites. They weren’t the Israelites then. They were the Hebrews. Then no sooner had the miracle of the parting the Red Sea -- then they get across. Pharaoh's chariots are deep in the water. They’ve been redeemed from slavery. They want to go back. They want the food they miss. I go, Lord, I'm no different from them. I want my husband back. I want my youth back. I want stuff back. I want all these things back. God goes, are you not going to finish this race with me? Are you not going to go forward Kathie? I don't go backwards. I go forward. You going with me or not? I feel so ashamed of myself at times, not condemned, but just reminded, no, I am the God of forward. He is with us presently. He's always leading us forward by his council. He leads us ultimately to the glory, the word says. I don't want to go back, really. It's just at times when we're weak. We never stop being weak at times. That never ever happens.

As we perish outwardly in our bodies and our world decays and everything else, we are being renewed on a daily basis for eternity's sake. It's just easy to forget that, especially when everybody's facing so many hard times today. They really are. That's the other thing the Lord reminds me of, Zibby, all the time, that, Kathie, some people are truly suffering. Let's remember them. Cry out for them. I see you. I see your needs. I know them without you speaking them. Trust me with those, as you have in the past, and really lift up those who are desperate for my help. I've got more friends right now, I don't know if it's because of my age, but more friends that are on life support or needing an operation or going into chemo. I think it's the most at one time. I've got the longest prayer list of people that truly need healing. There's always one or two in our lives that are facing those things, but it’s a much longer list now. A lot of it is because of COVID. Although, I have not lost a friend to it yet. I praise God for that. I know people who have been lost to it, but none of my dear friends have been lost to it. I'm grateful for that. I'm sorry for your -- it's your mother-in-law, you said? Is she going to be all right?

Zibby: I don't know. I hope so. I pray that she will, but we'll see. I'm sorry to have -- you're right. So many people are suffering. I'm sorry your list is so long on your prayer list right now. I know that there's so many people.

Kathie Lee: That's okay. God is there for them.

Zibby: One of the things I found with your book It's Never Too Late and even Hello, Little Dreamer is all of your emphasis on what's coming next. It's Never Too Late, it's perfect. You left the fourth hour of Today Show to pursue your dreams now. It's so inspiring. You want to go off in a whole different direction. Tell me a little bit about why it's never too late to dream and how much life is left, your whole theory on life. Tell me a little more about it.

Kathie Lee: Life is left until we run out of it. If I wake up in the morning and I have a pulse, that means I still have a purpose that God wants me to fulfil. I think a lot of people give up on life when they think that nobody needs them anymore. There is no reason to get up in the morning or they don't have the energy for it anymore. I was just praying to the Lord the other day. I said, Lord, if you're done with me, then take me home. I'm ready. I get very exhausted from things and discouraged and disappointed like everyone does. Even if somebody looks at my life and it looks like it's full and it's vibrant, and it often, often, is, I still have those moments where I just go, okay, I'm done, Lord. I'm done. Take me home. I'm ready. I have a beautiful home. I've been blessed with beautiful homes for a long, long time, but this is not my ultimate home. I'm a widow now. There's always that ever-present gnawing at your soul that you're alone and that I'm not alone. It's a constant, yes, you are; no, I'm not. Which little voice are you going to listen to? I could look around and say, my husband is not here with me. My children have moved on to their lives. But I'm not alone. I have the Holy Spirit present within me. I have his presence all around me in my friends and in my work.

I'm doing more important work now, I believe, than I've ever done in life with the encouragement I'm trying to be to others in terms of especially the word of God with the books that I'm writing, The Rock, Road, and Rabbi series. We're signed for two more of those. That is meeting a deep hunger in the world. Nobody's more surprised than I am. I thought there was complete, not complete, but almost complete total illiteracy about the scriptures and that people just weren’t interested in growing in their faith. That book has been a surprise super best seller much to my delight because it shows that people are hungry for the word of God. You can't fly to Israel anymore, but right before COVID it was the most-purchased and most-read book on all the planes going into Israel. People of every faith, they were reading it in anticipation of going to the Holy Land and studying, which just is such a blessing. My faith was lukewarm for many years because I wasn't being fed either in church or through the word of God. Why wasn't I? Because I wasn't reading the true word of God because I was reading bad translations and I was going to churches where they weren’t preaching the true word of God. It's just so simple. Go to the source. The source is what's going to refresh you. The source is what's going to empower you. The source is the Old Testament in the Hebrew and the New Testament in the Greek. If you're not learning that and not memorizing that and not quoting that and not building your life on that, you're building it on sinking sand your whole life. I need a solid rock under my feet because I will go astray without it. I will. I'm just like anybody else that's human. The fire that that lit in me when I started studying rabbinically was profound.

I wrote the first oratorio "The God Who Sees" with my friend, the beautiful and talented Nicole C. Mullen. That led to three more oratorios which I'm now about to start filming next week. I film the first new scenes from the new oratorios. We hope to have them done by the end of the year. That will be one and a half hours of symphonic oratorios, they're called "The Way," that we hope to give as a gift to the world next Easter. That’ll be two years, basically, after I left The Today Show. I've got two more books, I told you, that we're signing for, the two books coming out. My movie that I did with Craig Ferguson, Then Came You, is finally coming out in a month from now in theaters. If theaters are open, it'll be in theaters. If they aren't open, it'll be being streamed. That's been in my rearview mirror for too long. It's been two years since we wrapped it. Finding the right distributor, especially in the world of COVID, has been challenging. That's happening. I almost feel like I was singing "On the First Day of Christmas" because it's like, four duh-duh-duh, three duh-duh-duh, two duh-duh-duh, and a partridge in a pear tree. It's overwhelming. I woke up this morning. I said, okay, I know I have three interviews today. What are they for? What are they for, Lord? Remind me which project. [laughs] It's fun.

Zibby: It all just speaks to your whole point which is that there's so much more to come in life. I just wanted to read this one little passage from your book because it's so inspiring. You said, "If you're my age or getting close, it's probably been a long time since you last thought back to those days when you had dreams of what or who you wanted to be when you grew up. But it's time, friend. It's time to ask yourself, what would I do if I could? Toss out the phrases I can't and I don't know how, and start dreaming about the what-if that might get you off that couch and back into something you want to do. Maybe me sharing my story will give you some perspective and do that for you." Then you say, "Are you ready? It's never too late to dream." It's so awesome. I love it.

Kathie Lee: Thank you, but it's because it's true. When you study the scripture, you realize that dreams are an intricate part of your inner being. I believe that the scripture is flawless and God used people dreaming and their dreams all throughout history to impact culture and to impact lives, millions of lives. God has not stopped placing dreams in people's hearts. As we said before, he doesn't change. Women who are pregnant right now with their children, God is at work in that secret place the Bible talks about, in the darkness of the inner womb, which is a sacred place. I wish our culture and our world understand how sacred that is. God is, at the moment of conception, through -- there's a line in my new oratorio, "The God of the [Indiscernible]," when it says, oh Lord, you were there before the world began. You created everything, each woman, every man. You wrote their stories in their mother's wombs, and then you carried them from their cradles to their tombs. It's true. The God of creation, Jehovah Elohim, never stops creating. Every morning of every human being's life, whether they are just being born or they're dying, is an act of creation by Father God Jehovah Elohim, which in Hebrew means creator God.

If we can look at our lives with that perspective, it gives each moment purpose. Every moment has purpose because the great -- think about it. The greatest day of a believer's life is the day that God calls them home, the greatest day. It's not a tragedy. It's a triumph. That's why I could hold my dead husband in my arms and cry tears of joy and rejoicing, not because I was glad my husband was dead. I was thrilled to know where my husband was now and who he was with. You can't do anything but rejoice when you truly understand that scriptural truth. He will lead us on to glory. We either believe that or we don't. Grief is an important thing, but I don't allow myself to stay in grief. I allow myself to grieve appropriately. Then I make myself move on in the promise of the future. I have to because the evil one would keep us there. The evil one would love to keep us in grief because we're paralyzed. He comes to steal and kill and destroy. Jesus came that we might have life, and life abundantly. The word in the Greek for that word, abundantly, is the word zoe, Z-O-E, which means beyond. It cannot be contained. It overflows. It cannot be withheld. That's what I want for my life as long as I am alive, zoe. When it's not there, it's because I've moved away from God, not the other way around. My life is about God's faithfulness to me, not my faithfulness to God because I have failed him way too many times. I'll fail him today in one way or another, but I don't stay there. I stay there in the promise of, yes, but that's why you still need me, Kathie. You still need me. As Paul did, that in my weakness he is made strong. Even Paul was the greatest apostle ever. I think a close second would be Billy Graham in terms of the impact of one life on the world. There was Martin Luther. There are Billy Graham. There were those who truly changed the course of history. We could all change the course of somebody's history. We can do it right now. Today is the day of salvation.

Zibby: Come back to the book for two seconds here. Let me just ask about writing for you. I wanted to know what the writing process was like. You write children's books. You've written memoirs. You’ve done advice. You've done so many things. What's your process like when you write? Then what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Kathie Lee: I think everybody's process is different. I wrote my first book when I was eighteen years old. I'd forgotten that I'd written it. It had been a best seller. That's how much I didn't think I was a writer. I'd remind myself. Oh, my gosh, that's right, my first book was called The Quiet Riot and it had three printings. I forgot. I was so busy being an actress and a singer and pursuing those dreams. I literally forgot about it. Now that's twenty books ago. Everybody's got a book in them because everyone has a story. Whether they write it down or journal it, whatever, everyone's story is precious to God. He wrote our stories in our mother's wombs. Then he carries us from our cradles to our tombs. He never stops writing our story. My process is letting the Holy Spirit move and not trying to control it. I often wake up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning and the Holy Spirit speaks to me and says, get up. Go down and let the process begin. Be a channel. Be a channel for my creative energy and my creative juices to flow through you. I can't do anything on my own, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I sit down not knowing what the Lord has for me. Then I thrill to it.

Sometimes it's a Broadway show. Sometimes it's a lyric, just a lyric. I write a song or a half a song of the lyrics to thousands of songs. Or it's part of a book. It becomes a book. I've written jingles for commercials. I write constantly. My friend gave me a placard in my office that says eighty percent of the words in my brain are lyrics. [laughs] Life is a song. All of creation sings out to the creator. I'm just part of creation. I try to get out of God's way. I truly do. There are many, many times, I can't even count them, that I have written a lyric and I write it down and I can't get it out fast enough. I stop. I look up. I go, you are unbelievable. It's a perfect lyric. It's a perfect rhyme. It's a perfect lyric. It says perfectly what I need my character to say or I want to say in whatever I'm writing. I know a good song when I write one, but I know an anointed one when God writes one. More and more and more, I want the anointing. I want the anointing.

I'm writing with the finest writers in the world now down here in Nashville. It's a tremendous privilege that they’ve embraced me the way they have because I certainly have never been known as a songwriter, but I've been writing songs since I was twenty years old. I just never did it in a professional way until I started writing for theater. My Broadway show, even though it was certainly not a hit by far, not at all -- it was a disaster, basically, on Broadway. It was Tony nominated. I don't know how to write Broadway shows. I don't know how to write oratorios. I don't know how to write books, but God knows how. If I just put myself in his hands, he uses me to do those things. I left college. I left college before I graduated. I sat there for three weeks and wrote my first book waiting on God to see where he would lead me. He led me straight to Hollywood right after I finished that book thinking that nobody would ever read it except my daughter if I was blessed to have one one day. Look at what the Lord has done in the ensuing years. That was in 1975.

Zibby: What would you tell someone else who's just starting out? What would you tell an aspiring author?

Kathie Lee: I would say go back to your earliest memories and ask the Lord to show you what your dreams were if you've forgotten them. Show him. He'll restore those. He will redeem it all. He wants to. He is the redeemer of all things. He wants to make all things fresh and new. He says, look what I do. Behold, do you not see what I'm doing? Open your eyes, basically. I am making a garden from the wastelands, streams in the desert. All of those things are still inside you no matter what the world has thrown at you. He says, I have overcome the world, take courage. The word for courage, what he says -- let not your heart be troubled. Take courage. The word is [indiscernible], meaning Cana. That town of Cana is known as the place where Jesus performed his first miracle. He demonstrated his glory in a way that was profoundly human, to supply a human need for a glorious celebration of two people becoming one in God's sight. God still celebrates. I'm celebrating two weddings right now in my children's lives. We don't have as many people at them, but we're celebrating. We're serving my wine now, my family wine. I have a line of wine. I just think, how glorious of the Lord. The dreams that I as a mother -- as I was carrying these children to birth, God was doing a great and profound work of creation in my children's inner beings that will continue long after I am gone. I praise God for that. I don't worry about my children's future because God holds their futures in his hands long after my hands have gone on to embrace him. My God will be there for my children and their future generations. That's a promise straight from the word of God. I cling to his promises.

Zibby: Wow, this has been such an interesting conversation. I've loved hearing you talk about all your beliefs and passions and convictions and experiences. Thank you for sharing them with me and my listeners. I look forward to everything you have coming ahead. Thank you.

Kathie Lee: You're a dear. Thank you so much. Bless those sweet little ones of yours in Jesus' name.

Zibby: Thank you.

Kathie Lee: God bless, and your mother-in-law, sweetie, and your mother-in-law. Please, Lord, heal her.

Zibby: Thank you so much. Enjoy the weddings. Buh-bye.

Kathie Lee: Good talking with you. Buh-bye.

Oliver Jeffers, WHAT WE'LL BUILD

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Oliver. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Oliver Jeffers: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, this is like Christmas in my house. I don't even celebrate Christmas, but it would be like Christmas. It's the greatest thing to be interviewing you. My kids were freaking out. I have four kids. They are obsessed. My little guy loves How to Catch a Star and obviously the Crayons and everything else. Delighted to talk to you. Let's start with talking about your new book, which I only have on my iPad here. What We'll Build, beautiful illustrations, per usual, and thought-provoking text. Tell me a little bit about your latest book. What inspired this one? Why now?

Oliver: Why now and what inspired it are both the same things, which is we had a second child, a daughter. I joked that I better write her a book because I'd never hear the end of it if my son had a book and she didn't. Really, I was going through similar internal dialogues about the state of the world and what it's like to be raising a child, and especially this time around. It's not the first time we've had a child, but it's the first time we've had a daughter. She's actually the first female Jeffers in four generations. So quite some time just thinking about the timing and the feeling in the zeitgeist of this moment where so much change is possible, not guaranteed, but possible. The idea of raising a daughter in what will hopefully no longer be a man's world, it feels like a special time to be trying to do that. That was one aspect of it. Here We Are, if that book was about trying to understand the world as it is and break it down in its simplest terms, which covers the strangeness that comes with being a parent for the first time, then we had already experienced that. Our thoughts were able to turn more fully to the future when looking at this brand-new bundle of life in our arms. If Here We Are is about explaining the world as it is, then What We'll Build is about possibly changing it. In the quiet hours in the middle of the night as I was nursing her back to sleep, I would just be imagining these things and saying these [audio cuts outs]. I just started to write it down. Then it came quite organically and quite naturally.

Zibby: Wow. You just have to keep having kids. You'll have more and more original content. How old is your son?

Oliver: He's five. He turned five in the summer.

Zibby: I have a five-year-old also. He must eat up these books like crazy. How cool to have a dad who does this?

Oliver: He does, but I don't try to ram them down his throat either. I was never a big reader when I was a kid because it always felt like something that you had to do for homework. It was more like a chore. It wasn't until I discovered books on my own terms that I became an avid reader. That was later in life. I had this deep-seated fear that if I tried to make him do something, it would actually put him off. He does, he goes to books, but he actually likes reference books more, books that explain things. He's definitely more like his mother in that sense. She's an engineer. He likes things to be explained logically. He also likes dinosaurs and diggers. My daughter, on the other hand, I think is a lot more similar to me in terms of chaos and creativity. [laughs]

Zibby: What types of books got you reading?

Oliver: What types of books got me reading? There are books that I enjoyed whenever I was a kid, for sure. The first book that I read because I wanted to read it was a Roald Dahl book. I had read The BFG for school. It was the first book that didn't feel like homework. It felt like a treat. Then I just went and read his entire backlog. Honestly, it wasn't until much later in life that I became a read every single day type of person. I mostly read nonfiction, believe it or not. There's so many interesting things that have actually happened in the world. I want to find out about all those things and how everything affects everything else. I can't even remember what it was, but there was something that I didn't understand. I was like, let me read about that. Because it was on my terms and I wanted to find out about it, it was a very different experience.

Zibby: Interesting. I remember growing up my parents had these encyclopedias which were all really fancy and bound and everything. I remember being like, wow, I could just learn about anything I want. I'm just going to pull this thing out. Let's see what I find. The power in that.

Oliver: We moved to the US fifteen years ago. I realized that all the classic books that they teach in schools here -- in Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, they were Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, things like that. When I got the USA, I realized there was a whole different genre of classic books that were American classic books. I'd found a list of the one hundred classic American novels. I've been slowly working my way through them. I've discovered John Steinbeck that way, and [indiscernible]. That's been a real pleasure.

Zibby: Take me from what happened when you started reading Roald Dahl books to here. When did you know that you wanted to produce books? When did you start illustrating and writing? When did all that brew up inside you?

Oliver: From when I was a kid, I've always loved drawing and making things. A lot of the art, looking back on it now, has been very narrative driven. There is that old Picasso quote. All children are artists; the trick is just remembering how whenever you grow up. When people ask me, when did I start making art? I tend to ask them, when did you stop? We all made art at some point. Then all adults just sort of stopped and moved on to different things. I just never did. When did it occur to me to actually make a book? When I started thinking about real-life jobs and so on, once I learned that making art was a real-life job, I knew that that was going to be for me. I started to work my [indiscernible]. The university experience is very different in the UK and Ireland than it is in the USA. Here, you have to start specializing, really, from the age of fifteen. Then you pick your degree, your subject. Then you pick where you want to go. Whereas in the US, it's you pick your college and then you pick what you want to study. It's a much different system here. I think it suits fewer people here because who knows what they want to do when they're fifteen?

I'm one of the fortunate people that did know because I knew that I wanted to make art. I got into art college. It was only at the very, very end of my art college when I thought I was going to be a painter -- which is still something that I do. I have two completely separate careers. I had this concept for a series of canvases, but it occurred to me that maybe these canvases would be better served as a book. I made a book in my last year of college. Then I went about trying to get that book published. When I was showing that to publishers both in London and New York, the question was asked, "Do you have other ideas, or is this a one-off?" I was like, "I've got lots of idea." I didn't really. I was just like, I think that's the answer they want to hear. Ever since then, the switch was very easy for me. Books came very, very naturally. Just today, I realized that it's almost twenty years since I first made How to Catch a Star.

Zibby: Wow. It's so relevant and so beautiful. I go to bed reading it with my son. It's so crazy. Your ideas are in my house every night. It's just the magic of picture books. It's really unbelievable.

Oliver: I try not to break it down and take it apart to see how it works, ever, because I just fear that it won't ever be put together. It's such a strange thought that the work that I did alone in the studio then has a life of its own. It's easier just not to think about that than to really contemplate what that means.

Zibby: You keep, obviously, creating lots of stories. Do they just occur to you? How does something trigger you to decide, this is going to be my next book?

Oliver: I have lots of ideas for stories that never really fully materialize into stories because every good story, every good picture book, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some of these ideas that I had, they might have just been the middle. It was a gimmick or an interesting visual or didn't have one of those three things or couldn't really be fleshed out enough into a picture book. My sketch book was whittled with those ideas. Then at one point, I thought, these don't have all that it takes to be a full picture book, but maybe I could do a book of short picture books. That book became Once Upon an Alphabet. That really was me just plundering through my sketchbooks and lifting out the choices ideas and then attributing one to each letter. There was a few holes where I had to think up ones from scratch.

Honestly, each book happens in a different way. Stuck is partially based on a true story. The Incredible Book Eating Boy, the whole story came from both an art project that I was doing with a scientist in quantum physics and just a simple drawing that I made. I connected the two things. Then The Fate of Fausto, I don't really know where that came from. I took a drive up the North Coast of Northern Ireland. I pulled the car over just on the cliffs in the absolute middle of rural nowhere. I took a nap as I was watching this storm come in. I woke up and that book was just on the tip of my tongue. I put pencil to paper. It came out pretty much as is. Who knows where that came from? Here We Are was originally written as a letter to my son. The same with What We'll Build. There's not a formula. Each one is slightly different. Sometimes they're quite tricky to pick the lock of. Stuck, that's based on really getting a kite stuck in a tree and really getting some other stuff caught in the tree, but I didn't know how it ended. I sat on it for six months, eight months, maybe a year before watching my nephews play and just forgetting about one game and moving on to the other. I realized, maybe it doesn't have to end. Maybe he just gets distracted and moves on. That proved to be the perfect ending. It's different for every case.

Zibby: Then my daughter wanted me to ask you how you came up with the design for the crayons.

Oliver: Well, they're crayons. [laughs]

Zibby: I know, like faces and making them so human, how you came up with it. I didn't say it was a great question, but that's her question, so I'm going with it.

Oliver: It was fun to come up with the design for the crayons box because I wanted it to be completely unique and not associated with any existing crayons brand. I think it was based on, I saw an ad in a magazine for a packet of candy with that color spectrum, an old-time magazine or something like that. I was like, oh, that's how that will do. Really, it's the simplicity of it. When I saw that story, I just knew that this book had to be done so simply. You couldn't overdo it because it would ruin the obviousness of the whole thing. The letters had to be written as if you got them in a stack. The crayons themselves had to be characters. That's gauche paint. It's the simplest way that I could have drawn them and made them look like physical objects. Then, of course, everything else in the book is a crayon drawing. It was like, what are the laws of logic that would apply to this if this really happened? Then I just went from there.

Zibby: Wow. Some books you illustrate only. Some books you write and illustrate. Are you still a for-hire illustrator? I can't imagine you are.

Oliver: No, I never have been. I always said I would never illustrate somebody else's book until I was tricked into looking at the Crayons manuscripts. The editor that I work with, then in New York, called me into office and then says, "I've got to leave to take a phone call. Don't look at anything on my desk." Of course, I went over and looked. That was sitting face up. I read it and was like, this is a really great concept. It's so obvious what should be done. I was like, I hope whoever does this does it the right way. Then my editor came back in. I said, "Who's illustrating this?" He's goes, "No one yet. Why? You interested?" I was like, "I knew exactly what you were doing." I couldn't not do it. Then the only other book I've illustrated that hasn’t been a Crayons book was with Eoin Colfer. We're friends. We just basically said, yeah, we should work together. Artists and authors that meet at literary festivals always say that sort of stuff, and it never happens. Then about two weeks later, Eoin says, "I've got this idea that I think might be perfect for you." I read it. I was like, "That is pretty good, actually. What about I do this way?" He's goes, "Perfect." Then it was just that simple. Then actually, there's another book, but it's unclear -- people said, who wrote it? Who illustrated it? Sam Winston and I both said, "We both did. We both wrote it. We both illustrated it." That was born out of just meeting this person, becoming friends, and realizing that all of our work, it overlapped so much. We said, "We should do a project." We started doing what we thought was an art project that then morphed into a picture book. It's been organic every single time.

Zibby: All the authors out there who would salivate for your help with illustrations can now just say, forget it, that's off the table.

Oliver: Totally. I still work in the fine art world. My schedule over the next couple years is mostly based in public sculptures and paintings. It's a strange mix. I've always laughed at authors who, they want to collaborate. It's like, yeah, that's fifteen minutes of work for you, and it's a year's work for me. It's not that straightforward.

Zibby: What is it like? Tell me where you do the drawings, what materials you use, the process of illustrating a book.

Oliver: Again, it's different book by book. My studio was in Brooklyn in New York. Although, I haven't been there in some time because we were traveling before this pandemic hit. Then we came back to Northern Ireland to be with family. What We'll Build is, that's all paint on paper. It's acrylic paint and a little bit of ink and some colored pencil on paper. Here We Are was some ink washes. That was then finished on Procreate on an iPad. The Incredible Book Eating Boy was all collage with acrylic paint. Lost and Found, How to Catch a Star, they were all watercolor. Then The Fate of Fausto, just because I wanted to make life exceptionally difficult for myself, I experimented with a completely different media, which is lithographic printing. There is no original piece of art for that, per se, because it was all made on stone and on metal plates layer by layer, color by color. Then those plates and stones were sort of destroyed in the process of making them. It was completely different. I really didn't know what was going to come out the other end of the printer.

Zibby: Have you figured out what it is about your style that is so appealing to others? Maybe that's too self-referential. Maybe that's more for me to say. Have you kind of analyzed it, like when you start a new project?

Oliver: I try not to, but I think there's a directness and a simplicity and an honesty to it where I'm just clearly enjoying myself. That's just the way that I write. That's just the way that I do a straight line. That's just the way that it will look if I do this. I'm not trying to be anybody else. I'm not trying to be something I'm not. There's maybe an integrity and a mild sophistication enough in it that I'm not trying to pander to anyone. I don't know. Eoin Colfer's son who was eighteen at the time asked me with all sincerity, he was like, "Why are your drawings so popular?" I thought about it for a second. I was like, I think that might be an insult. [laughs]

Zibby: No, that is not an insult.

Oliver: It sort of was like, they're so simple and so easy, why do people like them? I was like, I don't know.

Zibby: That's funny. Trust a child to say something like that. What advice would you have for an illustrator or an artist, a child who was like you as a child, just sketching and not wanting to stop? How do you have them not give up?

Oliver: Two things spring to mind. One, if you look at successful people, there are plenty of successful people that have all drive and little talent. There are almost no successful people who are all talent with no drive. The advice that I generally tend to give young and aspiring artists and illustrators is an Oscar Wilde quote, which is, be yourself, everybody else is already taken.

Zibby: That's a great quote. What's coming next? What are your next books that we have to look forward to?

Oliver: That's a question I don't know. I haven't been in my studio in well over a year. As I say, we were traveling from the start of last summer. We planned to take a year off to travel. It took us about five years to prepare for it. We set off end of last July. We were intending to return just at the end of the summer. Obviously, in about February or so, that all came crashing to a halt. We ended up moving somewhere that we don't normally live. I'm just trying to find a new rhythm and see what's going to happen next. I do have a book project in mind, but it's too early to say anything. If that doesn't work, frankly, I have no idea.

Zibby: Are there more Crayons books coming?

Oliver: No, the last one, The Crayons' Christmas, has come out. I think there was a Crayons' Book of Colors. There was a concept book like that. The art was made quite some time ago. I think that's already come out. That's that.

Zibby: That's it. End of the line for the Crayons. They really quit. [laughs] Thank you for coming on this show. Thanks for all the hours of great quality time that I've spent with my children because of you. Best of luck with the new book. Thank you.

Oliver: Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the kind words. Buh-bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Lauren Tarshis, I SURVIVED: THE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

Zibby Owens: Hi.

Lauren Tarshis: Hello. It's so nice to see you.

Zibby: You too.

Lauren: Look at your beautiful -- it's like a monk's chamber of books.

Zibby: Yes, it is. Maybe I should shut that door before my son comes in. We're still doing gradual back to school.

Lauren: How old is he?

Zibby: He's five. I also have a seven-year-old and two thirteen-year-olds. He does every other day. Next week, he'll go back for good. What about you? You have four kids too, right?

Lauren: We do, but they're much older. Everyone but our oldest is home. We're sort like a WeWork meets The Waltons. That's the vibe I'm trying to create. My youngest is sixteen. She's able to manage her hybrid schooling pretty independently. I'm thinking of your seven-year-old particularly.

Zibby: They're in school, though. It's crazy. They're doing Zoom in the afternoons. The mornings, at least, they get to go. It's so nice. They get to run around.

Lauren: Where are you?

Zibby: We're in New York City. We just came back.

Lauren: I have to tell you, I love your podcast so much. My book club and I often listen to you. I was so thrilled and honored when Alex told me that I would be talking to you. It was very strangely serendipitous. It had been maybe a couple days after we had just gone wild over Disappearing Earth. We listened to you because we were just fascinated.

Zibby: That was great.

Lauren: In fact, I would love to change the topic of our podcast and just talk about that. I'm sure everyone wants to hear my opinion about Disappearing Earth. [laughter] I had never had the experience -- really, that last line of that book, it physically took my breath away.

Zibby: I get it. I actually listened to that book, which I don't always do. I feel like I was so immersed in it. There's something about listening to books. I can't explain it. Hopefully, you know what I'm talking about.

Lauren: I actually like to toggle between them. It's very decadent. I'll have the hardcover of that and then listen to it, especially for that one because I read on a low level. I need a lot of support. Just having her pronounce all the names and the places, the audio helped me in that way, then going back to the book.

Zibby: What do you mean you read at a low level?

Lauren: Meaning, I was a terrible reader. It's the first thing I tell the children when I go to a school. I didn't read a book until I was fourteen. Obviously, I read fine now, but I do have trouble synthesizing information. Especially when I'm doing research, if I'm reading a real tome with a lot of dates and places and people, the audio really helps. It's quite ironic, shocking that I find myself talking to you when I flash back to my childhood self.

Zibby: I actually tried to reach out to you two years ago when I first started my podcast because my daughter had been reading your Japanese tsunami I Survived book for school. I was reading it with her. We were reading that together. I was like, "This book is amazing." She's like, "Do you think you could interview the author?" I was like, "I don't know. I'll try." I was so new to it.

Lauren: Did you come to me directly, or did you go through Scholastic?

Zibby: I think I emailed you on your website or something.

Lauren: Whoa. There was a period of time -- my reader mail is a source -- I try to answer everyone. As I'm getting older, I'm trying to let go of shame and guilt. I'm haunted by it. I expend a large amount of energy. Then still I hear from people, you never wrote me. Anyway, I'm glad you forgave me.

Zibby: At the time, I was so new to it. I didn't know to go to publicists.

Lauren: I would've leapt at the chance had I been focused.

Zibby: All to say, it's so nice to be able to talk to you. I can't believe you were saying you're sort of a slower reader because the amount of research and information and the way you create environments makes everybody feel like they actually lived through all the stories for real. I'm feel like I'm traumatized after I finish reading. [laughs] I'm like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I just survived all this stuff. It's amazing. How do you do it? First of all, how do you pick which I Survived topics? I read somewhere that you had started it for your son, Dylan. On your website you said that. Tell me about starting the whole series and how you now pick which disasters to focus on.

Lauren: Definitely, you're right. The series was inspired by both my experience as a mom of four kids, my boys, who are the older three. The middle two particularly were not interested in reading at all. I was always in that situation that so many parents are of just constantly trying to find books that would light them up -- this will be it! -- and not succeeding. At the same time, for many years, for thirty years, which is a very staggering and now increasingly shocking number, I have worked at Scholastic in the magazine division. In that role, I spend an enormous amount of time with teachers and in classrooms and with kids trying to take topics that are either not engaging inherently or far removed from the lives of our kids, if it's a story about the Civil War or a story about Korea, anything, to try to make those engaging. I found that through the magazine work that anytime I had a real child or a fictional child and put them in the middle of the story, those were the stories that their teachers wrote to me about and kids wanted to know more about. I was actually really surprised that there wasn't already a book series for that age, for that third to fifth grade level, that did that. Of course, there are wonderful narrative nonfiction books written by incredible authors like Deborah Hopkinson and Tonya Bolden and all these amazing authors. There wasn't really anything in that between Magic Tree House and Lightning Thief. There was this gap for my sons. I think the hybrid experience, for me, of being the parent and the author/educator gave me that inspiration.

You're right. They are an enormous amount of research because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, with a very fine brush stroke, create these vignettes for kids so they really know, what does it smell like inside a tornado, actually? What does it feel like to hold a cannonball? That's the fun part of the research. That does mean that it's not just a linear research path of learning about a topic. A lot of the research is ancillary. I'm going down tributaries hoping that that will unearth some incredible detail. For my California wildfires book, which is unfortunately way too timely at this moment, I was really wanting kids to understand what it was like for a firefighter in a wildfire. What are the sensory experiences that you would have if you had to deploy your fire shelter? You're interviewing people and reading very arcane firefighter blogs and trying to get as close to the sources as you can, which is easier, obviously, for contemporary topics than it would be writing about ancient Rome. That's definitely the most exciting part. Well, the most exciting part is being with kids and talking to you. [laughter] Other than that, being on that treasure hunt for the detail. There's always three or four facts in a book that I want the kids, even if it's not about the topic itself, maybe it's something -- for the California wildfires, I had this whole frame story that the characters, one of them, they run this reptile rescue, which is real thing. People give up their large pet reptiles because they can't take care of them. Then you or I would have a shelter for them, so details about having a large monitor lizard that you're taking care of. That breaks up the background information and all those facts that I really want them to absorb. It's alternating between the boring facts and these sparkling details that distract them from the fact that they're actually learning stuff.

Zibby: It's amazing. You should do this for grown-ups. It's actually just an exercise in empathy, is what you're doing. You're literally putting kids in other people's shoes. You're using it in historical context. It's really a gift. How can you imagine what life is like for someone else going through something hard? Yet you're also teaching them. I feel like the main gift is the empathy piece. It's almost like memoir for kids.

Lauren: You're inspiring me. I'm going to cling to your words. I'm going to put them in my heart and my brain. They will be there with me all day. Sometimes it feels like almost a ridiculous amount of work. Luckily, my editor and the people who I work with, they do understand. These books, looking at these little paperbacks, you'd think that they could be, especially now that I've written twenty, that they would just be so easy. They are quite torturous. When I'm about to get into that heavy deadline mode with my family, everyone's like, all right. I'll say to my husband, "I think this one's going to be easier." He's like, "Okay. You say that before every single one, but I think you're wrong. It's going to be horrible." [laughs]

Zibby: How long does it take? How long do you research? Then how long does the writing take and all of it?

Lauren: Because I have very kind and understanding, my editor, Katie, and the whole team, I have generally gotten away with writing all the way up to the very last second. They have wanted two a year up until now. That means six months for each one. It became too much for me. The minute I finished one, I would have a week. Then I would just have to completely shed Revolutionary War and plunge into World War II. Then the joy of it kind of started to go away for me, to be honest. I don't want to sound like one of those people, like, it's such a joy, all that. Look, the experience of being able to talk to you and hear you respond to this work that I've done in the way that you do, I just feel tickled by it constantly. I found myself around maybe book fifteen, sixteen, really feeling like I just couldn't keep this up. Fortunately, they had the very genius idea of creating a line of graphic novels based on I Survived. I'm a little bit involved. They were incredibly kind about, I approve things. There's this incredible author named Georgia Ball. She's a scriptwriter for graphic novels. She somehow interprets my stories in this really lyrical way. The team just does a beautiful job. I get to watch and then weigh in on the history and all of that.

That now has enabled us to create an annual schedule that leaves more breathing room. It's really six months. Researching, one of the problems now is, with COVID, I'm not able to travel. Except for Japan and the bottom of the North Atlantic to see the Titanic, I've gone everywhere for the books. I do feel like that's a super important thing. I like to take video there because I like to be able to show the kids what it would've been like for the characters and for them to walk in the character's shoes. Often, the stories then give birth to nonfiction articles that appear in the magazine Storyworks which is this beautiful labor of love that I create with a team at Scholastic. It's this ELA magazine. I'll send you Storyworks, the second-grade version which is so adorable, for your seven-year-old. The work I do on I Survived, actually, many different sprouts come from it that end up blooming in different places.

Zibby: I'm sure you have thought of this, but I bet there are a lot of people who would jump at the chance to help you do your research and speed along the process of these books. Do you feel like it's hard to outsource that?

Lauren: I would love it. The problem is, it goes back to what we talked about earlier. I've learn to create the character, for the most part, that's the first thing I do now. That's something I learned from my editor, Katie, who's only been doing the books the past three or four. She's really helped me understand that I used to discover the character during the writing and then have to go back and research to create additional experiences for my character to have these epiphanies or opportunities for growth. She was like, "That is not [indiscernible]. You have to figure out the character." It's like 101. I'm sure this is what your thirteen-year-old [indiscernible] writing the character's journey. That is something that now I do. I really try to figure that out beforehand after a little bit of research, just understanding basically the trajectory of the book. Then all of that great stuff, really, I discover it accidentally. Sometimes what I discover in research -- I spent several days just researching helicopters for the wildfire story. I learned that the ones that many of the firefighters have loved the most are these old Hueys from the Vietnam War. That's the kind of thing that a researcher -- that became the little chapter head spots, those helicopters. They led me into this whole incredible world of magazine articles and blog posts by helicopter pilots, the people who are now in Oregon. That helped me create these two characters. One particular in the book, one of the firefighters is this woman who is just very badass who's the best helicopter pilot in their Cal Fire district.

Zibby: I know the forest fires now are raging again. It's unthinkable that your book would be coming out and be this timely. I know you mentioned it. How are you, to say leveraging it sounds totally crude and commercial, but how are you getting the word out? People are really suffering right now and could probably use this experience. I feel like you should be airdropping books of them to California or something. I don't know.

Lauren: I don't know. It's a really good question. The story of that book, it had a very wonderful emotional component which is that one of the things that happens to me as the author of this series but also in my role at the magazines is that people do reach out to me directly in the aftermath of disasters. This lovely woman named Holly Fisher wrote to me four days after the town of Paradise burned down. She had grown up there. Her son, Lucas, reads my books. She just wrote me this beautiful email. "You might have heard about the fire that destroyed my town of Paradise. The fire is still burning. I think that you should come here. You'd have many people who would want to share their stories." We got in touch. There were other people who had written to me from those areas. A few months later, three of the four kids and my husband and I went to Paradise. We met Holly and her husband, Josh, who's a firefighter who helped save people in a parking lot, unbelievable. They took us around the ruins of the town. Then we went back in the summer to see how things were.

I wrote an article about it for the magazine. We created a video. I wasn't really intending to write an I Survived book about it, but a lot of the kids said to me, "Are you going to write about this?" Then I thought, I learned so much when I was there. I do think it's a very important climate story. It's a story, also, about our relationship with nature. Not all of it is climate. A huge part of it is, but it's also how we have this interesting -- I don't know if you remember the book The Big Burn. I think it was Tim Egan. He writes about, that was the biggest wildfire in American history. I think it was 1910 if I'm not mistaken. That fire in the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho and Montana, it gave rise to the whole fire suppression policy of we're going to put out every fire because it was so terrifying. It made sense, but people didn't understand how important regular fires were to forest health and preventing the overload of dead trees and brush that is fueling -- we could talk for a long time about this. I decided that it would be worthwhile to do.

I don't want to be tweeting about my wildfire book every day now that the wildfire is burning. I'm in touch with Holly every day because they're in Paradise. Their house did survive. Nothing else in their neighborhood did. She's very involved in trying to rebuild Paradise. It's tricky. I know that the people of Paradise and those towns want people to know what happened to them and to share and these people fighting the fires, all of that. I really want this to be about honoring them. I don't think it's appropriate, frankly, for someone -- even though the fire book has a very happy ending, of course, and it's a story of resilience like all of them, I keep thinking, if I was a parent in Oregon right now, would this be the book I'd want my kid reading? Maybe not. So later when they can really connect and for people elsewhere to empathize and to really want to engage and help people. In the back, there's stuff on what you can do. That is super important.

Zibby: Totally. I sat down, I tried to read it to my two little guys who, as I mentioned, are five and seven. I started reading it and they're like, "This is a fire. This is so scary." I was like, okay, I'm going to save this for my older kids. You're too young. Sorry. [laughs]

Lauren: It's true. My daughter did not read my books. She was too scared. These are books that are for certain kids who are not going to overidentify. I hear you. I don't recommend them for very young kids. I'm shocked, I'll get letters from parents like, "We just read the 9/11 book together to our kindergarten." I'm like, I don't know if...

Zibby: Have you ever thought about writing an adult version? It would have to repackaged. There are a lot of grown-ups who could benefit from learning about the wildfires right now or learning about all these scenes. A lot of grown-ups have such short attention spans now that almost -- not that reading your younger kids' books couldn't benefit them, but I just feel like parents might be reluctant to read them on their own. You have such great information and the sensibility behind them. Not that you need another project. You're overwhelmed as it is. I'm just saying it's a unique skill to be able to take something that happens in the world and make it so relatable immediately that I feel like the world could really use, even for grown-ups. That's all.

Lauren: That's definitely my favorite genre, the great narrative nonfiction writers. There's so many of them. Is it William Langewiesche? I can never pronounce his name. William Langewiesche, he writes for The Atlantic. He wrote The Looming Tower. Tim Egan, there are just so many amazing authors who are doing this. I read all of their books. I think, oh, my gosh, it would be a dream to be able to spend a couple of years. Even, there was this great book -- I'm showing my age. I have zero short-term memory anymore. It's quite a problem. Although, people seem to be fairly indulgent. There's a great book I recommend which is the kind of book I would love to write called This is Chance! Have you heard of this?

Zibby: No.

Lauren: About the Alaska earthquake. It just came out this past year. It's so wonderful. It's this 1962 earthquake that happened in Alaska right when Alaska was getting on solid ground as a state and Anchorage was growing. Just pulls in all these wonderful tangents about Alaska, about the time period, and about this woman, Genie Chance, who was the weatherwoman and brought people hope and calm in the aftermath of this completely devastating earthquake and tsunami in Alaska, so the idea of bringing to life a little-known event but also illuminating this large chapter of our history. Of course, there are all sorts of insights that are applicable to us today. Maybe I will.

Zibby: If you were going to write an I Survived about something really awful from your own life, what would that be about?

Lauren: Oh, boy. That's a great question. No one's ever asked me that. For my own life, I'm fortunate that I -- as I always tell the kids, they're always like, "Did you live through any of those disasters?" I always say, "I've seen a tornado from a distance. I've been through a bunch of hurricanes here on the East Coast. I've been in an earthquake. It was in California, but it wasn't a huge one." I've never felt that my life has been in danger because of an event like the way my characters are, but I have been through -- one of our sons had an illness that lasted a few years. He's great. Fortunately, it was not this dire thing like many people experience. The experience of your life shattering apart, which is what so many people are experiencing at this moment, whether it's because of COVID directly or because of the economic collapse or because of now these fires, that's something that I, fortunately, have not even been through. Of course, it's what we all know. I think that's what keeps me writing these stories in a lot of way. We think we have all this control.

That's what I've learned over and over, these two big lessons. We think we have a lot of control and that we can, by being really careful or planning in advance or disciplined or good, that we can forestall something, but we can't. The other piece, the flip side, which is why I keep doing it because if you only focus on that first part it gets very grim, is that I am really -- honestly, talking to Holly Fisher from Paradise, I hang up the phone with her and I just feel so stronger. People go through those shattering events and you see, whether it's looking at what happened during the Holocaust or what happened during the Chicago fire or in Paradise, people find the strength. They go through a grieving process. It's really hard. It's not quick. For some people, it's terrible and agonizing and lengthy. People, for the most part, do find the strength somehow to go on and feel joyful again.

I'm sitting here, I'm in this beautiful office of mine, it used to be my mother-in-law's apartment, which is connected to our house. She died at the age of ninety-seven a couple years ago. She lived with us for ten years. She was a survivor of World War I and a refuge. She just had a life that you cannot even -- that should be a book. My one regret is that I didn't write her story because I didn't think she wanted me to. It wasn't until the very end that it was clear that she would've liked that. She was going to write it herself. I would wake up sometimes. She was a real night owl. She would stay up until two in the morning. She lived for many years in the Jewish ghetto of Shanghai during World War II and lost people in the Holocaust and all that. I would get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water or if one of my kids needed me, and I'd hear this noise coming from here. It was her on the phone with her friend Hilda in Rome laughing, this joyful -- I would think, after all you've been through, there's still a lot of joy. I don't know how I got started on that, Zibby.

Zibby: That's a great story to share. That's what life is all about, I survived.

Lauren: What really gives me a lot of satisfaction, you can imagine, is when I hear from kids who are going through difficult things. They write to me or their parents write to me and they say that the books -- somehow, kids who've been through difficult events find they connect with my characters. It's not a trauma to read. It's not triggering them, but it's actually bolstering them in some way. I think of course, every person reacts differently. It's a constant lesson through all the research.

Zibby: That's an inspiring takeaway. It's just super inspiring, and especially now. It's what people need. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Lauren: Yes. I don't know what you think. Another time, we'll have to talk because I'm curious on your take after speaking to so many authors. I don't consider myself a Julia Phillips-like literary novelist, Alice Monroe, my heroes. I really think of myself as a storyteller who is constantly working on her craft. I do embroidery. Here's my latest embroidery sampler that I did. It's very analogous. You learn these different stiches. You practice them. You notice one. In Julia's book or in one of the Alice novels, I'll see this amazing -- look at this sentence. I'll write it down and study it. I think that writing is something that, it can be learned. People improve. Writing a few books that are bad and unpublishable is really part of that journey. That's the advice. You have to start writing your bad books and looking at those as part of the learning process.

Zibby: I have heard from so many people, and it seems to me that the magic number is three. You have to write three novels before -- the third one might sell, but the first two, you should just say -- even though you think these are going to be the great American novel, it's okay if they don't sell at the end. Most people have to write two full novels before they sell one. That's just my anecdotal [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Lauren: I think you're totally right. I also think the other piece of it is that -- maybe it's different now because the world of writing and writers has changed so much over the past twenty years. It's hard to make a living as a writer. I think the idea of taking it on and not being as obsessed with becoming a best seller, saying, this is something I want to do, this is something I'm going to do, that was sort of my -- I wrote a really terrible first novel that I sent out beautifully bound from Kinkos with a spiral and imagining the movie rights. Maybe they’ll ask me to do a cameo. It was terrible. My dad, who is a writer -- he was a freelance writer when I was growing up. He worked for magazines, very scrappy when you could make a sort of living as a freelance writer. My mom was a teacher, and that helped. My dad loved what he did. He did all nonfiction. I remember when I proudly told him I was writing this novel and that I was very stressed, I wanted to finish it -- my dad's the nicest guy in the whole world. He never says a mean word. He looked at me and he goes, "No one is waiting for your novel." [laughs] It was actually, no one cares if you finish it. So take your time and make it good. My two pieces of advice: feel great and excited about the books that you might consider bad; and then, it is an ongoing learning process. That's what makes it satisfying.

Zibby: Amazing. Lauren, our time is up because I try to keep my show to thirty minutes, but I feel like I could sit here and chat books with you all day. I hope that sometime we can get together or something.

Lauren: I would love it.

Zibby: I want to hear what your book club is reading and all the rest.

Lauren: Your work is so wonderful. I've loved listening to your podcast. I sort of feel like I know you. It's been a huge treat for me to be able to spend time with you. Yes, please stay in touch with me.

Zibby: Thank you, Lauren. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.

Lauren: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Lou Diamond Phillips, THE TINDERBOX

Lou Diamond Phillips: For somebody who doesn't have time to read books, look at all of this.

Yvonne Phillips: Hey, that's the first time I have seen the hard copy.

Zibby Owens: Here it is. I just got it, actually. It just came yesterday. Beautiful.

Yvonne: Fantastic. I haven't seen it yet.

Lou: Cool!

Zibby: Want it closer?

Lou: That is nice.

Zibby: Do you want me to send it to you? I can FedEx it to you.

Lou: That's okay. I've got an employee discount. I'll be able to get it cheaper.

Zibby: Okay. I got it free, so I'll send it to you if you want. If you change your mind, put your address in the chat or something or have your publicist get in touch. [laughs] Welcome to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I'm delighted to have you here. Thanks for coming.

Lou: Thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Zibby: Your latest book is called The Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira. Indira, correct? Yes?

Lou: Indira like Gandhi, actually, like Indira Gandhi.

Zibby: Okay, perfect. That, I know. Can you please tell listeners what this book is about and the amazing story of how the whole thing transpired which you wrote in the author's note?

Lou: The original inspiration -- my inspiration, I'm going to start there. Then we'll back up to hers. My original inspiration were her drawings. When Yvonne and I first started dating and getting to know each other, you know how it goes, she started reading a lot of my work. She started sharing with me, a lot of her art, which is amazing. In that batch of original art was a series of drawings in manga style that was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinderbox." So looking at the drawings, I go back, I read "The Tinderbox," which is a three-page, five-page fable/fairy tale. It's very short, not one of his more famous ones. It just sparked this whole idea in my head. Her drawings, to me, were very evocative of a post-apocalyptic Mad Max kind of wasteland feeling. It went from there. I told her it was a great idea for a movie. She said, run with it. I did and basically ambushed and hijacked her idea.

Zibby: Perfect. [laughs]

Lou: Yeah, and kept going back to the source material because, as I've said in other interviews, I've always been a fan of art that begets art, West Side Story from Romeo and Juliet, a book called Grendel by John Gardner that was the bad guy's point of view of Beowulf, which is really hard to understand. [laughs] I understood Beowulf a lot more after I read Grendel. Just thought, let's create this fantasy sci-fi world. It's not that sci-fi jumped out at me. It's that originally, we thought it would be a good movie. Game of Thrones hadn’t happened yet when we first started this process. I said, if we're going to make a movie and we're going to set it in this other worldly fantasy thing, let's take a nod from Star Wars and do a --

Yvonne: -- Avatar was out at the time.

Lou: Exactly, in a galaxy far, far away where we could create our own rules and have kings and queens and princesses and soldiers and what not. That was where it all started. The story's very simple. It's a soldier on a foreign planet who falls in love with a princess. It's very Romeo and Juliet in that respect.

Zibby: Amazing. Yvonne, how did you feel about what happened to the drawings after the beginning?

Yvonne: My original concept was not sci-fi or whatever in the world this is. I basically started drawing it back in the nineties because I was really into the magna comic book style. This is before the internet was available, so you couldn't google images or just go to the store. It wasn't readily available like it is now.

Zibby: I remember that time of life. I understand.

Yvonne: You'd go to the comic shop and you'd order something from a catalog and wait six to eight weeks for them to order it. I decided I was going to create my own content. I'm not a writer. I'm very familiar with fairy tales. I'm from Germany. I grew up there, a lot of Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen and all those stories that I grew up with. I took one of the lesser knowns. We know The Little Mermaid. I went, I'm going to go a little bit lesser known. I started animating a story that was already out there in the magna style. He says it's kind of post-apocalyptic. It was, but it was definitely not outer space. It was earth bound. It was still witches and princesses and maybe more Games of Thrones, fantasy, earth bound, not outer space.

Zibby: I'm sensing a little discord here. [laughs]

Yvonne: When he took the idea and said, "I'm going to write a screenplay," I basically washed my hands of it. I'm not going to animate or draw or illustrate a screenplay. That was pretty much, do whatever you want with it. Take the story. It's a cool story. Expand on it. Do what you got to do. I thought I was finished with it.

Zibby: And now here we are.

Lou: That's just it. It took on a life of its own. It really evolved. It kind of took over. People have to understand that this has been a ten-year process. The father of the hero is King [indiscernible] the 47th. The reason he's King [indiscernible] the 47th is because I was 47 when I wrote the screenplay. We write the screenplay. It's fantastic. I'm very happy with it. She's very happy with it. Then we realize this is going to be really, really expensive. Nobody is going to let me direct it and us produce it. We'd probably make a little money by selling it, but that wasn't really what we wanted to do. This started out as a project for the two of us. There was always the thought to novelize it as part of the whole world, if you will. Then Game of Thrones happens. My manager, JB Roberts, says, "Write the novel. At the very least, you've got that. Then if you sell the rights or whatever, you've created the world." I kept bouncing ideas off of Yvonne and checking in with her on plot and just an overall feel for it and went about the process of actually writing the novel and creating the world in more detail so that even if it gets bought out from under us, this is what it looks like. We've established that.

Zibby: I love how your manager is like, just go ahead and write the novel, as if that's not a big deal. There are thousands and millions of people, that's all they want to do in their whole lives, is sell the one novel.

Lou: It's interesting because it is, it's easier said than done. It took me ten years because the day job kept working out. I kept acting and getting a job. Eventually, got to the point where I could do a film or a TV show and write at the same time. It wasn't as if I could devote eight hours a day to writing like novelists who do this for a living are. I think the reason that JB recommended that is because I've written a bunch of screenplays. I've written screenplays that haven't been produced. I've written screenplays that have been produced. Whenever I've decided to write something, it gets done eventually. He knew that I would do it, that it wasn't a frivolous suggestion. It just took a while. What's interesting is that, speaking of the collaboration, I really painted her into a corner. [laughter] I stole the idea. She washed her hands of it. Then I wrote a novel. It's like, okay, illustrate this, and there's all this stuff in there that wasn't her idea. It wasn't what she imagined she would be doing.

Zibby: This is how we learn the meaning of compromise in a marriage.

Lou: And communication.

Yvonne: I think it turned out that we did compromise because I ended up going back to really old-school vintage sci-fi, more Flash Gordon, Barbarella as opposed to the high-tech sci-fi that we see in Blade Runner and that of today. I still took my fantasy world and did a big mishmash of everything else and tried a few new things that I wasn't as comfortable with and pushed the boundaries here and there for myself. I think we got a good mix. It's not necessarily sci-fi, what is expected, but it's not exactly earth bound like it is today either.

Lou: People always tell you after the fact -- I didn't set out to write a sci-fi novel, really. I didn't set out to write in any category whatsoever. I wrote the story as it came to us. Now people go, it's sci-fi.

Yvonne: It's YA.

Lou: It's YA. Is it really? Okay, great. Wonderful. My heroes are teenagers. They're nineteen and seventeen, I think, or nineteen and eighteen. I guess that makes it YA because it is very much a Romeo and Juliet story, but that wasn't the point. I didn't set out to fit into any particular genre. I think ultimately what happened with Yvonne's artwork is also a hybrid, which I think is wonderful because it certainly has that feel like the original Hans Christian Andersen drawings, but also a bit of Charles Vess and a bit of the [indiscernible] drawings from Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. There are those touches of not only that really cool retro steampunk-y kind of sci-fi, but a graphic novel sensibility as well. She had to draw creatures that I made up. She goes, [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: I'm reading the original Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland to my daughter who's seven. I was reading it and I was like, I don't know if this came across my desk if I would even cover this. [laughs] It's weird. It's a funny story. Who thinks of these things? There's less rhyme or reason in that book than probably any other book in all the different ways that it goes off. Yet it's a classic. It's amazing. There's just no science to writing. Things just take off. They become successful. There's no formula, really.

Lou: The truth of the matter is that's one of the biggest criticisms. It's too formulaic.

Zibby: Right, yes. Exactly.

Lou: If you're going to be original and you're going to do something, then you kind of have to follow your heart. Obviously, there are certain ground rules and some fundamentals when it comes to writing. You apply those. You just can't compare writers. Franzen is very different than my friend Craig Johnson or my friend Chris Bohjalian. Both of those guys are different from one another. Their styles are different. Chris Bohjalian, his style will change depending on a subject matter, which I think is just amazing. His depth and breadth of research and the worlds that he creates is wonderful. By the way, both of those guys were instrumental in us getting to the finish line with this book. I was doing the series Longmire when I really started writing it in earnest as a novel and showed Craig and his wife, Judy, the first couple of chapters. I say, "Am I wasting my time? Is this really something that, this is not for you?" They really liked it and encouraged me. Then Bohjalian and the three of us are working on a project together. He took a look at the completed novel and literally pointed us toward an agent and gave us some advice and has been a steadfast mentor in this whole process as well. It's been a lovely journey. We've acquired some great friends along the way.

Zibby: That's amazing. I love Chris. It was so nice of him to put us in touch. I was like, "How did the two of you meet?" He's like, "We met through Twitter like everyone these days." I was like, what? I thought he was going to say, we go back decades or something like that.

Lou: It's one of those, it makes no sense. If you wrote it in a book, they go, no, no, no.

Yvonne: It's funny. I was reading The Flight Attendant, I think it was. We both do a lot of reading. We're big readers.

Lou: She'll read something and then recommend it to me. It goes onto my pile.

Zibby: That great.

Yvonne: When he started reading it, he's like, "Is this guy on Twitter? I should see if this guy's on Twitter."

Lou: Because once again, I'm reading The Flight Attendant, this would make a great movie. Little late to the party. It's already a miniseries now. I'm always looking for something to do or to direct or write. Sure enough, looked him up on Twitter, there he was. Not only was he a fan, but he's a friend of John Fusco who wrote both the Young Guns films. John and I have stayed in touch over the years. It was one of those two degrees of separation. We just happened to be going to New York within a couple of weeks of contacting him. He was here. We had lunch. One thing led to another. That's how we're working on a project. We're actually in the process of adapting one of his novels, once again, for a miniseries. He wanted to take a look at some of my writing. It was like, here, can we do this together? He's just wonderful.

Zibby: That's so great. Having a mentor is so important. It's so funny because you wouldn't think -- look how accomplished you are in your professional life. Yet you need a person or two just to be like, yeah, you're doing okay. [laughs]

Lou: It's when you're trying something new.

Zibby: It's true. It's a hundred percent true.

Lou: I don't think we can assume to be a champion at everything you try. My whole career has been defined by jack of all trades kind of thing. I write. I direct. I do theater, film, TV. I've said it many times, it's all different branches of the same artistic tree. I'm a storyteller. I'm a communicator. Whatever platform or format that takes, it’s just getting down the technicalities of it.

Zibby: Yeah, which medium to choose. It's like you have all these cards in your pocket. You can just deal them out wherever you want to spread your --

Lou: -- We'll see how successful this is. The reception has been incredible so far in some of the early reviews, which have been lovely.

Zibby: You're a beautiful writer. You're really good. You really are. You never know when you open a book, what you're going to get. You're a good writer, so that’s great, as you well know. [laughs]

Lou: A lot of people automatically saw that -- first of all, they thought it was a memoir, which ain't going to happen until in ninety. I promise you that. It's unexpected. I don't think people thought that I was going to write something not only fictional, but that was in this world. I always liken it to when I did The King and I on Broadway. So many people thought, the La Bamba guy thinks he can be on Broadway? I have a degree in theater. It's my background. Even though I'm not known as a writer, I've always written. I actually set out to be a narrative writer, a prose writer, in high school. Then the acting bug bit.

Zibby: This whole acting career has really just derailed what your main goals are. I can't believe how much it's gotten in the way. [laughs]

Lou: You know what's interesting? Yvonne has done so many things in her life. We met when she was a makeup artist.

Yvonne: I obviously didn't become a graphic artist or an illustrator. I went into hair and makeup and special effects makeup, all that.

Lou: Again, very artistic.

Zibby: Did you meet on a set? How did you meet?

Lou: She gave me a haircut, got all up in my grill. [laughter] Her art, it's a gift. It's a gift. She blows my mind to this day. I've always thought, you should be doing this. I've sold so many of her ideas. Believe me, our production company, which is Frabjous Day, from the "Jabberwocky" poem, so many of the projects that we have in various stages of development are her idea.

Zibby: Look at that.

Lou: I'm riding her coattails. I think at this point in life she's not yet having an opportunity to embrace some of the things that I think she is intended to do. She's just so gifted and so smart.

Zibby: How amazing to have a partnership where both of you can reach your full creative potential. That's amazing.

Yvonne: There's a lot of support.

Zibby: I feel like this never happens the first time. I'm on my second marriage. My husband, Kyle, and I have the same synergy where the more we talk, the more ideas go flying out in different forms. I feel like I never hear that about people with their first marriages. [laughs]

Lou: Her first.

Yvonne: You know what? It's my first.

Zibby: It's your first? Okay, sorry. Then I'm wrong.

Yvonne: It's blown out of the water. There you go.

Zibby: You changed the trend for me then. That's amazing. In the book, the character obviously is a soldier. I know you have a military background in your family. Did that play into the creation of this character at all?

Lou: Both of us have a military background. It's interesting. A couple things come to mind. First of all, Hans Christian Andersen's short story starts with the soldier coming back from an unnamed war, clip clop, clip clop. That is the imagery of the book, the first image. The fact that it's an unnamed war and the fact that he's a soldier automatically, in my mind, put him in a certain age range. A lot of great war stories are from people who have just experienced this or are still in the process of defining their own manhood, if you will. I did a movie called Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, directed by the amazing Ed Zwick. This was after he had done Glory. I asked him one day, I said, "Why do you keep doing war stories?" He goes, "First of all, the bang-bang's exciting." There's the big explosions and the effects and the hardware and whatever else. He's a very well-read man, a very smart man. When you think about it, you go back to even Aristotle who set a lot of things against war. Shakespeare set a lot of things against war.

Yvonne: Conflict.

Lou: Exactly, because you have this conflict, but you also have a setting in which you can discuss the more grand aspects of human character, of courage, of nobility, of integrity, of bravery, of all of these things in what is truly a life-and-death scenario. Hans's story is fairy tale. It weaves a certain tale. There's some magic involved and some just outlandish, fantastical adventures. As a novel, to me, or even as a film, it had to be grounded in a real sense of humanity. Why are we doing this? What are we talking about? From all of that came the idea of creating this planet that's spilt in two. We have two different races of people who are fighting one another. It's sweet because Craig Johnson said it's rather prescient, which I didn't think at the time. Here we are still again discussing race, discussing peace, discussing where we're at in this incredibly unsettled world. Though it's not meant to be a message piece, there is still very much a morality tale at its spine. The Once and Future King in the King Arthur is really an anti-war statement. Having read my entire life, I thought, I can't set off on this journey and just do it for the little story. There's got to be something a little bit more to it.

Zibby: Is it going to be a movie after all that now that you've backed into it? Do you have any idea?

Yvonne: Don't know yet.

Lou: We don't know yet. It's for sale if anybody's got half a million dollars laying around. What's interesting is that in the time it's taken to write the novel, that world has changed. What used to be a one-off now could easily be a miniseries, a limited series of sorts. I don't know how many books Game of Thrones, total, was based upon, but it has created a world. Interestingly enough, a lot of the people who reviewed it early on said that they so loved this world that they would revisit it. She came up with the idea for the sequel, so I'm working on that.

Zibby: Nice. Are you writing a sequel?

Lou: Oh, yeah. Already working on it and literally bouncing it off of her daily.

Zibby: Yvonne, you're the mastermind of the whole thing.

Lou: She is the mastermind. We had a certain idea and was tooling around with that for almost a year. Then one day she came up with a different idea that was out of left field. I literally went, that's it. That's it because it's unexpected. Once again, it's about something. It's about something that's relevant. Working on that now and very excited. This time, trying not to back her into a corner with the drawings as much. [laughs]

Yvonne: But we're already there. We're there already.

Zibby: I would recommend approaching this a little differently, perhaps.

Lou: We've been butting heads a couple of times.

Zibby: Last question. Do you have any advice, I was going to say to aspiring authors, but really anyone trying to achieve things in this creative way and to be storytellers?

Yvonne: For me, it starts with creating your own content. You want to do something, do it. Whether you're trying to sell, do it for yourself first. Somehow, put it out there in the universe. Something will happen even if it's many, many years later.

Lou: That's the point. That would go toward what I have to say. I said this to young actors, and that's never quit. You will never get an opportunity if you quit.

Yvonne: Just keep doing it.

Lou: You never know what heights you're going to rise to. When I set out, I just wanted to be a working actor. I was actually a very good student in high school and what not. When I decided to major in theater, a lot of my teachers and my counselor said, "Oh, no. What are you going to fall back on?" My standard answer was, "My ass." First of all, you have to love it. You have to have a dream. Then the thing that so many people -- I hate to say this. So many people who have this sort of overnight success American Idol mentality, it takes work. Writing especially, you got to do it. Our twelve-year-old right now wants to be an author. We love that. It's like, well, are you writing? Are you doing it? Some of it is just brass tax. It literally is elbow grease. You have to put in the work. Even if you have a dream as an actor or an artist or a dancer, you have to put in the work. It's a craft. It's an art. You may be talented. God bless you if you are. If you don't have discipline and you don't have commitment, then nothing's ever going to come from it. There are certain people who get a break because they are talented or they're beautiful or they're whatever. If they have no staying power, if they have no commitment to the art, they tend to go away because, especially in today's world, the cycle is so fast that you're only flavor of the month for a month. That's how it works.

Zibby: A month is a long time these days.

Lou: A month is a long time these days in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. Just look at what happened this last week. The thing about it is that I've done this for so long as an actor. I've never given up the writing. It's because I love them both. It literally is just physically, actively going after your dream.

Zibby: I love it. Thank you both for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and chatting. Tell me again if you want me to FedEx it. I'll run down to the store. [laughter]

Lou: You read it. You hold onto it. When we get to meet in person, we'll --

Yvonne: -- We have a few phone calls to make after this.

Zibby: All right, phew. Good. Have a great day.

Lou: You too.

Yvonne: Thank you.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Yvonne: Bye.

Sophie Blackall, IF YOU COME TO EARTH

Zibby Owens: Why don't we talk about your beautiful new book which is just amazing with your characteristic beautiful illustrations and all the rest, these positive world messages and everything. Tell me a little about, what made you write this book? Why now?

Sophie Blackall: I happen to have it right here.

Zibby: Amazing.

Sophie: I know. I prepared. It's called If You Come to Earth. I have been incredibly fortunate to work with UNICEF and Save the Children and had traveled with them to various countries over the years, to Bhutan and Rwanda and Congo and India. Meeting children in all of these countries was something I think about every day. It was just an incredible privilege. On some level, it was frustrating because I couldn't talk to them for the most part. Often, they would have very little English. I ranted some French, and that's about it. Shamefully, I couldn't communicate with them. I would leave these tiny village schools on the top of a mountain where there had been maybe five or ten kids. We'd spent the day together. We'd giggle and draw pictures because that is the way that I communicate with anyone if I can't talk to them. I would leave thinking, there's so many things I want to ask you. I want to ask you about your lives. I want to ask you what you dream about, what makes you laugh. I could do as much as I could do with the drawing, but I vowed to make a book that would be for all kids in the world about all of us and the planet we share and the things that are familiar to us so that kids might see something they recognize in a book, and also the things that we don't know about each other and the things that are surprising and unfamiliar. That was the goal. I had no idea it would take so long. Essentially, it is a book about everything in the world. [laughter] Every time you put something in, you're leaving something out. It was helpful to find a narrator so I could blame the child. Well, it's this child's view of the world. Everybody has their own view. The omissions are theirs and not mine. It did take seven years. It did take a village, as most books do, but especially this one.

Zibby: Which part of the village was most helpful to you?

Sophie: Somebody asked me recently, what was the best part about making this book? I said without hesitation it was the village. People are extraordinarily helpful when you ask them questions. I'd always been a little bit shy. I would kind of avoid talking to a stranger. With this book, I talked to so many strangers because I wanted to know the people I was putting in the book. Almost everybody in the book is somebody I met or saw with my own eyes or chatted to on the subway or in Central Park or on a ferry in Bhutan, a little tiny putt putt boat, or just along the way. All of these people have cameos in this book. To me, it was putting real people in there. Even if they look like a clichéd representation of somebody, that person was real. I saw them. I spoke to them. Those people's stories are intertwined on every page of this book. To me, when I open it, it's this rich tapestry of humanity. With every interaction, I felt more grateful that I'm alive and part of that. For all our differences, and especially now, almost everybody has a smile and a story to tell you if you're open. That was a big blessing for me.

Zibby: It's true. Now that you have sort of united everybody through this book, I feel that the world is so fractured right now. I feel like this is the most divisive time I've certainly lived through, not that I'm so ancient. In recent history, I feel like it just keeps getting worse. You've been this little soldier going around the world collecting little -- more like a mail lady or something. You're getting missives from everybody and mixing it all. With that unique point of view, what can we do? How can we highlight the fact that we're all just human and we're all going through the same stuff, love and loss and what we put in our mouths for breakfast and all the same stuff? How do we make that message rise to the fore?

Sophie: There are two ways that became clear to me with this book, for me at least. It's a macro and micro kind of thing. The one is to talk to people. I think when you actually hear somebody else's story -- again, the cliché is of walking in someone else's shoes, which you can't ever really do. To hear somebody else's story makes them real to you. I always think that with curiosity comes a certain empathy if you're curious enough to ask another person instead of to make assumptions. How are you feeling? What do you feel about that? I can imagine what your response might be, but I don't know, and so I should ask you. If you're willing to tell me, then that is a gift. Then I will learn something. That goes for people who have very different political views to me. They have signs in their backyard that I vehemently disagree with. Yet they all come and help me fix a flat tire. In Congo, I met some of the most wonderful, generous, warm people who felt that being gay was a terrible sin. Two of our four kids are gay.

There are so many things like that that I think we just see things so differently, and yet there's this warmth and generosity to you. I think maybe if you met my kids you might think differently. Maybe if I listened to your stories, I might be able to see more clearly what it's like to be a farmer and how difficult that has been. That's the micro. Then I think the macro is whenever there's something global -- a pandemic is one of those things, but also a comet or an eclipse -- when we, instead of looking down at our feet or inside our own heads, we actually look out and up and realize that we are this one tiny planet in a vast, vast universe. I think about the Pale Blue Dot and Carl Sagan, I'm a big Carl Sagan fan, and him saying in that picture that was taken from Voyager 1 four billion miles from Earth, this spec, that's us. That's here. That's everyone we know, everyone we love, everyone we've never met suspended on a moat of dust in the sunbeam. That's all we are. If we can't learn to live together on this planet, there's no hope for us. Just try with the daily conversations, I think.

Zibby: Wow. You should be a Mother Teresa-type world icon, I feel like. [laughter] I mean it. We need voices like yours to drown out the other voices, honestly. This just so speaks to my beliefs in my heart and what I think is important too. You say it in such a beautiful way and literally illustrate it. It's amazing. Have you always been this, holistic's the wrong word, but globally minded and a uniting type of force? Has this been in your DNA forever? Is it something that's grown out of you in adulthood?

Sophie: I don't know. I've always been really conflict-averse. I was one of those kids, oh, no, let's not fight, have it your way. [laughs] I really think having had the opportunity to work with UNICEF and Save the Children opened the world to me in a way that I'll be forever grateful for. To walk into a village in the jungle in Congo where children had never seen anyone they didn't know before, it was extraordinary. To spend this day with them and then to walk away and think, I will remember this for the rest of my life, I don't know what you all think, but I think about those kids all the time and wonder what they're up to. I hope they're well and surviving.

Zibby: Had you always been an illustrator? Did you love to draw from a young age? Tell me about the progression of that part of your life.

Sophie: I did. I was very fortunate that my mother was a single mother, but she really worked hard to make sure we always had art supplies. Even in my case, I would go -- I lived in a country town in Australia. After school, I was allowed to walk home because that was the seventies and that's what you did. I would walk home past the butcher shop and stop in and ask them for some of the big sheets of paper that they'd roll sausages up in. They knew me. They were very kind. They'd roll up paper and give me a couple slices of baloney into the bargain. It was a fantastic deal for me. I always, always drew. My brother and I lived most of our lives up trees with books. We had a rope strung between the trees, and a basket. We would send books back and forth to each other. He was older. Really, I just wanted to read anything he was reading, The Hardy Boys and all those kinds of adventure stories and Winnie the Pooh. We were very lucky to grow up with books. So many kids don't. It's this privilege that I completely took for granted as a kid. My father is a publisher in Australia. Not only did we have books in every room of the house, but he was making books as well. I got to see that, which was thrilling to turn a story and then put it into paper and ink and bind it into this beautiful physical object. I can't imagine not having books around me. We just downsized as empty nesters from a four-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn into a cozy one bedroom which we thought was just this delightful corner building filled with light, but it is the noisiest corner in Brooklyn, so you can probably hear. Soon you'll hear a fire engine and a garbage truck.

Zibby: I'm in Manhattan. Usually, there are sirens back and forth here too. I get it. No worries. Then how did you get your start illustrating professionally?

Sophie: It was what I always wanted to do. I was one of those kids who were, yep, that's what I'm going to do. I think it was Winnie the Pooh. I would look at E.H. Shepard's drawings and trace them onto this butcher paper and break it down. How did he make those lines? How did he put so much character into those tiny sketches? Then I just set about doggedly getting to do that. I remember being sent my first manuscript and just getting goosebumps. It was a book called Ruby's Wish written by Shirin Yim Bridges. It's the true story of her grandmother who grew up in China. She was one of the first girls to go university. It fed into all of my feminist, "girls can do anything" principles. It was this wonderful story. I had just spent time in China, and so everything kind of came together. It was just thrilling. Most days, it's almost too lovely to consider that this thing that I do is work. I actually get to do this and call it work. Traveling and books and drawing and books and children, all my favorite things, and they're all combined. I'm very lucky.

Zibby: I have four kids as well. My older daughter was so excited that I was talking to you because she's read all the Ivy and Beans. We have walls of Ivy and Bean. I'm just waiting for my next kids to get interested. Of course, we've read so many of your beautiful picture books and all the rest.

Sophie: That's lovely.

Zibby: It's really rewarding to be able to hear from you. Are you remarried now? Not to keep prying into [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Sophie: We were actually going to get married this summer, but we decided we couldn't have a wedding if we couldn't hug our friends and family. We're going to try and do it again next year. We are building a retreat for children's book writers and illustrators.

Zibby: Yes, I wanted to talk to you about that. What's it called again? Wait, I wrote it down. Milkwood Farm?

Sophie: It's called Milkwood, yes, from Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. This is this great big project that we're doing. We thought we would get married there at the same time. With COVID, everything has slowed down a little bit. It will happen. In the meantime, we're building this thing that I'm thinking of more and more as a kind of ark for people to come and to be together and to eat and drink and walk and talk and draw and write and think in lovely wildflower meadows in the Catskills. I think it's going to be, I hope, some kind of sanctuary where we can stop and be quiet and then be noisy and be all the things in the same place that we haven't been able to do. To gather together I think is something that people are yearning for. I know I am.

Zibby: How do I sign up? Where's the form? Save me a bed or whatever. How is it going to work, seriously?

Sophie: We'll probably sleep ten to twelve people, so they’ll be quite intimate things. There'll be a lot of different ways that it will work. There'll be long weekends for peers to get together. That's something that we don't get to do much in the industry. We meet for conferences. We gather in grim hotel bars and begin conversations that we can never finish. I share a studio in Brooklyn with three other picture book makers, which is an everyday joy where's there's family. We have this in-built community. We've been together for years. We work together. We're invested in each other's books. We throw our ideas around and are inspired by the way each other works. Most people don't have that, I've realized. Most writers and illustrators work in relative isolation. To be able to share this kind of thing, you could come for a long weekend and get a little taste of this and be fed really well and with a wonderful bar. All those things are very important for being creative, I've found. Cocktails are very good. [laughs] Then there will be longer week-long workshops for people who are thinking about getting into publishing or writing books for children or illustrating. Then hopefully there will be industry gathering, so agents and editors and librarians and educators and then things for community groups for school visits and all those sorts of things. It's a hugely far-ranging, ambitious, organic project. We'll start slowly and see what happens.

Zibby: I love that. I have a two-book deal with Penguin Random House for children's books myself.

Sophie: Congratulations.

Zibby: I wrote one of them. Lord knows when it's coming out. Then I still have to write the second one. That doesn't make me a peer, but maybe I can sneak in on one of your long weekends.

Sophie: Absolutely.

Zibby: If you need any help with that project or support or anything, let me know because that sounds so amazing.

Sophie: Thank you. Careful what you [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: I'm serious. I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it. You're basically doing Yaddo for children's books, right?

Sophie: Yep, that's the idea.

Zibby: I love that. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors or aspiring children's book writers or illustrators or really anybody? I could just sit and listen to your advice, whatever you have to say.

Sophie: You're way too kind. I was talking to some people who have been wanting to get published for a long time. I think there's often this sense of there's this track and you have to stay on it. If you don't meet these goals by a certain time, then you're failing at that. I just don't think it should be like that at all. I think that -- I was talking -- I cannot stay on a single linear train of thought.

Zibby: That's okay. Take them all.

Sophie: I had a brain scan recently for these rotten migraines. I got a picture of the inside of my brain. It was so thrilling to see all of these wiggly lines because that's exactly how my thoughts work. I love maps. There's a map called a meander map. I don't know if you’ve ever seen these. It's the map of the course that a river takes over centuries. You can look at a meander map of the Mississippi, and it looks like the inside of a person's brain. I love that idea of the way that thoughts move and intertwine. I think that, in our daily lives, is how we get our ideas and how we should be inspired and how we should work. For me anyway, I work on twelve different things at once. While I'm working, there are different compartments of my brain that are dedicated to different things. The book that I'm close to finishing is right up front. That's almost just busywork at this point. Then the one that's waiting in the wings is a little bit behind. That's where I'm doing heavy research and going down dead ends and rabbit holes.

Then way at the back are all the books that are just bouncing around in this great cacophony of jumbled ideas and ricocheting. That's the most fun place back there because anything can happen. The advice would be just to encourage everybody to keep their ears and eyes open and to walk around thinking not, this is this one track I'm on, but I could go this way or I could go this way. There's something to be gained from all of these detours even if it's not readily evident. Down the track you will think, oh, my goodness, that note that I wrote four years ago has just suddenly crystalized into an idea, or the thing I bought at a flea market because I didn't quite know why but I couldn't walk past it that I stuck in a drawer suddenly has opened some key to something that was locked. I'm all about the scrapbooks of the brain and any excuse, really, to go to flea markets. I think that's really what I'm advocating, which is something we're not doing right now but hopefully will again.

Zibby: What are some of the twelve projects you might be working on right now? What's coming next? What can we expect?

Sophie: This was such a gargantuan thing, seven years, and really illustrating the world and thinking about -- I involved so many people in it. I'm going to show you a page now. There's a page in here of colors, how to paint all the colors in the world. It's this page. I asked the internet for color names. I had all of these paint tubes. I thought it would fun to give them names. I love going into paint stores and looking at the paint chip names. My partner, Ed, and I play a game where we pocket a bunch of the paint swatches and then we fold the names back and we have to make the other person guess which names go with which colors. It's good on car trips when you're coming back from the hardware store. The internet gave me, there were about 1,500 submissions. They were just so wonderful. One of them was "Don't get me started, Jen" for the color pink, which is brilliant, and "Vacuum bag dirt." They're so good. Right now, I'm writing to all the people two years later to thank them for their color names. This was another one, the page that's about birds. I asked people their favorite birds around the world. They all came in, and I formed a giant bird with all of them. This is front and center.

One of the other books I'm working on is a book for grown-ups. It's called Proust's Bedroom. This painting you might be able to see behind me, it's a little bit of a story. The book, Proust's Bedroom, is going to be about my favorite writers' houses which I am visiting around the world. It's been suspended for a minute. It's part memoir and part biography of these writers and little bits of travel going to all these places. It's Herman Melville and Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter and a bunch of writers. When I was eighteen, I was in Paris thinking I had discovered it, as all eighteen-year-olds do, I found myself at the Musée Carnavalet, the history of Paris museum. I'd been up all night. It was just so wonderful to wander Paris at dawn and then to arrive at this museum. I found Proust's bedroom. I had never read a word of Proust, but I thought it was just impossibly romantic. I took a snapshot which, when I got home to Australia much later, printed and put on my wall. All through college and when I moved to the States, I brought this photograph with me. It's always been on my studio wall. Then one day, I thought I'd make a painting of this bedroom because there was something monastic about this bedroom. I loved the cell-like room and then the decadent gold dragon scales sort of quilt. I made the painting.

Then a couple of years later we were in Paris around New Year's Eve with my partner Ed and our four kids. We found ourselves outside the museum. I said, "Kids, let's go and see Proust's bedroom." We went in there. My son ran ahead. We turned the corner. There it was. Except it wasn't Proust's bedroom. It was somebody else's bedroom. My eighteen-year-old self had seen the label on the wall and taken a photograph, but the label actually referred to the next bedroom which I didn't like the look of at all. It was quite dour. There was a lot of ugly furniture in it. I thought, that can't possibly be Proust's bedroom. It must be this one. I've been living under this painting and dining out on it for years. In fact, someone at the French consulate said, "I hear you did a painting of Proust's bedroom. Can we use it for the anniversary of Swann's Way?" Thankfully, I was out of the country. Otherwise, it would've been my everlasting humility and shame. They would've had to gently say, um, this is actually Paul [indiscernible]'s bedroom and not Proust's bedroom at all. That is the introduction to this book. I thought after that the least I could do would be to read Swann's Way. I've read Swann's Way now. I'm slowly working my through Remembrance of Things Past. It's an interesting sleepy read with beautiful -- have you ever read Proust?

Zibby: I did. I read Swann's Way in college.

Sophie: I think I have to read it about six times before it's maybe all in there. There are bits that made me laugh out loud. Then there were bits that I just read the same page five times and couldn't retain it at all.

Zibby: I should probably go back. That's a wonderful story. I love the yellow bedspread. Congratulations on your book release and getting it out, this book about the world out into the world. It's really exciting and I'm sure makes you feel so accomplished to have that sort of closure on such a giant project that's gone on for so long. Enjoy the success that follows. Let's stay in touch. You know, I'm not far away. I already started following the Milkwood Farm Instagram account. I'm very interested. I will be tracking the progress.

Sophie: Thank you. It's been lovely to talk to you.

Zibby: You too. Have a great day.

Sophie: Thank you. Bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Kimberly Derting & Shelli Johannes, CECE LOVES SCIENCE

Zibby Owens: Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I'm here with the authors of Cece Loves Science and Libby Loves Science, Kimberly Derting and Shelli Johannes. Welcome. Welcome to my show.

Shelli Johannes: Thank you for having us.

Zibby: You were so nice to have sent me these. My kids lined all these up on the table yesterday, all the little cards of the different characters. We had this whole game with all of them. Thanks for sending these too. Of course, we've been reading Cece Loves Science since it came out. As I mentioned to one of you -- sorry, I'm rambling here -- I literally had just seen this in the bookstore and was so excited and had read it with my son. When you reached out, I was like, this is perfect.

Shelli: That was so weird. It was just crazy.

Zibby: Tell me how the two of you came to collaborate in the first place and how you came up with the idea for the series.

Shelli: You want to go, Kim?

Kimberly Derting: Shelli and I have been critique partners for twelve years. We actually met online, of all places, back when blogging was still a big thing. We both started in young adult novels. SCBWI held a summer conference every year in LA. We were communicating via blog back and forth. One of us would post a blog. The other one would comment, back and forth like that. I think I had said I was going to go to the SCBWI summer conference. All of a sudden, I get an email from Shelli saying, "Hey, I have this really great idea. How would you feel about rooming together at this conference?" We had not met.

Shelli: That's not creepy or anything.

Kimberly: We had never met in person before. I go, "Sure." My husband says, "That's how Dateline starts." [laughter] We had kind of formed this friendship online. We met in LA and instantly formed a connection. We really liked each other. From there, we started critiquing each other's young adult novels for years. We had become instant friends. We'd talk every day on the phone, just fast friends. Fast-forward, Shelli had this idea. She says, "I have this idea. My daughter --" Tell the story, Shelli, about your daughter.

Shelli: My daughter was nine at the time and loves science. We were writing YA, so we had never written picture books at all. I went to my daughter and was like, "Are you ready for science camp this year?" She's like, "Well, I don't know if I'm ready for science camp. Science is kind of for boys." I was like, "What?" She said, "Yeah. Every club I go into, every camp I go into, it's always boys." My husband has a PhD in topography. I love science. I volunteer at the zoo. We do a lot of conservation stuff. I couldn't figure out how she got that message. It kind of scared me that someone could get a message like that outside of the house that we had not given. It was such a strong message that she was deciding not to go to camp because of that message. It scared me that someone could have that kind of voice in my child's head. I immediately got this -- this little girl came in my head and was super sassy and was like, science is not for boys. Science is fun. Science is cool. I just thought maybe I could write a Fancy Nancy for science, was kind of the initial thought.

I called Kim and told her the story and just how bothered I was. She was like, "You know, that's so weird because Abby said that too. She loves science, and she kind of got out of it during school." I said, "I'm going to write it. I'll send it to you." When Kim and I critique, we write back and forth and obviously just do little notes and overviews. For some reason, this time, I would send it to her and it would come back completely edited. I was like, "Aren't you just taking some liberty?" We were kind of kidding back and forth. I couldn't find the voice. Kim's really, really good at voice. I was like, "This is a really weird idea, maybe not as weird as going to a hotel at a CBWI, but close. Would you want to write a picture book with me?" She goes, "I would love to. I totally love this picture book. I think it's a great idea." That's how it started. We went to our agents. We're like, "We're going to write a picture book." They were like, "But you're YA authors." We're like, "Yeah, yeah, we know, but we're going to write a picture book." They were like, "But you're YA authors. You write thrillers." We're like, "Yeah, but we're going to write a picture book." We just started and studied for a really long time. That was how it got started.

Zibby: Wow. Wait, tell me more about that. What did you study? How did you learn how to do it?

Shelli: At the time, there wasn't that much online. Now Josh Funk has a great blog. We just went through articles and studied picture books and tried to map out picture books and how the arcs were for stories. Kim, do you remember if we -- there were no classes.

Kimberly: We had one friend who had just sold a picture book to Harper Collins. We went to her and said, "What format do you use?" She gave us the layout of how the spreads are. She was really helpful. We had another friend who was agenting, and she went through some picture books with us and showed us some dos and don'ts. We reached out to people we knew who were in the industry and said, "Give us some ideas of what works and what doesn't work." The internet was really helpful, but it was also helpful to make some personal connections with people and see what is working and what isn't working. There's a lot of what doesn't work. There really isn't a right way to do it because there are so many different kinds of books. One of the things we really did wrong is we didn't understand word count at all. Our first book, Cece Loves Science, is probably over the word count anyway, but our first draft was maybe three thousand words, which is humongous in picture book terms. Our agents kept going, "You need to cut. You need to cut." We had so many art notes for the illustrators. Illustrators, they want to have creative license to use their imagination, and they should because they're so good at it. They're so talented. They have so much more imagination than we possibly could ever have. We had so many notes down to what Cece should be wearing in the book. We're not illustrators. We should've cut all of that out.

Shelli: That was Robin Mellom, right?

Kimberly: Yeah. Robin Mellom is the author we had gone to to ask for help.

Shelli: Zibby, both of our agents are at the same agency. When we say our agents, we just mean one --

Kimberly: -- Our agents are friends too.

Shelli: We kind of put them together. What do we call them? [Indiscernible]. We kind of give them their Hollywood name because they both email at the same time. Then Zibby, when we talked over email, the person who ended up taking our book at Harper, Virginia Duncan at Greenwillow, her daughter had said the same thing. I think it was just that moment where our stars align and something clicks or there's some kind of connection that accidentally happens. I think she clicked with that because her daughter was the same age as my daughter at the time. Her daughter had said the exact same thing to her in recent months. She was thinking, this is obviously a problem.

Zibby: Wow, how great to identify a problem and then just go ahead and solve it. This is how we're addressing it, right now, boom, I'm done. Here's my book. It's great. Why wait for someone else when you can fix it yourself? That's fantastic. When my daughter got home from school and we had this stuff waiting, I was like, "What was your special today at school?" Now they're actually in school again, which is a miracle. She's like, "Actually, it was science." Then she held up the book. She's only seven. Maybe by starting with earlier kids it will help. Do you have a lot of people who are going to love science? Is this a whole series with fifty kids? What's your plan with the series?

Shelli: Yes, Virginia, this is a series for fifty kids. [laughter] No, we have six books. We have the ICR coming out in February for Libby, so Libby's I Can Read. The Cece I Can Read is out. Then we have Vivy Loves Science which comes out next summer. There's six books right now in the series.

Kimberly: It's three characters. The third character is Vivy. She is a little marine biologist. She'll be going down to the seashore and exploring marine life and the ocean. Each character has their little specialty. Libby's is chemistry, obviously. What we like to do is include little experiments or things that kids can do at home. It's especially timely now with parents on the frontline with educators, a lot of parents at home trying to keep their kids busy and engaged. It's nice to have those interactive things that they can do at home.

Zibby: Yes. As a mother of four, I will agree with that.

Shelli: We were thinking about starting to go out and do more virtual school visits to actually see if there was a way to see if we could do experiments over Zoom. Could we have them do the ice cream? It's very simple to do that and lead them through that process while we read the book and have it be a little bit more hands-on. I think picture books right now are a great way to supplement and have it be fun at home because it's hard right now. I've got kids at home. It is hard to keep it fun. My kids are older, but they're struggling to stay engaged, I think is the hardest thing.

Zibby: How old are your kids?

Shelli: Mine? Thirteen and sixteen.

Zibby: How about you?

Kimberly: My kids are older. They're out of the house. My youngest is nineteen. She just came back from college when COVID hit. My grandkids are six and three. My daughter is struggling with that. While my six-year-old grandson is online, I bring my three-year-old granddaughter over here. We do preschool. I'm teaching her her letters and numbers just to keep her out of my daughter's hair while -- not to say out of her hair, but to kind of keep her out of the way while she's trying to keep my grandson online on school. They're still in virtual.

Zibby: My goal now is to try to look more like you when I'm a grandmother. I would never think you had grandchildren ever. Wow, that's awesome. Fantastic. Tell me about working with the illustrator. You gave her all these notes. Then did she hate you? What was it like?

Shelli: We took them out.

Zibby: You took them all out, okay.

Shelli: Vashti did not need any art notes. She's amazing. We took them out just so that the illustrator could have creative liberty and just make Cece who she was. We love her. Joelle Murray is the new illustrator for Libby and Vivy. Vashti is so amazing. She got super booked. Virginia really wanted to have the books come out a lot faster. We actually found Joelle on Instagram. She seemed to have a similar style. She's amazing as well. We didn't give any notes. That's what's hard about picture books. There's no book that's just one author. There's all these people that play into it. Illustrators are half of that.

Kimberly: Can I just say, we have been so fortunate in illustration. Picture books take so much longer than a novel to produce because it's pairing -- our editor, she probably took a year to find the right illustrator for Cece Loves Science. She searched far and wide. When she came to us, we had a vision of who Cece was going to be. Like I said, we had a million art notes. We had stripped all those out. It's like handing your baby over to somebody and saying, now make it come to life. Vashti Harrison, if nobody knows who she is, you have to look her up. She is absolutely brilliant. When we got the first sketches, Shelli and I opened them together over Skype. I think both of us started to cry a little because Cece was almost exactly who we pictured. Vashti brought her to life so brilliantly. We just felt so blessed to work with Vashti. Then when Joelle came on board, she complimented the series so beautifully. It was just such a lovely pairing. An illustrator can make or break a book. Kids are so visual, almost more so than adults. Everybody's visual, but kids, children, you say, don't judge a book by a cover, but how do you not? Those characters can bring a story to life. We've just been so fortunate.

Shelli: We were so upset when Vashti couldn't, obviously, because we had built three books together. When Virginia said Vashti can't sign on, we were thinking, oh, my gosh, how are we going to find someone that can step into those shoes? When we started in 2015, Bold Little Leaders hadn’t come out yet. It was so new. She was so new. She grew so fast because Bold Little Leaders was so amazing. We were so nervous. Then when we found Joelle, it was exactly the same. We were just so grateful that she could step in and make it so seamless and colorful. We were really lucky. Starting in the middle of a series is really hard to find someone that can fill or even come close to filling Vashti's shoes. I think Joelle does a great job of that.

Zibby: That's great. Vashti, as you know, was on this podcast to talk about those books. She came to my book fair. Then I had her at a book club recently. She's amazing. It was so sweet when she was here. She drew a little picture of a monkey and my son's name. I don't think he knows how precious that is. I'm like, this is so amazing. You will appreciate this as you get older. I'm such a huge fan of Vashti's. You're right. Even just holding them side by side, you wouldn't even necessarily know. They certainly look complimentary, as you well know.

Shelli: The art direction, obviously, at Harper did a great job of doing that. It definitely was a nervous time to make that transition, but it's worked out really well.

Zibby: Do you already have plans, maybe you have this and I just didn't know, to do Cece Loves Science kits or kits you can buy or subscription boxes or something to bring that science-y experiment into the home even more?

Shelli: We would love that.

Kimberly: That's a great idea. Cece has been included in some subscription book boxes already, Jambo Books I think just for September. I can't remember the other one. I should know this off the top of my head. A science kit would be super fun.

Zibby: You should team up with -- I can introduce you if you want, if I can find the email. There's a company called Kiwi Crate which we subscribe to.

Shelli: I love Kiwi.

Zibby: You should do a Cece Loves Science-branded, at least, kit.

Shelli: Wouldn't that be great?

Zibby: That wouldn't even be hard. You could just include some of this stuff. That could be the craft.

Shelli: That's a great idea.

Zibby: Foodstirs also has a box, I don't know if you follow them, with fantastic baking and cooking crafts for kids. You could do the ice cream maybe in that.

Kimberly: In the Libby Love Science: I Can Read is mix and measure. It's baking. That would be super fun.

Zibby: I know. It's very similar. Anyway, that's your assignment for today. [laughs]

Kimberly: Thank you.

Shelli: [Indiscernible] hours on Skype coming up with assignments for ourselves and talking assignments and talking about the future and where it could go.

Zibby: I feel like this is such a natural thing. Those boxes already exist. I know we rip open our boxes because we're so in need of stuff. Instead of having to scrounge for materials, it's all right there.

Shelli: That's a great idea. I hadn’t even thought about the subscription boxes, going to them ourselves.

Kimberly: The boxes are so fun, though. I'm a subscription box junkie.

Shelli: I am too.

Kimberly: I love the book boxes. I get the FabFitFun box.

Shelli: I love FabFitFun.

Zibby: I don't have that box. Maybe I have to check it out. Is that a fitness one?

Shelli: It's fab, fit, and fun. You get some kind of beauty supply. Then you get some kind of health thing. Then you get some kind of fun thing. It comes four times a year. I get mine and my daughter's like, "Can I look at it with you?" I'm like, "No, this is my box. I have my own box. It's a mom box." Bubble baths and whatever comes for that season.

Zibby: I do Book of the Month. Then I also do -- I know we're totally off topic. I get the LOL box for my kids. It's this huge craze. All they do is unbox and unwrap stuff. It's basically like all we do is clean up packaging. They think it's so fun, so whatever.

Shelli: Whatever works, right?

Zibby: They're like, "Did you order us this present?" I'm like, "I think this is the box I ordered. I don't know." [laughs]

Shelli: Which box is it?

Zibby: Which box is it? I know. I can't even keep track. Anyway, that would, I feel like, be such a natural. I'm sure there's so many other brand extensions. It's just an approachable -- I feel like there are other companies and things trying to get kids, and girls especially, to enjoy science. I feel like this is so important. Your brand is so playful and fun and young and targeted that it would be really easy.

Shelli: I think a lot of kids start to think science is a subject in school. Once kids get to middle school and it becomes like, you're going to science now and then you're going to social studies, you're going to ELA, then somehow the fun of science I think gets lost that they have in elementary school. That's what we always think about. What would be something fun that kids could do at home? Science is everywhere. It's not just a subject in school. How do we keep kids off of that track that it's just a subject that you're supposed to get an A in? It's everywhere. It's outside. When I do some of my talks at schools, at the end I'll have people raise their hand. I'll say, "Who loves science?" They're like -- [laughter]. I'm like, "It's okay. You don't have to love science. Just raise your hand if you love science. Keep your hand down if you don't." Then I'll say, "Who loves baking?" Then people will raise their hand. I'll say, "Who loves being outside in nature?" They're raise their hand. Then I'll just go down the list. There'll always be a few kids that are just like, that's not for me, you haven't listed anything yet. Then of course I say, "Who loves computers?" They're like, "[gasp]." Everyone raises their hand. They start screaming. I'm like, "That's computer science." They're like, "What?" It's so cute. They just don't think of those things as science.

Zibby: I feel like science as a word, we need to rename it or something. I mean, not now because you have the books and everything. [laughter] It has a negative connotation, which it shouldn't. It's not even representative of all the stuff. If you said Cece loves experimenting, everyone would be like, totally, of course she does. She loves potions and magic.

Kimberly: Asking questions. I feel like just the whole idea of keeping kids curious, asking questions, getting out there and exploring is kind of the whole thing. Don't squash their curiosity.

Zibby: That's all kids do. Why? Why? Why? So what's going on in your other writing lives? Are you still doing YA? Have you stopped the other types of writing? How are you integrating this with the rest of your professional lives?

Kimberly: It's interrupted it a little bit, but we're both still writing. We both have projects in the works, nothing announce-able. We definitely are both writing. I think COVID has been the biggest hiccup. If anything, you would think that would give you more writing time, but it's definitely been a creativity damper for me. I'll speak for me personally. I know probably some people found it easier to hunker down at home and find time to write. For me, it's actually been the opposite. I've found that it's kind of taken away my creativity a little bit. Now I'm finding it again. The picture books are actually kind of nice. Shelli and I have other picture books in the works. We found that writing together, this team thing, works really well for us. Shelli has other individual picture books. Our team one, we have another one coming out in 2020. Wait, this is 2020.

Shelli: 2022.

Kimberly: 2022, it sounds forever away.

Shelli: I have a couple. I'm kind of an overachiever. With COVID, for me, it helped me focus because I wasn't going to soccer. I feel bad because my husband built this super cute she-shed for me. It's just amazing. I actually have two picture books coming out next year. I kind of moved away from YA and was just like, I love picture books. Kim and I do the STEM picture books. I've got Thesaurus, which is a dinosaur who loved words. That's coming out with Penguin. You have a book coming out with Penguin, right?

Zibby: Flamingo is the new imprint under Penguin Random House, so it's going to be through that.

Shelli: I love that emblem, the logo. I think it's so cute.

Zibby: Yeah, so cute.

Shelli: Then I have Shine Like a Unicorn which is coming out with Harper that is a how-to book. How do you stand out? How do you be a unicorn in a herd of horses? is kind of the tagline. I went down the picture book a little bit more. I'm working on a YA now. It's nice to get back. I've actually found that since I don't have anywhere to be with my kids, it's given me that space. I'm not driving all the time. I'm not in my car all the time. I'm not sitting at soccer fields, which is sad, but it definitely has given me time to focus.

Zibby: Is it sad, though? [laughter] I don't know. Do I miss sitting there, hockey or baseball and ice skating? I'm pretty happy here at my desk.

Shelli: I just feel like it gives you more space to be creative. Before, I felt like I was trying to squeeze it in. I also do marketing. I'm a copywriter on the side. I do freelance. I feel like I was always trying to squeeze my writing in between writing picture books and writing YA and being with the kids and doing that and being with the husband and cooking dinner. Now everybody's just here. I have no place to go. Instacart's taking care of me.

Kimberly: Except your fancy she-shed.

Shelli: My she-shed gets me away from the house, which is nice to have my own space.

Zibby: I totally agree, by the way. Not having to race around and get people to assorted things has been completely freeing for me.

Shelli: Maybe it's because I have ADHD and I'm scattered. Maybe that is just too much scatter for me.

Zibby: I think it's too much scatter for most of us. It was a lot. Now that we've slowed down, I'm like, oh, what was I doing? How did I even do that? Anyway, what parting advice would you guys have for aspiring picture book writers, or writers at all?

Shelli: I will tell you that I watched your podcast with Greer and Sarah. Kim and I would like to take them on in a battle of the coauthors. I was listening to their podcast. They were like, "No other writer writes like us. We're on Skype all the time. We feel like our relationship's different." I was thinking, no, it's not. We get on Skype every day. We talk every day, all day. In my head, I was a little bit competitive. I was thinking, I think we could take them. Maybe we know more about them than they know about us. That's a challenge.

Zibby: I am going to find a way to pitch that as a TV show, Battle of the Coauthors or Author Battle or something. You guys will be the first contestants.

Shelli: Instead of the newlyweds, it'll be The Authors That Know Each Other the Best. That would be my advice, though. I think when you do do a coauthor, the relationship has to be -- you have to have trust first because you do have conflict. You do come across things that you are not expecting to come across. That is the first thing Kim and I made a pact from the very beginning. You are for me. I am for you. We are a team. No one else matters. We have to be with it first. If you don't like something, I don't want to like it. We both have to love it and move forward. No matter what, it's you and I against the world.

Kimberly: Right, the friendship always comes first with the coauthoring.

Shelli: You have to really trust each other.

Kimberly: It doesn't mean [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Shelli: Oh, yeah, we have our own challenges. I would say that's the biggest. We are on the phone pretty much every day for hours. My daughter came out the other day and started talking. I said, "I'm on the phone." She goes, "Yeah, but is it just Kim?" I said, "We're working." She goes, "It doesn't sound like you're working." I'm like, "We work and we play at the same time." We get a lot of work done. We just have to catch up a little bit. Kim was like, "Just Kim, that's great." [laughter] What do you think, Kim, for advice?

Kimberly: For picture book authors in general, I think the best thing you can do is join a great organization like SCBWI. Get involved with meeting other authors. If you're an illustrator, meet other illustrators. Get involved with the organizations out there in your area. Right now, you can't actually do it in person. They have so many great virtual events. Find out what resources are available. Like I said, Shelli and I had to go out and scour the internet. Meeting, actually talking to other authors who are in the industry was more helpful even than the stuff we found online.

Shelli: I think writing picture books is hard. It is harder, I find, than it is for YA. Not saying that anyone doesn't work as hard as a picture book author, but getting a story and a character in eight hundred words, six hundred words, enough to where people can connect to the character, enough to where you know what's going on, it's hard. We really struggle trying to pare back our words. I think really making sure that your characters have clear arcs. Just because they're picture books, they still have to have a clear arc, clear story, personality, voice. That's hard to do in six hundred words.

Zibby: Agree. Right before you, I interviewed Sophie Blackall, the author/illustrator. She's starting, you should know, a retreat for children's book authors and illustrators, like a Yaddo for children's books, basically. I can't find the little sticky here, but it's called something-farm, Wilford -- Milkwood. Milkwood Farm.

Shelli: It sounds like a picture book.

Zibby: Right? It does. She's Australian. Anyway, check it out. She has a new Instagram for it. It would be really neat to go. I was like, when is this opening? Can I go on a retreat right now? Anyway, thank you, ladies, so much. This was so fun. I'm so thankful for all the little fun cards and books and everything. Your books are just fantastic. Thank you.

Shelli: It made me so happy when you said you'd already gotten Libby Loves Science. I thought, oh, that's great. Libby's been hard because it's been over COVID.

Zibby: It jumped right out to me. It had great placement. I was at a bookstore. It was front and center. Idiotically, I didn't even realize it was related to Cece Loves Science when I got it. I was like, oh, Libby. I was taking this with my son. I was like, "Look, it's kind of like Zibby Loves Science." It's the closest title of a book to my name ever.

Shelli: You know what's funny? When I was signing it to you, I got all nervous. Then I looked down and I had written "To Libby" because I flipped Libby/Zibby. Then I put it aside and had to make another one. I was like, oh, Zibby would be a cute name. I wonder if that would be weird. [laughs]

Zibby: No, that'd be great. I was so excited. Even this is -- I feel like I'm famous, so thank you. [laughs] All right, have a great day, guys.

Kimberly: Thank you so much for having us.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Jamie Lee Curtis, LETTERS FROM CAMP

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Jamie. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." This is such a treat.

Jamie Lee Curtis: Apparently, you do because there are a lot of books behind you. There are a lot of rainbow-organized books behind you.

Zibby: Yes. I try to make time and share what I can read with other people who might not have as much.

Jamie: I understand. This is how we do it. We share with other people.

Zibby: You have contributed so much in so many different areas in the artistic world. Your latest endeavor is Letters from Camp, an Audible Original which came out this summer. I wanted to talk a little bit first about that. Tell me how the idea for an Audible Original came about and particularly this show.

Jamie: It's funny. It's such a wonderful story that the show was born from such a beautiful moment. I am the proud godmother of three New York-raised children. My friend Lisa Birnbach lives in New York. Her three children obviously live there with her and were educated in New York. I'm the godmother of all of them. My middle godchild, Boco, wrote me a letter from camp when she was twelve years old which she never sent. She wrote it and then put it in her shoebox of cards and then obviously didn't send it, had my name written on the outside of the envelope. In November of last year, I got a letter in the mail from Lisa. Inside that letter was the letter from Boco, unopened. I opened it up. It was a letter from a twelve-year-old saying, "Dear Godmother Jamie, I made a mistake. I got into trouble. I wish you were here because you would know what to do." I immediately called Boco who's twenty-six years old and a comedy writer here in Los Angeles. I said, "Boco, I got your letter from when you were twelve. It's fantastic. There's a TV show here." Originally, we were going to do it as a TV show. As we started talking about it, we found out that the Audible idea, doing a scripted podcast with characters and sound effects just like old radio plays -- they call it TV for your ears. It feels like a TV show, but it's Audible. They bought it and loved it. We made it this summer during COVID. Everybody was remote. It was written in about a month. Then we performed it. Then it was out August 4th. Crazy.

Zibby: Wow, that's the way to do it.

Jamie: It's a new world for me, the Audible world. Audible as a company has been fantastic as a partner to really understand that there are people who want content, who want things. This was just a wonderful -- it's super funny. It's charming. They have been fantastic partners, Audible, in the creation of it. The whole world of Audible, I didn't know about it. It's just been so fun. We had such a great cast. It's got songs in it that are like earworms that get in your head and then you can't get it out of your head. It's just been an absolute joy, crazy experience, and super fun.

Zibby: Amazing. When I was listening to the introductory theme song -- I spent many years at sleepaway camp. It just took me back to all that time on the bus and singing the camp songs and all the rest. Were you a sleepaway camp girl yourself?

Jamie: I was. As you can maybe tell, I like to compartmentalize. I like things to all work well. For me, trunks at camp were like your own fiefdom. I know some kids hated the idea of a trunk. They had to keep it clean. Everything was all messy. I loved it. I loved that you could roll your T-shirts and line them up. I loved the little soapbox. Remember there was a plastic soapbox?

Zibby: Yes. [laughs]

Jamie: I loved every aspect of camp. I loved lanyards. I loved the group activities. This show just spoke to my heart and made me remember how wonderful that experience is for people. Honestly, if people have the opportunity to go to camp, I think anybody who had that opportunity -- obviously, not everyone had that opportunity. The privileged people that were able to go to camp have that nostalgic feeling of creating a new version of yourself and learning who you are. I think that's the great benefit of camp.

Zibby: It's so true. Actually, my son is very into how his room looks. Now he's growing up. He's five. He's like, "I don't want to have a stepstool as my side table." [laughs] Literally yesterday, I was like, "You know what? I think I'm going to get you an old-fashioned camp trunk. I could put it here. You could store all your little treasures." Anyway, trunks have been on my mind.

Jamie: I'm sorry. You just said something about, your son is very specific about the way his room looks. I might ask you turn over your left shoulder and look at your bookcase.

Zibby: [laughs] I know. I see where it comes from. He's my only one of four who actually cares. There you go. Who knew? The fourth time. Letters from Camp is absolutely fantastic and a total throwback and fabulous to listen to. I also wanted to talk about your over a dozen children's books because I've been reading them with my kids. The oldest are thirteen. I've been reading them for years. I'm so impressed with the output and the content and the cleverness and the way you make different concepts from self-esteem to the alphabet to everything and being brave and all of it accessible and fun. Tell me about how you started writing children's books.

Jamie: Thank you, by the way. They are my best thing. They will be the best contribution I make to the universe besides raising my kids, for sure. I never thought I'd write a book. I barely got out of school. I am a well-educated uneducated woman. I spell so poorly. I count on my fingers. I did not receive schooling at all. It's a miracle that I survived my youth. I never thought I'd write a book. My four-year-old daughter walked into my office one day, apropos of nothing. I was sitting at a desk. She was down the hall. She came marching into my room. I remember she stood there and was delicious in her four-year-old-ness. She went, "When I was little, I wore diapers, but now I use a potty." Then she marched out of the room. I thought, oh, my goodness, that's amazing. I wrote down on a piece of paper in front of me, "When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth," which just made me laugh because she was talking about when she was little the way I talk about when I had long hair and wore it in a shag or when I wore bell bottoms. The good old days that I remember fondly, she was reminiscing about because she had a past even though I only looked at her having a future. She was so little. I never thought that she would look back. I only thought she would look forward.

When you have small children, you're only looking forward. School, shoes, clothes, food, school, clothes, shoes, food. You're only looking forward. Where are they going to go to grade school, high school, college? In the writing of that, I wrote down a list of things that she couldn't do and now she can do. I found that at the end of the list -- I wrote three things, and I started to cry. I realized it was a book. It was the last thing I thought I would do. All of a sudden, I was moved by it. I realized it was a book about self-discovery, about self-ownership. I realized it was a book for children. I sold it that day. I sent it via fax. Faxes were new then. That's how old I am. I remember sending it in curly-q paper to an agent in New York who was my mother-in-law's best friend. She sent it to HarperCollins, which was actually Harper Row back then. They bought it. Joanna Cotler, who was the head of children's books, bought the book. That began my career as an author. I had had a book that my daughter Annie loved, we loved, the way parents and children love books, called Annie Bananie. It was written by Leah Komaiko. It was illustrated by Laura Cornell. I said to Harper Row who had published Annie Bananie, "I would like Laura Cornell to draw the pictures." She and I have been partners since then for thirteen, fourteen books.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing.

Jamie: Last thing in the world I thought I'd do. Last thing in the world. I don't write them. They come to me. I wait for them. Then they pop into my head almost fully formed. I can barely get them down on the paper. That's how fast they come.

Zibby: Wow. Your most recent one, Me, Myselfie, & I, that was hilarious, the mom outside taking the selfies in the snow and all that.

Jamie: Obviously as I get older and the children get older, I'm no longer seeing the world from a young child's perspective. I'm seeing it from our perspective of how we relate to young people and the poison of social media and our self-obsession and our self-altering nature. Even here, I'm sitting here, I have a light over here. I have a light over here. If I didn't have those lights, it wouldn't be at all good. I will tell the truth on myself. I do it too. I don't alter photographs. I don't throw up a hundred filters and all of a sudden try to look like I'm not sixty-one years old. I think it's a poison. It was my way of talking about it. I knew if I had made it about kids doing it, nobody would've liked it because they would've felt that I was making a social statement about them. I think they would've been like, well, F off, just go away. Whereas by turning it on the mom, making the mom the one who's obsessed by it, who can't stop looking at herself -- the faces we make, it's crazy. It really was my think piece about self-obsession and the opposite of that, which is selflessness, which is what the world needs way more of. It was a little bit of a think piece.

Zibby: Love it. Speaking of the selflessness, tell me more about My Hands in Yours, which is your latest endeavor which, as you know, I just got very excited about myself.

Jamie: It's very sweet of you to support it. I am sixty-one years old. I am at that point in my life where my motto now is, if not now, when? If not me, who? What am I not doing to create love in the universe? How selfish is my life? I have always supported Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. For years, if you went through a bad thing or if a friend of mine went through a bad thing, I would either buy a little gift and I would send it. I'm a gift-giver. I like gifting. I would write on a card, "I'm so sorry to hear about your mother. I hope she recovers. Remember through it all, my hand in yours," is what I would say. It was a phrase that I put those four words together to say, I'm not with you, but imagine what it would feel like if you felt my hand in yours. That's what I want you to feel when I'm not there with you. I've been saying that for a long time. I've been collecting small sculptures by this artist named Anne Ricketts who makes little tiny beautiful feet that I love to send people and say, remember to be where your feet are. Meaning, get out of your head. Be right where you are in the moment. I've been buying and supporting Anne Ricketts for a long time.

I had this thought. What if we made a sculpture of two hands holding -- I don't know if you can see it. Here, let me get some light on it. Oh, my, look at me with my lighting skills. [laughter] It could fit in your palm. You could hold it like this. It would be two hands holding. I went to Anne and asked her if I could commission her to make them. I explained to her that I was going to donate a hundred percent of the sales to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, which is an organization I've worked with. I was going to call it My Hand in Yours. I was going to create a marketplace for comfort items for people during times of crisis. This was last year when I thought I would start this project. I thought maybe it would be like an Instagram store or something. I didn't really know. Then the universe changed. COVID hit. All of a sudden, the need for contact with other people, the need to be able to send someone a gift and say, I am with you during this incredibly hard time, presented itself, and so I started a company. I never thought I'd start a company. I underwrote the company so that a hundred percent of the profits -- that means that Anne Ricketts donates all of her time, all of her artistry, all of her sculpting time, all of the preparation. Then they get sent to a foundry where they're produced. Then she makes sure that each one is perfect, polishes each one, bags each one.

All of that is done for free so that I can sell them and a hundred percent of that sale goes to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Everybody that has participated, Anne Ricketts -- my friend Cathy Waterman has created this fantastic hand charm. I don't know if you can see it. I will tell you, from product testing, I have reached up and grabbed that hand. There's something so tactile about holding this pendant as I go through my day. Cathy created that. That's on the website. I have now expanded the website. There are now medallions that you can buy. I wanted to make sure that there were things with different price points. The medallion is twelve dollars. For twelve dollars, you can have it sent to a loved one with a note from you. The money goes to Children’s Hospital. Then the sculptures, obviously, are more money, the pendant, blankets. Soon we're going to have candles. We're going to have beautiful objects. It's objects of comfort in times of crisis. A hundred percent goes to Children’s Hospital. All of a sudden, I have a store. I ship. I'm doing shipping every day. It's hilarious because I'm not that person, but yet I've become that person.

Zibby: I'll look for you at UPS.

Jamie: You will be receiving it at UPS or USPS. It depends what method you choose, or FedEx. You can choose all of the methodology to getting it to you.

Zibby: You might want to add some pictures of the scale of it, I was on the website earlier, like show it on a person.

Jamie: You mean of the pendant?

Zibby: Just to show how big or small they are. Maybe I did it in too much of a hurry. I didn't notice somebody wearing it. Anyway, I can check.

Jamie: I will do so. That's such a good idea. I will get on it. Let me get my people on it.

Zibby: You go. You do that. [laughs] Why did you pick Children's Hospital Los Angeles? Do you have a personal connection? Did something happen? Did you use it? Do you just think it's a great thing?

Jamie: I have been a supporter of Children's Hospitals throughout the country for a long time. It started when I was making a movie in Pontiac, Illinois. There was a charity put on by the town of Pontiac for a young woman named Lori Tull who was the very first successful heart transplant recipient as a child. She was thirteen years old. It was experimental surgery. The insurance company was not going to pay for it. The town of Pontiac put on a benefit. The movie I was making, we joined the benefit. She and I became friends. When she passed away at nineteen, I made a big donation to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, which was a fantastic institution at the front of that type of surgery, Dr. Starzl. Thomas Starzl is/was really a pioneer in transplant surgery. I worked with them for years. Then when I came back home every time, it felt weird that I would go to Pittsburgh and work on behalf of people in Illinois when in fact I live in California and I have one of the greatest institutions in Los Angeles. I literally just cold-called them one day and said, "Look, I'm doing this work for other places. I would like to start to support Children's Hospital Los Angeles." Then it ended up that they were doing bond initiatives to raise money, hospital bonds. I became the spokesperson and started doing the commercials for them. Then I've been involved with them since. They're just a fantastic organization. It's my hometown, born and raised here in the City of Angels. It was important to me that I give back to them. They get all of my support.

Zibby: I can just imagine the person who picked up the phone that day who was like, "Um, yeah, that’ll work that. We'll take that donation. Sure, get involved. Why not?" [laughs]

Jamie: For anybody watching this, you don't have to do big gestures. One the proudest things that ever happened in my life is that one of my best girlfriends, because of my involvement at Children's Hospital, decided to volunteer as a cuddler. A cuddler is for all of the premature babies who are in the NICU who do not have their parents or mother or father or grandparents with them. Volunteers are trained and then vetted. Then you go in and literally sit in a chair and they bring you these babies. You rock them and hold them and sing to them. One of my best girlfriends made that her commitment to Children's Hospital, no fanfare, no big TV ads, but hours and hours and hours of her day where she would hold these little babies. That's what I'm saying. To people watching and listening, we have to do something. We have to. As human beings, we are not here to look at ourselves on our phones. That is not the reason we're here. We're here to manifest our destiny as human beings and create a loving connection in the universe. That's why we're here. That's just why we're here. Whatever it is, you can do something.

This is a time in our nation, in the world, where we all have to be doing something. I don't care what it is. Look at what Bette Midler has done in New York City. Look at what Bette Midler has done with her parks projects, reclaiming these old disheveled pieces of property and turned them into local urban gardens and meeting places and transformed the city. That's just one person going, you know what, I'm going to do that, and all the volunteers and all the people that joined her. That's what we can do. I hope that's what we teach our children to do because if we're not teaching them that, it's over. Then it's just anarchy. Then the world will blow up. I do believe that you can make a huge, huge difference in the lives of other people by suiting and showing up and trying to help people. If anybody takes away anything from this besides I do a lot of hand motions, then that would be a good thing. [laughter]

Zibby: This could actually be part of your My Hand In Yours.

Jamie: I'm going to tell you a quick little story. I've been texting with a person about the picture on the chain. Let me just finish that. This is what we call multitasking.

Zibby: I love it. I make a suggestion, it gets implemented during the podcast.

Jamie: Immediately. It should be up on the website before we're done. Here's a funny thing. When I was doing Activia yogurt commercials for a very long time, there were hand gestures that we had to use to demonstrate what the product was helping to achieve. I literally had training to learn how to go like this, where you go like this. It's truth in advertising. Again, it's not a laxative. It's a probiotic, but it's supposed to help you poop better. I had the training where I did this, but then there was all sorts of kerfuffling about what does this really mean? If you go back and look at those commercials -- which I loved doing, by the way. The fun part of it was actually meeting people. The second wave of the hand gesture was, we couldn't do this anymore, so we had to talk about how it made you feel better. The new gesture was this. [laughter] It was like, when you take this product, you feel lighter and better. I had training in that too. There is a commercial where I'm walking along talking, talking, talking, and then I go like this. Anyway, hand gestures.

Zibby: Behind the scenes of the yogurt. Who knew? My daughter would not forgive me if I didn't ask you at least one question about Freaky Friday, which is her favorite movie. I just have to ask something. I don't even have a question. How was it filming that movie? Are you going to be doing any more movies, or are you now firmly in the children's book, might come again, we might do another Audible Original? What's coming next? That was a lot of questions.

Jamie: That was like twenty-five questions in one.

Zibby: Sorry about that. Pick one.

Jamie: It's all right. Watch this weave of answers.

Zibby: I'm ready. [laughs]

Jamie: I'd still make movies. I just had a Halloween movie. I was in that movie Knives Out last year. We have another Halloween movie to shot. I may go off and make another movie. Yes, I'm in the movie business. I'm in the TV business as I have, now, a company that is trying to produce our own work, part of which is the Letters from Camp podcast, which I believe, fingers crossed, that we will make more of. It was always conceived as a three-summer show. We wanted to avoid teenagers because mean girls are --

Zibby: -- Don't we all?

Jamie: Yes, we want to avoid teenagers, so we wanted to set a show in the summer of Mookie Hooper's twelfth, thirteen, and fourteenth year. We're hoping that that happens. Lastly, I loved Freaky Friday. It was a surprise for me. I was in the middle of a book tour. I had a fifteen-year-old daughter of my own and a five-year-old son. An actress pulled out of the movie. I stepped on a moving train, honestly. In three days, I was now pretending to be fifteen and fifty all at the same time. It was fantastic. I think the reason why it's so good and why it was such a pleasure for me is that I had zero time to prepare for it, zero. On a scale of zero to a hundred, zero, honestly. Three days later, I was shooting. Because of that, I had to just go, okay, whatever, how old am I? Just immediately release my ego and be fifteen. I was living with a fifteen-year-old. I knew many fifteen-year-olds, and so it was very easy for me to do. I think if I'd had a lot of time, I might have gotten very self-conscious about it. In that sense, it was the freest I've ever been in my life. Just was like, okay, what am I doing today? Okay. Because of that, I think it was so successful. I was having the time of my life.

Zibby: Amazing. I love that. You can tell. It's so fun. It was amazing.

Jamie: Because of that movie, I will actually have put into the world of parenting, a phrase that I ad-libbed, which is not my skill. I am not an improvisor. I did improvise because I was living with a fifteen-year-old of my own, shooting at the Palisades High School. My first day of work was at Pali High very near from where I live. When the mom drops her daughter off and the daughter gets out of the car and the mom leans out the window and says "Make good choices" out loud while all of the kids are around her, it may be my proudest moment. It certainly is going to be my legacy from that movie. "Make good choices" will outlive me, I think.

Zibby: If I were going to make a title for this podcast, that would be it. That's all of what you've talked about, in life, in literature, in Audibles, and everything, giving back. It's all about that.

Jamie: It's also about, life is for living. We are here such a short time. The older you get, the time gets shorter. It's time to really focus on making your moment count, whatever it is, be it planting a seed in one of those gardens, be it holding one of those babies at Children's Hospital where nobody is going to be -- it's not a glitzy gig. You're not going to get a bunch of kudos. You're going to feel it inside you. The more I'm a public figure, the more I understand that all of the outside attention, and I get a lot of attention, means honestly nothing. Self-esteem comes doing esteem-able things. That's why it happens. You don't get self-esteem because you get a million followers on Instagram. You get self-esteem because you buy groceries for your elderly neighbor and you don't even tell them it's you. You leave them a beautiful planted dahlia on your neighbor's porch without a note. That's how you get self-esteem. You get it from doing things for other human beings. I hope that we can all live that way until we're not here anymore. That's actually my raison d'être, my reason for doing it all. It's all boiled down to that. I'm really happy to meet you. I hope next time you're in California, you'll let me know. We'll social distance walk or something.

Zibby: I would love that. That sounds great.

Jamie: Cool. Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Of course. Thanks for joining me.

Jamie: Of course. Thank you.

Zibby: I won't tell your neighbor about the dahlias. I'll keep it our little secret.  

Jamie: Perfect. Thanks, everybody. Be well. stay safe. Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Cat Deeley, THE JOY IN YOU

Cat Deeley: Yay! I did it. Hello.

Zibby Owens: Hi. How's it going?

Cat: Really good. How are you doing?

Zibby: I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for doing this podcast with me.

Cat: Oh, my god, you're more than welcome. Are those all your books?

Zibby: Yes. Well, these are part of my books. They go all the way up and over. I have more in the closet.

Cat: You've color coded them.

Zibby: Yes, I have.

Cat: That's very, very, very organized. I'm slightly jealous of your organizational skills.

Zibby: I must say, I didn't do it all myself. My husband and his business partner and his girlfriend, they were here for July 4th weekend. I was in the process of redoing the whole thing. They're like, let's all do it together. Everybody was here picking up books. It was a team effort.

Cat: I hope you served margaritas or something like that or did something to get it done faster.

Zibby: We did. We had a proper celebration, so not to worry.

Cat: Good. [laughter] How are you doing?

Zibby: Good. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Your children's book is so precious. I love it. The Joy in You, it is so adorable and heartfelt, oh, my gosh. Congratulations on the children's book.

Cat: It was always an ambition of mine to write a book. I loved English literature at school. I had the most amazing teacher. If I had gone to university and life hadn’t taken the turns that it did, I probably would've studied English literature at university. It was always something that was in the back of my mind. I'd love to write more, actually. I have two sons, Milo and James; Milo, who's four; James, who is two. Like any other mom, by the time it reaches the end of the day, I am frazzled, worn out, tired, completely inarticulate. I can't really string a sentence together. I know what I want to say, but I can't actually get it out. The idea behind the book was if I could say everything that I wanted to say to them in the most eloquent way possible, so have all the thoughts and feelings and emotions and ideas [indiscernible] and then top and tail it with love, that what was essentially what I was trying to create and have a book that you could talk about and you could discuss. It would open up conversations between you and your child too.

I think it's so important to engage with them and any ideas that they have or thoughts that have, actually talk to them and be as honest as possible, obviously within what's appropriate for their age and things like that. How I find my own boys anyway is that they are very resilient. They can cope with anything as long as you tell them the truth and you're honest with them. The minute you aren't or you hide things, it's the unknown that scares them, children. That suddenly becomes the boogeyman under the bed. They get the vibe from you too when you're doing that. The more we can be open and honest and engage in conversations about our kids, whether that's about emotions or life or situations or whatever they are, I think the more it gives them their chance to be able to be empathetic when they get older and also reach their full potential as an adult too. That's what you want. Essentially, it doesn't matter where you come from or what your background is, you want your children to be happy and kind. We all want the same thing, happy and kind. That's what we want. We want them to be able to empathize with other people because I think that will create a better world than what we're living in right now. I think everybody wants the same. When I first started doing the book, it was actually just going to be about boys to begin with. Then I started playing with ideas and talking to Random House. They were like, "This is silly. It doesn't matter who you are or what your gender is. These are big ideas that everybody should talk about."

Zibby: I couldn't agree more. I have four kids of my own. They're a little older, five to thirteen. Yes, happy and kind.

Cat: Four?

Zibby: Yeah, four. [laughs] So I'm well-versed in the children's book world. I'm very reliant on them and grateful to great children's books. Like you, at the end of the day I'm a mess. When I find a book that both I want to read and they say, "Read it again. Read it again," and I don't mind, then that's amazing.

Cat: It's so weird. As parents, we've all got those books that touch us as well. That was the other thing as well. I wanted to write something that I loved reading. The Giving Tree and The Wonderful Things You Will Be and all of those type of books, How Much Do I Love You? I'm a weepy mess by the end of them.

Zibby: Me too. I pull it out. They're like, "Read this one." I'm like, "Oh, no. This is the one that makes me cry." They're like, "Really? Let's try." I'm like, "No. Every time I read this book, I cry." Then I cry. They can't believe that a simple book can elicit the same huge reaction every time even though I know what's coming. [laughs]

Cat: I know. You know exactly what's happening. Listen, I think that that is a really important thing for children to see too. I was not a big crier. I was not hugely emotional, actually, before I had my babies. It's this weird thing where -- you know how they say the day your baby's born the mom is born too? There's a definite almost palpable switch that happens to you, I think. It's definitely changed me, but in ways that I actually really like. It's definitely made me much more patient and actually much more loving towards other people as well. It's interesting how much it changes you.

Zibby: Do you think it pervades your work life too, like every interaction, or mostly in the personal sphere?

Cat: No, I think every single interaction, actually. I always feel a bit like even when I'm just out and about, you just never know what's happening in somebody else's life at that specific moment or time when you interact with them. I think it's very important that we approach people with just a little bit of kindness. By the way, I think ourselves too. So often as women, we're the care-ers. We're the sorters. We're the people who organize. We make things happen. We get things done. We split up fights. We feed people. We cook for people. I think that we could do with being just a little bit kinder on ourselves too.

Zibby: That is definitely, definitely true.

Cat: Sometimes I juggle and I'm like, oh, my goodness, what have I done with my day today? You think about it and you're like, we should be running this country. [laughter]

Zibby: Sometimes, though, at the end of the day, I'm like, ugh, I didn't spend enough time with this kid or that kid. What did I really get done on my list to do? I didn't do enough of this. I feel like you can easily have those metrics not live up to your expectations. It's a matter, I think, of picking the right ones.

Cat: Agreed. I think the kinder you are to yourself, actually, the more you get done. Whatever your moment is -- for me, I love yoga. That's my thing where I move my body. I would probably have the body of a seventy-six-year-old. I'm very stiff. I'm not flexible at all. I've been doing yoga for twenty-five years. Still, I'm just like a regular person. I'm not like Madonna or anything like that. It makes me feel good. It makes my body feel good. It reminds me to breathe. It just gives my head a bit of space. Whether yours is shopping, reading a book, watching a movie, praying, meditating, whatever you want to do, you find your thing. Even if you take twenty minutes when you need to, take twenty minutes.

Zibby: I think that's exactly what your book is teaching kids. Find your thing, whether it's dancing or wandering or anything they want. You can't do it wrong, painting, dreaming. The line I loved the most in your book was right at the end when you said, "If you ever lose your way or you don't believe you can, just look beside you. That’s where I'll always be cheering you on and believing forever in the wonder that's you." That's so sweet. I love that.

Cat: It's even better when James sits on my lap. He calls himself Jamesy. I said, "Who's this?" He's like, "Jamesy." He's like, "Who's that?" I'm like, "Mama." I just dissolve into an emotional puddle of a mess. My thing, when I think about it, I think that small people, they're like little seeds that just need feeding and watering and light on them. Then their brains kind of explode almost like trees and branches going off them. I feel like the more we can stimulate them and try all different things with them, the better they are. Either they’ll find something that they really do love or they won't, but that's a life skill that they’ll learn too, learning to cope with something, A, you're not very good at, or B, you don't really like. That's perfectly okay as well. I just always think, what if Stevie Wonder had never played the piano? What if Tiger Woods had never picked up a set of golf clubs? What if Picasso had never picked up -- there are millions of people out there that have not reached their full potential just because they haven't tried what they want to do.

Zibby: That's why sometimes I'm like, what if I was supposed to be the most amazing sculptor but I still have not tried to do -- what if? How would I know? [laughs]

Cat: Totally, or knitting or [indiscernible] or whatever. There are plenty of things. What if you'd never tried it? I feel the more we can throw at them -- I don't mean exhausting them or anything like that, but try this, it's something new. Let's try this. They don't have to be Stephen Hawking. I remember being a kid and a moment of joy that I remember was I was bodyboarding in the ocean, not surfing because I wasn't big enough. I was probably about eight. I remember being in the ocean. The ocean's a little bit scary when you're eight because you can't quite tell what's coming where and how it's going to -- that almost adds to the excitement of it. That's what made it so great. Either the wave that comes is going to tip you off and throw you down to the bottom and roll you around or it's going to send you hurtling into shore. You're going to squeal with delight, and I'm going to race my brother back and it's going to be amazing. I remember staying in the ocean until my feet were blue. I loved it so much. Even simple things like that, I think that's one thing that we're all learning from being in the situation that we're in right now with the global pandemic. It's about finding the simple things that bring you so much joy. It doesn't have to be -- yeah, you can learn a new language. You can learn a musical instrument or whatever you want. It can be a simple as making the perfect cup of coffee or going to the ocean or making the perfect Victoria sponge cake, whatever it is. There are so many lovely things that you can do. It doesn't have to be brain surgery. It can be small but really scrumptious at the same time.

Zibby: I totally agree with that. I think people who might not know you would argue that you did find your thing. You've been a host of a major TV show. You've gotten these all primetime Emmy nominations. By any objective standards, you're a success at work. You have that. How did you find that? How did you figure out, oh, I would be such a good host for a reality TV dance competition show? I wonder if other people would be really good at that. How would they even know? [laughs]

Cat: I do get what you mean. It was never that specific. You know you have those books when you're little where you have to write what you want to be and how tall you are and then you do different pages? It said, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said I wanted to be Julie Andrews. That was what I wrote at eight. Unfortunately, Julie Andrews has Julie Andrews covered. [laughs] That was kind of what I wanted to do. Then I was quite academic at school. I quite enjoyed school. I liked studying and stuff. I did have someone ask me a question, you're so lucky, you do what you do. But I grew up in a very small town from working-class parents. Entertainment wasn't the family business. There is no reason why I should be doing what I'm doing apart for the fact that I really like people. I don't care whether you're Beyoncé or Meryl Streep. I just like people. I love chatting with people. It's my thing. I like working out how they tick. I like conversations. I like how it's formed their life and where they’ve gone and how their journeys happen. That's part of the reason why I love the dance show too. Some of the stories you hear, you would think, oh, my goodness, that would be enough to crush the human spirit. Yet somehow these kids not only survive and thrive and move on with their lives, but they also channel the negativity and spin it around and make it positive. They put it all into doing this thing that they love that they have this amazing talent for. Don't get me wrong, they have to train. They work. They do all that. I think that you can find it. You don't necessarily have to be born into it. It's what I said. There is no reason why I should be doing what I'm doing, but I am. You know what? There will always be people who are doing better than me and driving Rolls-Royces. That's fine too.

Zibby: Who wants a Rolls-Royce anyway?

Cat: Exactly, unless you're going to drive it into a swimming pool.

Zibby: In a music video or something. [laughs]

Cat: That would be fun.

Zibby: That's amazing. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors, particularly people trying to write a children's book?

Cat: Oh, my goodness, no. I don't have any. This is my very first one. I would love to write more, actually, maybe a little bit older next time. I have an idea for another book that's based on a little girl who's a tomboy. Then I also have a very dark one which is to do with babies and baby monitors which is a bit Gone Girl. I'm not going there yet, but I have that idea too. My next book that I've got to read is Normal People. Have you read that?

Zibby: I'm embarrassed to say that I have not read it, but I have watched the show.

Cat: And?

Zibby: So good.

Cat: See, I don't want to watch the show until I've read the book. I'm going to read the book first. The show is sitting there waiting to go for me. I want to read the book. I'm always like, book first, then show.

Zibby: I know. I usually am too, but my husband wanted to watch the show. I was like, I'd rather do something with him.

Cat: Let's blame him. Blame him.

Zibby: I'm going to blame him, yes. I've had the book for a very long time. I'm embarrassed that I'm the only one in the world who hasn’t read it.

Cat: I haven't either, though. What's his name? What's your husband's name?

Zibby: My husband? His name's Kyle.

Cat: Blame Kyle. Let's namecheck him and blame him.

Zibby: Yes, I blame him for everything. [laughter] Did it take a long time for you to write the children's book? Did you just pound it out in one day? What was it like?

Cat: There was lots of backwards and forwards. There's lots of backwards and forwards. Sometimes I also disappear down the hole a little bit where I've got an idea. For instance, there's a line in the book which is, "Dream as big as the night full of stars." I started to then research what the biggest thing in the universe is. It's called the borealis blah, blah, blah. I disappeared down this hole. Random House said to me, "You do know you could just say a night full of stars and that would bring you back to where you started to begin with? But you disappeared into the abyss of the most enormous thing in the universe." I was like, yeah, fine. You know what it is? There's so much backwards and forwards because sometimes you need to be accountable to people. I think it always helps to get people's opinions too. You think that writing a children's book is so easy, but there's so many layers to it on what you're trying to say and how you want to say it and where we're going next. It's quite tricky. It was a lovely, lovely experience too, lovely experience.

Zibby: What's coming next in terms of -- then I'll leave you alone. I know I've taken a lot of your time. What's coming next in terms of your regular life versus your book life? Do you know with the whole pandemic what's even on the [indiscernible/crosstalk]?

Cat: No, I don't really. Essentially, what's happened is Milo has been off school since March, so that's six months of homeschooling. I'm lucky. Milo is four, so I don't have to teach him algebra and Latin. I've taught him to read in the time that we've had at home, which is lovely. I would never get the chance to do that normally, ever. It's really special. Then James is two. He's got all these cute little -- he's gabbling. He's got all these weird little picadilloes with his language where he's like, "Mom, mom, mom, [child noises]," which is the cutest thing too. Normally, I would never get the chance to hang out as much. They're at that age where they want to hang out with me. It's not like I've got two teenagers at home where I'm thinking, they’ve not seen their friends. I've actually been really lucky. Then Milo goes back to school in September. We do all the press for the book. We're doing worldwide press as well. Then when the pandemic hit, I was shooting a new show for Disney. We shot about five of them. We've got to wait and see when we can go back into the studio and protocols and all that kind of stuff. Basically, it's just a big wait and see, I think like everybody, right?

Zibby: Pretty much.

Cat: How have you been? Have you been okay?

Zibby: That's a whole nother podcast. You don't want to know my whole story.

Cat: How old are your children?

Zibby: Five, seven, and I have two thirteen-year-olds.

Cat: Twins?

Zibby: Twins, yes.

Cat: Wow, that's a very full house with no school.

Zibby: It's a very full house. They are going back to school. I know that's happening for at least a month or two until they cancel it again. At least, I'll take those mornings that they go back.

Cat: By the way, I think they're going to do the same here too. My four-year-old doesn't understand social distancing. They're going to go back and it's going to be flu season. They're all going to get runny noses.

Zibby: We just got our flu shots today, actually, because our pediatrician was like, getting COVID and the flu, forget about it. Got our flu shots done. I am not overly optimistic about the schoolyear, but at least for a little bit. Like you, I love talking to people and finding out what makes people tick, and so I'm glad to have been able to do that with you and get to know you better and all the rest. Thank you so much for all of your time.

Cat: Lovely to talk to you too. Thank you so much. Lovely to chat to you. I'm so jealous of your books on your wall.

Zibby: Just --

Cat: -- Invite some friends over and give them margaritas.

Zibby: Invite some friends, and you'll get it done in no time. [laughter]

Cat: Thank you.

Zibby: Thanks, Cat. I wish you all the best. Buh-bye.

Cat: Bye, darling. Stay safe.

Zibby: Thanks. You too. Bye-bye.

Cat: Bye.