“I lean on my community. I lean on the power of the pen. I lean on remembering who my ancestors are and what they endured, the colonization that they survived in the Americas, I think, ‘we've been here before, and the lineage from which I come is one that is powerful and resistant.’ I would be dishonoring that legacy and that lineage if I didn't step up in this moment.” — Aida Salazar Aida Salazar believes deeply in the power of words to change the world. For Aida, writing isn’t just a creative ...
Mar 05, 2025•40 min•Ep. 65
“Their white classmates can read Harry Potter and relate to going to Hogwarts and flying on brooms. But a Black kid can't aspire to go to Paris, which can actually happen.” – Jerry Craft Growing up, Jerry Craft did not enjoy reading. He says he simply never encountered a children's book that intrigued him enough or felt right. But Jerry loves defying expectations, and so naturally, the boy who rarely set foot in a library grew up to become a celebrated children’s book author and illustrator. He ...
Feb 19, 2025•38 min•Ep. 64
“For every child that thinks something is wrong with them, my books are saying, ‘be you, even if others can’t see you. The people who don’t see your beauty, see your glory–they have a problem. Something is wrong with their eyes, their soul.’” – Jewell Parker Rhodes Raised mainly by her grandmother on a steady diet of porch stories (and lots of bread), Jewell Parker Rhodes spent decades writing for adults, perfecting her craft in order to “be good enough” to write for kids. For Jewell, that has m...
Feb 05, 2025•48 min•Ep. 63
“Every time I read “Big” at a school, obviously I’m there to speak to kids about the story, and I hope they’re all connecting with it, but at every single reading there is always an adult woman that comes to me and says, this is my story, I needed this when I was young. And I just wish we all knew that we were all going through the same thing.” -Vashti Harrison Vashti Harrison burst onto the children’s book scene with her book, “Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History.” But to hear her tell ...
Jan 22, 2025•39 min•Ep. 62
“Life is a wheel and humanity has been through countless cycles of ups and downs. The things that seem so dire now won't be this dire forever. Eventually, there is an upswing. I always needed that reminder, and it made me think that my young readers need that reminder as well.” - Yamile Saied Mendez With a storytelling style that radiates warmth and resilience, Yamile Saed Méndez’s work reflects the cycles of life’s challenges and triumphs. Born in Rosario, Argentina, in the midst and then long ...
Jan 08, 2025•44 min•Ep. 61
It’s official. Two years in a row makes it a tradition. The Reading Culture Yearbook is here. It’s the year-end celebratory episode where we look back and highlight some of our favorite moments in the form of awarding superlatives. Or, as we dubbed them last year and seemingly forgot, “The Readies.” This year’s edition features awards such as “Best [Not] Meet Cute,” the “Owning It Award,” the “Merriam-Webster Award” (alternatively titled “Most Likely to Know More Words than Merriam-Webster”), an...
Dec 23, 2024•35 min•Ep. 60
“I am saying: reader, we're going on a journey. You are going to come with me and then I'm pulling them gently into the narrative. And then again, if I'm doing my job, I'm holding them like a hug.” - Andrea Davis Pinkney Andrea Davis Pinkney stands tall at just 4’11”, but she is still somehow larger than life. In her writing, she has what she refers to as “the page one pact,” a commitment to getting her readers’ attention right away. As an interviewee, she does the same. Andrea’s passion, commit...
Dec 10, 2024•42 min•Ep. 59
We revisit our episode with Gregory Maguire. ****** "That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as humans, and then we behave the way we will. We are obliged not to consider them as less than human because that way, all hell breaks loose. - Gregory Maguire Gregory Maguire expresses himself with extreme precision. While many of us may grasp for words to communicate a specific emotion or to describe a series of events, Gregory seemingly has wor...
Nov 26, 2024•44 min•Ep. 58
“I think kids are actually generally a better audience for literary fiction, for art, for ambitious storytelling that asks the reader to do work. And a lot of that is just based on how their brains work and their place in the world.” - Mac Barnett Growing up, Mac Barnett’s mom never took their picture books off their shelves. They remained a part of his reading world, even as he grew up and could read more mature books. Maybe that choice helped Mac’s youthful spirit alight for longer. As he ofte...
Nov 12, 2024•44 min•Ep. 57
“I think it caused me to get over some of the sort of narcissistic impulses in my writing and not make it about me and impressing, but instead about having the best reading experience I could imagine.” - Eliot Schrefer At a young age, Eliot Schrefer acknowledged that he was hiding himself. Growing up queer when he did meant concealing a key part of his identity for the sake of self-preservation. It was through books that he first learned to accept his queerness. That thread leads to one of his m...
Oct 29, 2024•38 min•Ep. 56
“The two most important things you can do as a writer are to make people wonder what will happen next and to understand why it matters. - Katherine Marsh Every moment of every day, our attention is the subject of a battle. As adults, we struggle to focus on the 'right' things—so how can we expect our kids to? With this in mind, capturing and holding young readers’ attention is a key focus for Katherine Marsh in her books. But she’s determined to do so without sacrificing intellectual depth. Stri...
Oct 15, 2024•42 min•Ep. 55
“Why am I fighting this? Like, why am I fighting the thing that I want to write? For who? For like a teacher that I haven't seen in five years or ten years? For a critic who I don't know?” - Zoraida Córdova Zoraida Córdova doesn’t care about what a book should be. When she writes, she’s interested in.. well… what she’s interested in. That means Zoraida doesn't prioritize following rules or meeting pre-set expectations. If she wants to write about sappy zombies, she will. If she wants to create a...
Oct 01, 2024•39 min•Ep. 54
“I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over [it].” - Elizabeth Acevedo In an interview, we may hear Elizabeth Acevedo's singular voice, but she assures us she is not alone. Elizabeth reminds us that she is part of a lineage and an amalgamation of many voices. She, like all of us, represents those who came before her, those whose books she devours, those who have shaped her life, ...
Sep 17, 2024•40 min•Ep. 53
“I talked about how I didn't process things in my journals. Well, in poetry, I did. All of a sudden, it was cracking that door open.” - Ari Tison When we’re kids, the world still feels so big . Everything is a discovery, from why flowers bloom to why we go to school and what it feels like to make friends… everything is new. But for some kids, life can hit faster than they’re ready to process. The logical side, the “why,” isn’t as important as the safe space to feel the emotions. In Ari’s native ...
Sep 03, 2024•43 min•Ep. 52
“I see my job as trying to soothe the trauma that teenagers don't know they have yet because everybody's so busy telling them that they don't.” - A.S. King The older we get, the more we understand that life is impossible to actually understand. Things are not often straightforward, and the more we do discover, the more we realize there is to discover. But when we read, we want to relate, to see the words on a page and have them reflect the world back at us in a way that makes it feel more digest...
Aug 20, 2024•42 min•Ep. 51
“I think it has to do with powerlessness, and with the kind of hierarchy that kids endure every day, where these grown ups are not making sense, and the world doesn't make sense, and animals are basically suffering the same fate.” - Katherine Applegate Why do kids see themselves in animals? Children’s media is full of stories from and about the perspective of animals. But why? Katherine Applegate has been exploring this question since she was a child, fascinated by the inner worlds of the animal...
Aug 06, 2024•39 min•Ep. 50
We revisit our episode with Matt de la Peña. **** "Kids are growing up in an interesting time and they're led to believe that if we don't feel happy, we're doing something wrong. I think what I respond to is a deeper truth, which is, happiness is incredible and we should strive for it, but we should also acknowledge that half of our life is challenging or melancholy." - Matt de la Peña Hailing from a working class border town in Southern California, Matt de la Peña (Last Stop on Market Street, M...
Jul 23, 2024•40 min•Ep. 49
We revisit our episode with Sabaa Tahir. ****** " This is happening in our world and at the very least you can bear witness to it. That's literally the absolute least you can do. - Sabaa Tahir Sabaa Tahir’s (“All My Rage,” “An Ember in the Ashes” quartet) upbringing in the Mojave desert, isolated nearly 100 miles from the nearest city, exposed her to an unforgiving landscape and also many unforgiving truths of humanity. Within this backdrop, one place held significant importance in shaping her w...
Jul 09, 2024•44 min•Ep. 48
" I feel like it was this little miracle that in some areas of my life, I'm shutting myself up and shutting myself down. But with my writing, I was always really connecting with that inner voice.” - Shannon Hale Flaws. We do everything to hide them away and pretend they don’t exist. But what if these flaws that we try so desperately to mask are exactly what we need to access our power, our story? How does one tap into it? How does one express the very things they have tried so hard to hide? For ...
Jun 25, 2024•44 min•Ep. 47
"I'm not a person that's like, let's throw out the classics. It's, let's move forward. Let's disrupt the canon. Some of these universal themes, some of these ingredients that we love, how do I remix them into a new stew?” - Dhonielle Clayton What is life without a little magic? Fantasy gives us the space to break free from the confines that reality often brings and the freedom to dream the typically unimaginable. But with all its magic and wonder, the fantasy genre doesn’t always reflect the div...
Jun 11, 2024•39 min•Ep. 46
"That barrier between what is “real” and what is not, when that's more fluid, I think it's that's where the fun of fiction comes in. Especially when you're writing for kids.” - Minh Lê Life is full of barriers. Barriers between reality and the imagination, the spiritual and physical world, and perhaps most crucially, the ones we create for ourselves. When a barrier is a boundary, it can be a good thing. But in many cases, the barriers we create are holding us back. Minh Lê’s life was defined by ...
May 28, 2024•42 min•Ep. 45
"I've found that the books that have resonated with me the most are books where your body is incidental, but it's still something that you can never leave behind.” - Julie Murphy Julie Murphy has an unexpected story, one that involves a winding road to her writing career. With equal parts quick wit and matter-of-factness, Julie shares that part of her confidence that she could dare to be a writer came after falling deep into the Twilight series. If Stephanie Meyer, an untrained author, could wri...
May 14, 2024•42 min•Ep. 44
"...the reader's mind is filling in the blanks in between those panels and as a lip reader, that's what I do. I fill in the blanks. I'm trying to piece together what that person says. So, comics really make sense to me.” - Cece Bell I first came to know Cece Bell through her groundbreaking semi-autobiographical graphic memoir novel, “El Deafo.” It was SO good that I had to read more by her. That's when I found out, through reading aloud with our (then younger) kids, that Cece's work is hilarious...
Apr 30, 2024•43 min•Ep. 43
"That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as humans, and then we behave the way we will. We are obliged not to consider them as less than human because that way, all hell breaks loose. - Gregory Maguire Gregory Maguire expresses himself with extreme precision. While many of us may grasp for words to communicate a specific emotion or to describe a series of events, Gregory seemingly has words and turns of phrase on command. What a delight it...
Apr 16, 2024•43 min•Ep. 42
"I spend a lot of time trying to hope that I'll remember little things and how a certain simple thing felt. … Writing is one way of trying to capture that feeling, even if I'm fictionalizing it still.” - Nina LaCour If Nina LaCour were a drink, she would be a cozy cup of tea. You’re not rushing to finish a conversation with Nina. Rather, you are spending time exploring the details. And that is exactly what we did in this episode. The world moves fast. Usually faster than we’d like it to. But wri...
Apr 02, 2024•38 min•Ep. 41
"There's something very lovely about feeling like, well, it's not my name, and it's not me, it's just the books.” - LeUyen Pham To listen to LeUyen Pham is to feel inspired. She is full of hope and ideas and sees potential everywhere and in everyone. In LeUyen’s ideal world, diverse representation is a natural outgrowth of art that truly reflects our world. Her career as an artist and writer has been her contribution to making that a reality. Her career as an artist and writer has been her contr...
Mar 19, 2024•41 min•Ep. 40
"Love is risky. Love always ends. Should you do it anyway?” - Nicola Yoon Love is a feeling that never exists solely on its own, and those likely companions to love (anxiety, grief) often bring questions such as, is this worth it? It’s this question and others like it that Nicola Yoon explores in each of her novels. Nicola is a hopeless romantic. The affliction began in childhood after the discovery of her aunt’s harlequin romance collection. From then on, Nicola’s love of love would only grow s...
Mar 05, 2024•41 min•Ep. 39
"I'm putting every single ounce of who I am into every single book that I write, so y'all know to expect the blackest books you have ever read from yours truly.” - Derrick Barnes Derrick Barnes’ introduction to vulnerable storytelling was through the jazz and R&B records he found in his family’s collection. For young Derrick, reading the liner notes in albums was just as important as any other kind of reading. Eventually, artists like Prince, Rakim, and John Coltrane taught him about the pow...
Feb 20, 2024•40 min•Ep. 38
"I'm a bad liar. So I'm just like, I'm really good at telling the truth.” - Brandy Colbert Going down internet rabbit holes and discovering everything there is to know about random subjects is a relaxing way to spend an evening, according to Brandy Colbert. This passion for research is part of the secret sauce that helps her build such deep and believable characters in her fiction work. In her nonfiction writing, Brandy’s ability to bring humanity to the real “characters” in the story is what br...
Feb 06, 2024•40 min•Ep. 37
"Books can be the perfect prescriptions to let us know that we're going to be okay.” - John Schu John Schu’s entire life has been shaped by books. As a kid, he fell in love with Shel Silverstein; Emily Dickinson comforted him as he was battling an eating disorder, and “The One and Only Ivan,” well, that book changed his life. In fact, it nearly put him into debt (he tells that story in the episode!) The powerful impact books have had on his life inspired him to dedicate his life to sharing this ...
Jan 23, 2024•38 min•Ep. 36
