Eliot Schrefer

Eliot Schrefer: Being in the closet means, like, sort of a self policing at all times of, like, do am I gonna give a tell that will reveal me to other people and that would be terrible and scary?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Is there ever a good side to concealing or even erasing, our honest thoughts, our feelings, our identities? Eliot Schefer spent most of his teen years hiding his queerness, a sort of self erasure driven by self preservation. But can self erasure sometimes be constructive? Say, for example, an artist who decides to strip away the autobiographical flourishes from his art and, in the process of removing himself, creates a more universal work.

Eliot Schrefer: 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.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Maybe we shouldn't always be able to see the identity behind the art. I mean, hey, knowing more about the people who write our favorite books is, well, kinda our whole thing on this show. But is it sometimes better if an author just anonymously slides over some food for thought and then slips away without ever revealing their own taste in the matter?

Eliot Schrefer: It is my responsibility as a writer to come up with great questions for the reader to have as they read, but it's it's not my responsibility to come up with great answers.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Elliot Schrefer is a best selling author known for his young adult and middle grade works, including Endangered and the 3 other books in his Ape Quartet series, as well as Queer Ducks and Other Animals, and The Darkness Outside Us, along with its recently released sequel, The Brightness Between Us. A Prince honoree and 2 time finalist for the National Book Award, Eliot's works often explore themes of empathy, the natural world, and fantasy. In this episode, Eliot talks about different ways he's practiced self concealment in his life and in his stories, and why he thinks it's made him better at connecting with his teen audience. He'll explain why the world needs fewer leaders and more sensitive types, and he'll reveal why his current influences include Carl Sagan, Jane Goodall, and Eeyore, the donkey. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities.

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I one time was interviewing MT Anderson, and he talked about how being a speck of dust in the long arc of the universe felt very relieving to him, and that really gave me pause. And I wanted to know if that is something that, like, scares you or if it is something that does give you a sense of relief.

Eliot Schrefer: That is amazing. I knew I liked that guy. That is absolutely amazing because that is literally like something I have said within the last few days. Is that, yeah, there's you know, Carl Sagan has this piece of writing called Pale Blue Dot, which is basically about, you know, the first time we saw earth from the outside from space. We got to know how vulnerable it seemed.

This picture of this little blue fragile globe surrounded by this immense vast black space. And Carl Sagan wrote that it makes all the like rise and falls of kings and queens and pandemics and wars and even all your personal goals feel very small in relation to that. And I think you could either you can go two directions with that sort of piece of information. Right? There's a, like, existential, nothing matters, therefore, life is meaningless, or nothing matters.

It's all gonna be fine. Right? Like, don't, like, don't carry yourself a little lightly because, you know, it doesn't nothing's gonna be that big a deal. I think that's kind of the stance I take. You know, it's funny.

My my husband is very much the opposite, And we realize that he's the exuberant pessimist. So he's sure that everything is in crisis and everything's gonna be ruined, but he has, like, such high color energy to any interaction. And, I'm the melancholy optimist. So I'm sort of like Eeyore, where because we're just on this hunk of rock going around the gaseous ball in the solar system, like, nothing really matters and therefore it's all gonna be fine. But that's sort of a, a melancholy stance to have.

So I'm sort of like, oh, it's okay. You know, that's like my role in life. And I think, I guess novel wise, maybe I'm giving a bit of that by writing about non human experiences and other places and other times. That it's a way of, I think, allowing yourself to take our lives more a little more lightly. And I don't mean unseriously, but just there's less cause for wringing your hands when you realize how small we are in the in the big scale.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. And when you were I will bring it to your childhood now. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's interesting that you're I'm trying now I'm thinking about my husband, like, I wonder which would how we would fall on those

Eliot Schrefer: Our theory is every couple has one arm.

Gregory Maguire: I think

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: he might be the Eeyore.

Eliot Schrefer: The Melancholy Optimist?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I'm

Eliot Schrefer: not sure if Eeyore is an optimist. He might be a Melancholy Pessimist, Eeyore. He just has all of them.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. But has has might bring that energy.

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. Like, one one partner needs reassuring, and the other one needs sort of energizing and directing.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No. That is that is us.

Okay. Good. This will be great. We're I'm in stand in for him now.

Eliot Schrefer: Doing exuberant testimonies. Thank you, Jordan.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And now when you were a little human, did you think about these things as a as a young person to bring back childhood? Were you thinking about, like, your place in the universe?

Eliot Schrefer: I don't know. I have I do have a memory actually, pretty distinct, of being maybe in 5th grade. And my dad was carrying me to bed. Like, it was just the way, like, I went to bed. It's like he would pull me over his shoulder and, like, walk me upstairs to my bedroom.

And I remember I loved that moment of the day so much. And I was staring up at the ceiling and I had this thought of like, oh my gosh. Like, when we die, we're not necessarily going anywhere. It's just gonna be blank. I remember that was like a shocking feeling to have as a 5th grader.

And it was sort of seemed desperately unfair. And I was like, why isn't everyone talking about this? Like, that's it's crazy that we don't that doesn't dominate our lives. That we just talk about groceries and pets and everything else. And so I think for me, books were a way to have those conversations.

Because I was Especially going into my early teen years, I kinda felt that the essential meaninglessness of everything was a source of sadness for me. Like, why do anything? Like, why does anything really matter? And it took me actually I sort of came around to science as a way to deal with that and it was a book on evolution. It's called Thread of Life and I got it from the local public library.

And I read it when I was maybe in 8th grade And it was said that natural selection was the reason we exist. There's a history and a movement within the natural history that actually makes everything have a reason in its own way. And for a kid who grew up without religious influences, I think it gave me a sort of structuring concept that made everything feel a little bit more stable and knowable. And so it's funny. I hadn't realized science could provide meaning in quite that way.

I thought science raised questions, but it didn't provide answers. And but thinking about evolution, like, oh, there there's a reason for everything we do and who we are, was really reassuring as a kid.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. So interesting. So you did not grow up with, like, religious religious influences, you said?

Eliot Schrefer: No. Well, my parents were Unitarian Universalists, which is as close to atheist as you can get while still having a religion. So

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. It's, like, it's interesting that you found that science and biology, like, so early on like that too, you know, because there is this interplay in your work, I guess, between science and fantasy. And so we covered science a little, but when did you discover your your love for fantasy?

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. Yeah. I was really drawn to the window function of literature more than the mirror. I really loved the idea of getting somewhere far away and learning about somewhere else. Kind of like that pale blue dot experience of getting a sense of scale that whatever's going on doesn't matter as much.

And I was just really curious about those other places and other things.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Do you remember from your childhood, what were some of the books that really got you started on loving fantasy? What were some of those?

Eliot Schrefer: So I I was reading up, I guess. These were technically adult books, like the Dungeons and Dragons tie in novels is the Dragonlance series, Forgotten Realms, and just those 3.99 drugstore paperbacks, you know, with some young woman in a chain mail bikini and a dragon with a name that's too long to pronounce. And, you know, just really just combat and all that. I loved it. Then I worked my way into The Hobbit from there.

I assume a lot of the children's classics set up fantasy to them. Like, Missus Frisbee and the Rats of Nym, say was another childhood favorite.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Was your household like a bookish household? Were your parents and brother and everybody readers? Or

Eliot Schrefer: Yes. Yep. There was a lot of reading in our house. In the evenings, I'd often be my dad with this newspaper, and my mom might have a novel. And, it was definitely encouraged.

We weren't allowed to have a Nintendo, which that was hard in 1988 not to have a Nintendo. And all the other kids knew how Super Mario worked and I could just kinda watch. But looking back, I think it must have been so insufferable for my parents to have my brother and me, like, complaining nonstop about the child abuse we're experiencing by not having a video game system. But ultimately, I did read a lot more and there would just be like a big, paper bag full of toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls and pieces of paper and cardboard. And, you know, if I was said I was bored, like, you just had to go to that bag and, like, make something up using all those old materials in the house.

That kind of creative process was very much part of my childhood as well. If nothing's interesting to you, it's up to you to find something interesting to do. That's what writing is for me now.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So that's what it is now. And was there also a lot of talk about or writing happening in your home?

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. My father was a history major back in college, and my mom didn't attend university, but was always very interested in writing and books. In fact, she was writing books in the house. She wrote 3 books while I was a kid.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: What? Your mom wrote 3 books when you were a kid? Okay.

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. Yeah. They weren't ever, published, but she was always working on them. And I think sometimes I read an article about how when we talk about, like, Mozart being a harpsichord player, that's partly his genius in knowing harpsichords, but it's also there were harpsichords in the house, you know? And so he knew that was around because his dad was a harpsichord player.

And I think sometimes about how writers are are not just individuals, but they're socially made. Like what's around you as a kid and what's valued is why we become writers. And so my mom was always typing and working on her books. And it's like in most houses where the youngest person is the one who can work the printer. So it was a dot matrix printer in 1988, Columbia, Maryland.

And I remember helping her pull off all the side pieces and you have to separate all the pages. And I became very much part of her process. And as a kid, I could see that she wasn't getting her books published even though she was trying. And I think I internalized that a little bit, that this is something that is wonderful to do, but is impossible to actually manage. I just assumed writing would would be awesome, but it just couldn't work.

So I really didn't even know that was the story I was telling myself. And so when I went to college, I entered as an evolutionary biology major. I didn't finish that way, but I was thinking about the sciences. And after I graduated, I just did everything else but right. I worked at a boarding school for a year.

I waited tables. I temped. And I was just out with friends in my early twenties and just said from nowhere obviously, if we all had time and money, we'd be writers. My friends were like, No. No.

No, no, my friend. You couldn't pay me to do that. And I realized like, oh, I just assumed this was everyone's goal and we were all too scared to go for it. And really, it was mine. It was what I wanted to do, and I hadn't even realized that I was cutting off the option to myself, just assuming giving up before I started.

So that's when I turned to writing my first book, which as someone who grew up with a lot of sword and sorcery fantasy novels, it was this way too long, slow paced sword and sorcery book that never went anywhere. Even my best friend couldn't read it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Even your best friend. But I've read actually though that you really enjoy the process of writing it, and you mentioned earlier that you writing is like this thing that you loved and found interesting to do. So maybe you can speak a little bit more about why that is or speak more to that.

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. I guess, well, writing is, for me, it's the easiest path to that flow state where just everything disappears. And I don't remember what was happening earlier that day, what I have to do later. I'm just totally banished into whatever I'm writing. And that is so It's pleasurable on its own, just during that state, and then it's also it's great to have a vacation from whatever else is going on in your mind, like to be that fully transported.

And I think writing is just one way that people can do that. It can happen running or playing basketball or playing violin. But it's something when I talk to kids, I often suggest no one can tell them what their flow state should be, but really pay attention about what absorbs you, especially if it's something that you're doing creatively or or physically, and cultivate that because it's a great state of being, and I think it's really important for being a healthy human.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I like that way of, like, thinking of just fine as opposed to I feel like there's a lot of emphasis on kids to find your passion. And so, you know, which is a different way a different way of thinking about something than find your flow state, what lifts you in a way. You know?

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. When how awful for a kid that feels like they have no passions, just be told, like, find one. Check them out,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: check back

Eliot Schrefer: in once you got me.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Exactly. Yeah. Or or like an adult, honestly. I mean, it's not even for kids. You know?

Find your passion. If you're doing your passion, then you're not gonna feel like you're working. You never work a day in your life. It's just a real part of our narrative as opposed to Do you

Eliot Schrefer: remember as a kid being told, well, this is the happiest time of your life? And I remember often as a kid, hey, it was not the happiest time of my life. And there were, like, moments I was like, really? This is as good as it gets.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Like, oh, shit.

Eliot Schrefer: I'm in control. But I think now the version of find your passion is, like chase your curiosity, which I think is an improvement because just notice what makes you curious and lean into that, I think, is more manageable ask than saying, go find a passion.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I agree. That makes more sense. And, you know, like, for some people, in my family, for example, I think that flow state can be social, like saying a team sport, like basketball or football, but it sounds like for you, it's a little more solitary. And, yeah, I wonder if that's something that you realized early on.

Eliot Schrefer: I was definitely an observer. I feel like I was very often kinda quiet and looking at things and not necessarily participating in the kid world around me. I would always have my, like, one best friend and we would know each other very well. But beyond that, I was sort of undone by how complicated everything was and just sort of hung back and and watched. And I guess that time spent observing does make you more internal and thinking.

So I guess that was I was definitely, yeah, probably the shyest kid in most of the situations I was in. And people would be surprised when they finally heard my voice. And that would That was true, I think, even through college. Some of my seminar professors, at at the end of the semester was like, did you have a good time? I have no idea because you didn't say anything.

But I was just This

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: is my favorite class. I remember that.

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. Exactly. I was having a great time. I just wasn't talking. And, you know, now, it's very much not who I am.

At the time, I thought it was just my temperament, but it's also probably about comfort level and feeling like you're known and seen and valued. And I might have just been scared that I wasn't.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Essentially, I'm thinking about, this in the context of Queer Ducks, which is the best book, and we'll talk more about it later. I also love that duck content came up in, the Brightness Between Us. But you said that you you wrote that book really for yourself at that age and, like, other kids who are experiencing what you did or when the world was telling you, like, it's not natural to be queer. And I wonder when you were growing up, did you turn to writing or journaling, you know, to hash out some of those feelings back then?

Eliot Schrefer: I didn't keep a journal or a diary, but there was a way in which the internal life could come out in writing in a way that I wasn't able to bring it out in interactions, social interactions with other people or to tell my truth. I was in the closet for middle school and most of high school except for like 3 or 4 friends. And Yeah. I think certainly reading books with LGBT content and characters was really important for me. And even those, I had to take from the adult section.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. What did you read? Am I there was hardly any

Eliot Schrefer: Yes. Like Michael Cunningham novels, Paul Manette's book, Last Watch of the Night. Yeah. A lot of them during those years were,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: you know, about the interest Michael Cunningham when you were in, like that's great. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah.

Eliot Schrefer: I picked it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I was

Eliot Schrefer: like, this this definitely seems made for me just based on the cover, but Yep. It was definitely, like, it was scary. Like, I I sort of I think now about teen readers who are wanting to find stories in which they're represented or that they can feel seen, and I got that. But I also got the impression that it was really, really terrifying to be an adult gay man just based on the books that I was reading. And so it was a mixed bag.

And so I think, you know, about the idea of, like, giving teenagers a chance to see themselves, but also with hope and optimism is a really important combo. Yeah. That's where QueerDox came from was, you know, I just got this master's in animal studies and a lot of the research that's going on right now about animal behavior is in the diversity of reasons that they have sex, not just procreation. And that was something that teenage me would have really, really loved to have known about, but that just wasn't available to me. And so I often think, what did I need back then and and how can I provide it now is sort of a motivating goal for me as a writer?

I believe in aristocracy, if that is the right word and if a Democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power based on rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. 1000 of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names.

They are sensitive for others, as well as for themselves. They are considerate without being fussy. Their pluck is not swankiness, but the power to endure. And they can take a joke. I give no examples, it is risky to do that, but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be.

Their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the heart's affections. And their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide open world.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That passage comes from EM Forster's 1951 essay, What I Believe, in his book 2 Cheers for Democracy. And although Eliot clearly fits the bill of sensitive, considerate, and plucky, he actually chose to read it because, for him, it perfectly captures his middle school reaction to another of Forster's works, his 1910 novel, Howard's End.

Eliot Schrefer: I wanted to give a lecture on Howard's End. I had a, a moment when I was reading Howard's End of just feeling this for the first time. I was I read it in middle school. I was a weird middle schooler, But the movie came out when I was in 6th grade with Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. And I saw this movie and I just felt this like, for the first time, the conversations they were having and who these 2 Schlegel sisters were just felt like, I want them to be my friends.

Like, this is the people I was waiting for. I can't Safety Harbor Middle School doesn't have this kind of person. This is who I'm meant to be with. Like, these people were you know, it's set in 19 08 so far in the past. So I wound up reading Howards End and it's, to this day, is probably the most important book I ever read.

And he just wrote a paragraph about the kinds of people that are important to him, which I think goes to the core of what I saw in that book as a reader and what I wanted to be like and what I try to cultivate in people I'm around. And, you know, I didn't have that piece of writing as a kid. I wish I had, but I don't know. We're always told, like, you should become a leader or you should, like, change the world in sort of these aggressive ways, and I think he's really valuing being a good human to another human. Seeing deeply and being curious about others and that seems so important as well.

And I think it's something that reading can cultivate really well, this sense of attachment to those who are different from you. And that there can be That's not a sense A sign of being sensitive isn't a sign of weakness, but of something that is a great asset that you can bring. And I think especially as young men, we're often taught sensitivity is where our downfall is. Like we shouldn't be sensitive. We find ways to police boys from being sensitive.

And, I love that Ian Forster, instead of saying it's okay to be sensitive, he's like, actually this is the highest pantheon of great people are the ones who are sensitive. I just love that idea.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: What's that last line again? Can you say that last line?

Eliot Schrefer: Their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the heart's affections and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide open

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: world.

Gregory Maguire: I realized it was sort of toward the end of high school, I began to question whether I was gay or not. And that certainly positions oneself on the margins of the dance floor. You hung back. You watched. You didn't know what you were thinking or feeling.

You just knew that to think and to feel and to notice what you were feeling was the important first step, and you could figure out what it meant later.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's a clip from the episode we did with Gregory Maguire. He and Eliot came of age a full generation apart, and yet their descriptions of the experience are remarkably alike. For both men, growing up and having to come out first to themselves and then to others has shaped the way they view the world, and by extension, the way they write.

Eliot Schrefer: Being in the closet means, like, sort of a self policing at all times of, like, am I gonna give a tell that will reveal me to other people, and that would be terrible and scary. And so this feeling of self awareness is is something that, like, once I came out when I was 18, like it took decades to sort of like fully peel off. Maybe I'm still working on it, but peel away that armor I took on of the protection of the sort of false self that got me through. But the side effect of that self policing is maybe this sort of extra attention to how people behave and act. So being a good observer is key to being a writer, and I think people who are closeted are required to become really good observers of tells and signs and indications.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So interesting. And it sounds like you were, like, studying very carefully, you know, how to remove your queerness really from people's image of you. And I actually wanted to talk more about how that role of being removed shows up for you in your writing, and you've mentioned that you're intentional about removing ego, as you said, from your work and about how that actually led to you writing for younger audiences. So can you tell me more about that?

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. So my adult novels, I wrote 2 of them before I switched over to writing young adult. And looking back at those books, it's unclear who I was writing for, and actually I suspect I was writing for myself more than for a reader. And I think my big goal was to have someone finish the book and be, like, impressed by me. That was what I wanted the effect to be for a reader.

I wanted someone to finish it and be like, wow. That Eli Shrafer. He's something. Which, if you're the reader in that situation, that's a really unpleasant thing to, like, realize, like, oh, this whole person's, you know, motive for writing this book is to, like, get me to be impressed by them. Like, screw you.

I can go write someone where they care about me. But, like, it's like the equivalent of, like, going on a date and they just talk about themselves the whole time. Yeah. And so I didn't know it at the time, but it was switching to You that broke me of that habit because in young adult, I'm writing for someone who's officially not me. They are officially of a different age group.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, yeah.

Eliot Schrefer: And so thinking about what is the teenager's experience of this book going to be, forced me to write for that teenager and not for myself. And 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. And I think without that shift in age group and writing for young people, I wouldn't have been able to do it. So I think I became a better writer once I started writing for kids. So I'm not gonna turn around and not gonna look back anytime in the near future.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Okay. Well, that's good because we love your books here. But, when you think about it, you've really removed yourself even further than just age. Right? Because you write so much about animals.

Maybe you can talk more about how that came about.

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. Well, I've always been really kind of surprised looking at bookshelves that all our stories are about humans. I mean, it makes sense that most of our stories would be about humans since we are humans, but it also seems like so we shut out other lived creatures' experiences so entirely. Outside of, like, picture books and middle grade where you do actually have animal stories really centered. But as soon as you get to adult lit, it's few and far between to find Oh, yeah.

Animal stories. I've always been really interested in trying to capture those stories, and some of my favorite books are Jane Goodall's work, her memoirs about her time with the chimpanzees. And she by naming her chimps and following them as individuals, she found they have these amazing, like, Shakespearean stories. You find these rise and falls of heroes and villains and just as complicated and emotionally interesting as human stories, but they're they're chimps. And I just loved those books.

And it was when I was researching about bonobos, because I bought a pair of bonobos pants.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I love that that I didn't realize I heard that later. You're like, I'm planning to get a pair of khakis, got some chinos.

Eliot Schrefer: Oh my god. I bought those. Yeah. If I bought Levi's, I

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: wouldn't feel bad because I'm like, I've never thought about the bonobos yet, you know. But we bought some bonobos in this house, but yeah. Yeah.

Eliot Schrefer: And I was reading the story of these orphaned apes that are being raised by humans and I, was just so moved by it and I always try to pay attention to when I'm really moved by something because I'm I tend to be a little bit more on the thinky side and less on the feely side. And the fact that I was feeling these deep feelings, I was like, oh, I, you know, explore that a little bit more. So I ended up reading more about them and going to going to Congo to say at a bonobo sanctuary. And that was the beginning of this ape quartet. And I think there's a lot that bonds us with the nonhuman world, and nonfiction about animals can get a lot of the facts and information out.

But for that, like, emotional bonding that, like, we might actually have nonhuman companions that have a lot to say about being human, I think fiction can do a lot for establishing, like, an emotional argument about how things are, and that was kinda what I wanted to tackle with that series.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Fiction is the emotional argument for how things are. That's a great line. But in this case, I want to transition us to nonfiction and perhaps Eliot's most famous book, Queer Ducks and Other Animals. We referenced it earlier, but, in short, it's a book about queerness and its widespread existence in the animal kingdom. As you can imagine, a You book with the word queer right in the title gained some attention.

Eliot Schrefer: That came out in 2022. It was a really interesting test case in soft censorship because we assumed going in that as a You nonfiction, we were gonna live in schools and libraries and institutions primarily, and not in bookstores. And it wound up being the opposite was the case. So it was very little library pickup. I can totally empathize with librarians who weren't able to acquire the book for their collection because it's clear from, like, the card catalog, not card catalogs, clear from the digital catalog that this book has LGBT content.

And so if they're all feeling at risk of keeping their jobs or staying safe, it was a step they couldn't take. But that changed in January of the following year because it was a Prince honor. And for a lot of systems, that's an auto buy. So they buy anything that is in the Newberry Prints. Yeah, Gamut.

So it wound up in a lot of schools in areas where they never would have acquired it before. And that's when it really became a much bigger thing. When, All Things Considered did a short segment on the book and their Facebook post about it became like sort of the village green for people coming to talk about the book from both sides. I was about to wade in and start fighting back with some and then I just realized that I shouldn't and then the left wing trolls started trolling the right wing trolls and there was there was one, one guy said, yeah, guys. This book is terrible.

I mean, my son read it, and now he's a duck. That's when I, like, leaned back away from the keyboard. I was like, it's gonna be fine.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I'll let them take care of it. He's a duck. I love it. I love I love when it solves itself. It solves itself.

Okay. Well,

Eliot Schrefer: a good tease nothing is more powerful than a good tease, you know, when it's deployed well.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. So true. So true. And it is deployed, very well, in your books. But what about your other books?

Have you ever gotten responses that made you feel like, you know, like you're just truly connecting with the people that you are trying to reach?

Eliot Schrefer: There was actually a review for Darkness Outside Us that I loved. It was a reader review and, he said, you know, I I gave this book to my cousin and he's been really conservative and homophobic, and now all he wants to do is read male male romances. I was like, it was a long journey going on here, but I was like, oh,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: this is

Eliot Schrefer: sort of a, you know but, like, what a great Yeah. I mean, that's what I love about books. Right? Is they give you this pathway to explore something that in a safe place that you can control. So, like, a kid or any reader can put a book down when it becomes something that's beyond what they're ready for or capable of.

And even unlike a movie where it's a bigger ordeal to leave the movie theater if it goes places you're not ready for. Books are just perfect ways to navigate what you might be too scared to mention out loud or what you're curious about. And I think just like when I was, you know, a closeted teenager and books made me feel seen and that I existed in a broader world and that there were other futures out there if I didn't like my current one, that continues to happen day by day. And so I think providing those kind of stories is really important to me for the ones who need it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I know that cautiousness can be our doom just as much as recklessness, but no one else seems to see it. Eliot wrote that line in his new book, The Brightness Between Us. It stood out to me as I read, and I asked him about what it meant to him. He responded that what it meant to him wasn't really the point.

Eliot Schrefer: One thing I love about writing a book is that it is my responsibility as a writer to come up with great questions for the reader to have as they read, but it's it's not my responsibility to come up with great answers. And in fact, it's actually pretty annoying when a book clearly does have the answers to the questions it raises. Then you're like, oh, great. I'm just being lectured to. Especially young people hate that.

Right? Yeah. So I love raising the question of how do you balance there's 2 siblings on this exoplanet in Brightness Between Us, and one is very content to stay home and garden, and the other one wants to go out and explore their world and thinks it's really important to do that. And their parents are also divided along this question. I just love exploring both arguments and then letting the reader fall wherever they want to along it.

There's also a thread in Brightness Between Us of the question of whether humans even should be continuing. Like, if we deserve to continue as a species. Like, should we be settling other planets? Or have we mucked up Earth enough that, like, sorry, you had your chance. Like, you're you're off with some other species to give it a try.

Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting question, one that I don't have a good answer to. I'm actually not not sure which way I would fall. And luckily, I don't need to have an answer. You know, if I was if this was a non fiction text about that, then you might expect to have a conclusion that would state what the outcome is.

But the fiction works better when it doesn't get to an answer. And then the reader can just decide what they want.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Do you consider yourself more of a cautious or a reckless person?

Eliot Schrefer: Cautious. For sure. I'm like the most defensive driver you're ever gonna ever gonna meet. Like, 40 feet following distance, hands a 10 and 2.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. But moments of of recklessness. Yeah.

Eliot Schrefer: Yeah. Occasional reckless moments for sure. I mean, Saturday night has to be Saturday night.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Speaking of humans letting another species have the spotlight, Elliot's reading challenge, beyond the human experience, follows the theme of viewing the world from outside of our own perspectives.

Eliot Schrefer: I like the idea of reading beyond the human experience or reading a point of view that isn't human because it reminds us that we're not the only creatures worth caring about, and I think it's wonderful to explore another animal's consciousness or or what it might be like. And I think you'll see the books in the list run a huge range from really anthropomorphized animals like Wilbur in Charlotte's Web who is clearly like a human zipped into a pig suit. Like, has all these human feelings in conversation and dialogue and Yes. And then other radical examples where we really find someone is really delving deep into an animal's experience like, Lalaine Paul's The Bees, which is really the point of view of a bee pretty accurately presented. You know, some flights of fancy but you get to know what it would be like to be in a hive as a bee.

I I just love that getting to open a book and entering something so different and coming back to my own life a little bit changed or having learned something about another another creature.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You can find Eliot's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at the reading culture pod dot com. This episode's featured librarian is Tammy McIntyre, a library media specialist in Gwinnett County, Georgia for many years and now working with us at Beanstack. Today, she offers a guiding principle she follows as a librarian and especially as a parent.

Tammy McIntyre: So this is something I heard many years ago when I started teaching. A counselor shared it at a parent night, and it's something my husband and I try to live out as well. So I am practicing while preaching, and that is to say yes as much as possible with your kids and to save the no's for, like, the bigger things that really could impact them. And I think that that applies really well to reading and books. Like, if your kid wants to read graphic novels all the time, say yes because they love it.

As educators, obviously, we want kids to advance. We want their reading levels to increase. Like, those things matter. But as far as, like, a kid loving reading, I think saying yes to the books that they're choosing is a really easy thing for parents. And just to kinda trust that it's all gonna work out, like, let school teachers work on those reading levels, and you as a parent say yes to what your kids would love to read.

We try to do that with my my son is 7, and, he's actually quite behind reading wise, and he wants to read Skippyjon Jones every single night. Like, that's the book that he wants to read, and we just keep saying yes. You know, we're reading it to him. He's not even reading it, but we're reading it to him because that's what he loves. Like, he can even, like he he tells us what's coming next.

You know? Those little moments are really powerful too.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been The Reading Culture, you've been listening to my conversation with Eliot Schrefer. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. And currently, I'm reading The Red Pencil and many other works by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a 5 star review. It just takes a second, and it really helps.

It truly does, y'all. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport and Lower Street Media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan. To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, be sure to check out all of our resources at beanstack.com, And remember to sign up for our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.comforward/newsletter for special offers and bonus content. Thanks for listening, and keep reading.