Katherine Applegate

Katherine Applegate:
I think it's really the obligation of a children's writer to write hopeful books. I can't imagine not writing a hopeful book.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Hope, it's perhaps the most important tool we have to stay optimistic in life. For most young children, it comes naturally at first, but it can be difficult to hold onto as kids brush up against the hard truths of our world and their seeming powerlessness in the face of injustice, suffering, and even death. Stories are one way we prepare our children to be resilient in the face of those hardships, and it's no accident that so many of our most treasured and effective stories on those topics are stories about animals.

I think it has to do with powerlessness and with the kind of hierarchy that kids endure every day, where these grownups are not making sense and the world doesn't make sense, and animals are basically suffering the same fate.

Katherine Applegate is a decorated, renowned author known for the beloved Animorphs series, as well as Odder, and the Newberry Medal winning, The One and Only Ivan. In this episode, she talks about the connection between kids and animals, and she shares about how a community came together to fight the censorship of her book, Wishtree, and Katherine's part in that fight. We hear about why she always chooses comedy over tragedy, even when the world feels most bleak. Katherine also tells us about the real reason she isn't out roughing it with Jane Goodall and the gorillas. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with authors and illustrators about the ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations, and why their stories and ideas motivate kids to read more. Make sure to check us out on Instagram for giveaways, @thereadingculturepod, and you can also subscribe to our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter. All right, onto the show.

I was personally very excited about finding out in my research that you wrote for Sweet Valley Twins. That is the greatest thing ever that you wrote for.

Hey, 17 Sweet Valley Twins.

17 of them?

Yeah, and it was a massive stable of authors. It was a package series created by Francine Pascal. We had a Bible, and it would have things like Jessica's pink telephone is on the right side of the bed, so we'd all get it right.

Oh, yeah. I always wonder about those kind of details. Right, right, right. Okay.

It was really fascinating. It was actually a great way to learn, and your name isn't on there, so for those of us who were really chicken about exposing ourselves, it was a really good way to learn. I gave Jessica her first period.

You did?

I did indeed.

Oh my God. Wait, Jessica was the mean one, right?

She was the evil one. Yeah, she was the one. I was at Austin at the book fair there and mother came through. She was a big Twins fan and we were talking, and she had her daughter next to her. I told her that about the period, and her daughter looked up at her and said, "Mom, what's a period?" I'm like, "Oh, crap."

You're like, "I gave you your first period talk." Whoops. That's amazing. Let's start. We'll go back, further back, in your life and start off just a little bit about where you grew up and what your early childhood was like.

Well, I was born in the Midwest in Michigan. I'm a Michigander, but I lived all over. My dad was with IBM, and the joke was it stood for I've Been Moved, so we moved around a lot. My mom eventually became an artist. She started out as a nurse and was miserable, and later in life went back to school and got an art degree. I was probably 25 or 30 when she did. I was so proud of her.

That's so cool.

It just made her so happy. It was a really good life lesson to see somebody move from a miserable job to homemaker where she was wildly happy. I had this other creative thing going on, and it was really lovely to see. I had lots of pets growing up, which is pretty obvious from my focus in my books. I was, in fact, one of the first purveyors of gerbils in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I was featured on the cover of the local newspaper as a pert 9-year-old who-

Pert 9-year-old.

There was this catalog back in the day called Creative Playthings. For some reason, they had gerbils in it. I was obsessed and I wanted them for Christmas so badly. Unfortunately, my parents got a male and a female. They were wildly prolific.

Oh my God, this is like my worst nightmare in your home.

[inaudible 00:05:02] because they were everywhere, and so I ended up just selling and giving away endless, endless numbers of gerbils.

But no gerbil books so far.

No. Actually, I had one very early on. It was called The World's Best Jinx McGee. It was very sweet. I remember the artist did a little picture of a gerbil in a wedding costume with a little veil. It was adorable.

You were like an entrepreneur because you had to sell off all of your gerbils?

Essentially, yeah.

Oh my god.

I was absolutely sure I was going to be a vet growing up and, in fact, in high school worked for a vet. It was fascinating. I got to assist in surgery. Mostly, I gave cats baths and picked up a lot of poop. I realized I was much more interested in what was going on cognitively, what they were thinking, how they were communicating, and not so much with the more physical end of things, which struck me as redundant and boring after a while, so that was my goal growing up. I was not going to be a writer. In fact, and I emphasize this to kids with great regularity, I did not like to read. I am not alone in my feelings, but most of the authors who do school visits will tell you, "Oh, I was reading in the womb," and I was not that kid at all.

Did you just not get into it? Do you remember the books that were assigned or books, that would require naming names and everything, but do you remember just being like, "Ugh, I just not that excited"?

I just thought it was boring. As it happens, I have a daughter who has dyslexia. Of course, that can make it really challenging, but with good teachers, you can overcome that, but that wasn't my problem. I just thought it was dull. For me, the gateway drug was Charlotte's Web. To this day, I remember Mrs. Gray reading it to our third grade class, and it was life-changing. Of course, now, when I read it, the emotional content is what gets me, but at the time, it was talking big of [inaudible 00:07:09].

Right, that makes sense for you. Yeah.

It was just so cool. I try to remind teachers and librarians that I... I am absolutely sure Mrs. Gray never knew that I went on to write over 150 books, but I did, and it was because of that moment. Teachers so often don't get to see that magical connection they make.

Oh, yeah. It's so true. Who knows when that's going to actually show up? But in your case, did that flip the switch for you? Did you get into reading or writing soon after that?

I was pretty slow. I remember bits and pieces. I remember reading... I learned of the Blue Dolphins, for example. There are little ones that stick in my memory, and weirdly, I was writing a bit. I wrote song lyrics, thank God those are long gone, and some poetry of sorts. I remember writing, my first short story was about a wild pig, a peccary named Alice, which happens to be my middle name. I think I wrote that in about third or fourth grade. Even though I wasn't reading, I was playing with words a little bit. I always tell kids, "That's the day I became a writer," because I go nuts when I talk to kids and they want to know how to get published and they'll be in seventh grade. "No, no, no, no. You're already a writer. Love it. Have fun with it."

Between her gerbil pedaling, her love of Charlotte's Web, and her curiosity about her veterinary patients, Katherine's childhood was already shaping what would eventually become a staple in her writing the inner lives of animals, but the path to a career as an author included some early detours.

No, I was going to be a feminist lawyer. I studied, it's the University of Texas, and they have a program called Plan II, where you don't really declare a major. You either end up being a doctor or a lawyer or you became a really good waitress. I became a really bad waitress.

You're like Plan III.

Plan III, yeah. I just did all kinds of flaky jobs and I was just miserable at them. Eventually, the idea of dipping my toe in the literary waters hit me, but I was just terrified of failing. It's such a public way to fail, so I started doing quizzes for YM Magazine and then I wrote, with my husband, two Harlequin romances. To this day, I will not tell anyone-

Wait. Yeah, that was my next question. Which one?

No, I'm not telling you. We tried that and then found out about packaging, which was more popular, I think, back then than it is now, but Hardy Boys used to do it. Lots of people have done it, and that's how I started writing Sweet Valley. I wrote a whole bunch of different series under a whole bunch of different names. I mean, I've honestly lost track. There was one series we did, I think it was called Ocean City. I had my name on it, my husband didn't want his name anywhere near these, and then they went on to keep selling in Europe. I wasn't writing them anymore but my name was still on them, as I understand it. There are books out there, they could be Nazi propaganda, for all I know.

Oh my God, by Kate Applegate.

[inaudible 00:10:30] Who knows?

Katherine spent several years writing for package series like Sweet Valley Twins, which is how she came to give Jessica her first period. Hey, she deserved it. In the 1990s, Katherine broke through with the prolific series of her own, the wildly popular Animorphs books, inspired in part by her childhood fascination with the minds of animals. That theme soon became a trademark of her work, both in standalone novels, like Crenshaw, and in series, such as her Endling trilogy, and of course, The One and Only Ivan quartet. Stories from and about the perspective of animals are all over children's literature, but why? Why is it that kids connect with them so deeply? Katherine has thought a good deal about it.

I think it has to do with powerlessness and with the kind of hierarchy that kids endure every day, where these grownups are not making sense and the world doesn't make sense, and animals are basically suffering the same fate. The wonderful thing is you can be a kid and you can give solace to an animal, you can care for it. You can take over that almost adult role. I think that's really empowering, so I do think that's a part of it.

Do you think in The One and Only Family, this has me thinking about it, there's a point at which they're referring to the humans as like, I forget one of Ivan's kids, is like, "Are you in charge or are you not in charge? Because these humans are in charge of you"?

That's the scary thing about children, is how insightful and intuitive they are about power dynamics and things like that. They know so much more than we give them credit for, and I think, as a result, are afraid of a lot more than we want to admit to ourselves, but they're also capable of a lot more than we sometimes want to admit. They can handle more, which is why, at the time, when Charlotte's Web came out, people were so shocked that it talked about death. "How can you do that with these small kids?" I've had kindergarten teachers read The One and Only Ivan, which surprised me. I like to think I'm pretty open-minded about them, but I certainly have first and second grade teachers read it. It has some very dark moments in it, but kids are okay. Of course, a lot of that is because they have a guide, a teacher or a parent walking them through it, and I think that's very important.

Yeah, it's critical. Going back to that point about powerlessness, do you feel like you understood that connection when you were a kid, that maybe there was, I don't know, something universal between animal experiences and our experiences?

Oh, absolutely. I was fascinated even then about what they were thinking. To this day, the chasm continues to fascinate me, and I think, in part, it was because I'm an introvert. I was shy when I was a kid and connecting with people was hard sometimes. I could relate to pets and I could connect with them, and yet I still didn't really know what was going on. When I write now and I jump into the heads of animals, I'm always aware of that moment where I'm anthropomorphizing and taking that leap, because we don't really know, do we?

No, but do you feel like you do now? When you see a dog now or when you see... Are you thinking like, "I am really viewing that animal in a completely different way"?

Oh, as much as you can. It's interesting. I did a book not that long ago called Odder, and I just dove deeply.

Yeah, you really researched for that one, right? You went [inaudible 00:14:22].

I really did that. I had it vetted by the marine biologist. They like to be called aquarists, I discovered at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, because I really wanted to get it right and to get as close as I could. But the moment you're always projecting, the moment you start writing about an animal's thoughts, there are degrees. There's the Jack London at one end and then there's Frog and Toad at the other. You're always parsing it.

Interesting. How do you decide how far you go or where do you draw that line?

It's hard working on The One and Only Family. The last book in the Ivan Quartet, Ivan is a parent. In real life, we don't think he ever was. Ivan,\ for those who aren't familiar with the story, was based on a true story. There was a real gorilla who spent 27 years in a Tacoma mall, believe it or not, before being released to a zoo, but I had to think about what it would be like in the setting of a zoo to become a parent and how much do they know. In this particular case, Ivan and Kinyani, his wife of sorts, are separated from other gorillas, and so you don't have that knowledge that comes from being around others in the same species. They'll do things like give them stuffed baby gorillas to play with to work on the nurturing.

Demon babies.

Yeah.

I love that.

I had to think about that and how far I wanted to go, because at the same time, I found myself exploring what it's like to be a parent, more generally, how we want to protect our kids and how hard that is to do.

Yeah. What's the line? I think Kinyani says it to him, "It's not about protecting our kids, it's about preparing them."

Preparing them, yeah.

North Brooklyn, Maine, 30, March 1973.
"Dear Mr. Nado, as long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock as a contribution to order and steadfastness. Sailors have an expression about the weather. They say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society. Things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds and all is changed sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people, we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. Hang onto your hat, hang onto your hope, and wind the clock for tomorrow is another day. Sincerely, E. B. White."

You may recall that Meg Medina also read a letter by E. B. White as her passage, and Kate DiCamillo read directly from Charlotte's Web. E. B. is becoming a popular reference on the show, and as it happens, Katherine and Kate have a friendly feud over who gets to claim Charlotte's Web as their own.

Kate thinks Charlotte's Web was written just for her, but it was written just for me.

In the letter that Katherine read from the collection Letters of E. B. White, E. B. was responding to a letter he received from a man about the bleakness of the world around him and his despair for the future. While Katherine had long been a fan of his work, she only came to read and appreciate this letter once she was well-established in her career.

That would've been, oh, maybe 20 years ago or so. I was trying to remember what particularly dark moment I was having that I found some solace in that. But they're wonderful to read because it's like talking to your, I don't know, your favorite uncle who's just always says just the right thing. Sometimes you need that. They're always infused with humor, which was, of course, a great gift of his. I think the beauty of his books is there's always that little thread of hope.

That little thread is something that Katherine believes should be woven into the fabric of all children's literature.

I think it's really the obligation of a children's writer to write hopeful books. I can't imagine not writing a hopeful book. I think it's gotten harder, at least for me. A lot of that, I think, has to do with climate change, well, and politics, this kind of apocalyptic feel about the world. When you write and you're able to make sense, at least temporarily, of the chaotic complications in the world and then hand it to a child, I think that's a really wonderful thing to be able to do for both ends, especially for me because it helps me make sense. I think that's why a lot of people write. I know that's why I write. I'm imposing order in a world that doesn't always make sense to me.

Yeah, it is increasingly difficult. Do you feel like you have to... I don't know. Has your process changed at all? The longer you write, the more you feel hopeful, or the longer you write, the harder it is to remain hopeful?

No, I'm still there. I'll tell you, going to do school visits is so important because it grounds you and you're reminded of how much energy and enthusiasm there is with these kids. Sometimes when I do feel worried, I find doing a school visit or going on a tour is the best medicine possible. I do think I'm trending a little more toward writing about those topics. I wrote Willodeen, which was sort of a fantasy about climate change. Odder, the catalyst for writing that, was a story I'd read about otters in Monterey Bay whose numbers had declined drastically. They were finding, because of climate change, that the water was warming and the kelp beds are changing, and one of the many manifestations... For one thing, they're seeing diseases like toxoplasmosis show up more, but they're also seeing great white sharks come in closer to shore.
Great white sharks, apparently, when they're young, are not the brightest guys on the block. They look up and they see these long, dark forms and think, "Oh, seal blubber, this is going to be fun," and sometimes it's a surfer. Quite often, unfortunately, it's an otter. As a result, they were having all these orphan baby otters, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium developed a surrogate mother program. When I started writing that book, it was just going to be, "Otter adventure, won't this be fun? Oh, they're so cute," and then I came across halfway through the book, this story about the surrogate mom program, and the whole book veered in a different direction.

Have you had any school or any visits that stand out to you as like, "Oh yeah, I know that something happened," or kids said something that really stayed with you in that vein?

Oh, I've had so many in different ways. A lot of times, they'll end up doing... I love this about teachers and librarians, like they don't have enough to do, they create these complicated curriculum around a book, especially one book, one school reads, which I think are absolutely fantastic idea. I probably would've been a reader a lot sooner if I'd been exposed to one of those, because you've got everybody reading the same book, the teachers, and librarians, and lunch ladies, and crossing guards. For those of us who are reluctant readers, I think it's a way to bring you into the fold even if you don't particularly like a book. I've seen schools adopt otters, and gorillas, and raise money.

For Wishtree, I've seen just so many beautiful trees with wishes hanging off of them, and they're always poignant. Some of them are funny. It'll be, "I wish I could see my dad," or, "I wish my grandma could get better," or, "I wish I had a camel for a pet." They run the gamut. It's always amazing to me that schools can... With all the other things they have to deal with right now, that they are able to put together programs like that.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure they've picked your book many a time, and how cool to have that happen. But I read that for when they did Wishtree in a community like Floyd County, it was just like this one woman outside of the county who initiated a protest of that. Yeah?

She didn't like the tree. She was concerned about a botanical fact. I won't get into the botany because I'm not a botanist, but she was offended by the tree, and then it took off. What was fascinating about it was a district-wide read, so these elementary schools were already halfway through reading it. They were well-established. They knew there would be projects and celebrations, and they just pulled it without an explanation. I tried to speak to the school board and they were not interested. A wonderful parent read a statement at the next meeting, and then the public library and my publisher really picked up on it, and we went down there and met at the public library. Two sold out sessions, and all the kids and parents and teachers who'd been reading the book came to the public library and we talked about it, but that kind of thing is just exhausting when you're already an overworked librarian or teacher. I keep thinking the banning instinct is going to fade, and it just keeps rearing its ugly head.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I think we all keep hoping that it will but...

It is deeply frustrating, I think to so many of us, that we are not making more progress on the question of banning books, and librarians always end up being on the front lines of this. They are so courageous. Booksellers too, by the way, and teachers. I've talked to people on school boards and librarians who say they can only communicate with their private emails because of FOIA requests and that kind of thing. It's gotten that intrusive and intense, and I think the only way through it is to fight back book by book, school board by school board. It's so important to think about who is on those boards because it really makes a difference. Eventually, I'm confident we'll win the battle, but it's exhausting. I think just watching that little incident in Floyd, it was a reminder of how complicated it gets. Parents have enough to deal with, librarians have enough to deal with, so to add that energy drain is really scary, but it's vitally important. You just got to keep fighting the good fight.

Yeah. The fact that you went there and they still didn't make a change is mind-blowing.
I'm just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many people, especially LGBTQ and POC authors, who are just constantly fighting this fight. There was a wonderful documentary that was up for an Academy Award last year called the The ABCs of Book Banning, and what was so brilliant about it, they went... I think it was in Florida. They took these really young kids, second grade, and they gave them these books that had been banned, like And Tango Makes Three, and the kid had read it and go, "Well, it's not just about these really nice penguins and they're really good dads." Out of the mouths of babes, you get this really fresh perspective. They featured a girl in that documentary who was Muslim and she read from Wishtree. It was such a beautiful way to make it clear to people that we need to get past all this.

Yeah. I've read that your husband told you at the very beginning of your career, you can look at life as a comedy or a tragedy, or the beginning of your marriage maybe. You've chosen comedy, but the world around us is more of a tragedy sometimes. How do you maintain that comedic outlook?
I'm not sure I do. Yeah, that was a good entree to our marriage right there. It's one or the other, isn't it? It's funny because I really am, I'm a consummate pessimist, and I often write optimistic characters. I wrote a character called Keck in Home of the Brave, who's this Sudanese refugee, just amazingly resilient, so not the person I would've been in that circumstance. I think sometimes writing is a good way to remind yourself there's the possibility for being more optimistic and to see the world as comedy. I try, I think it's really important, and I don't even think it's forced. I mean, the world is funny, it's absurd, and humans are really strange creatures. If you look at the world that way, you're always entertained.

Actually Flo, my daughter, she writes on these little post-it notes. Well, she used to, not as much anymore, but she used to have these little post-it notes where she would read a book, and she would find a quote, and she would put it up. She's very sentimental. I told you, she was a huge fan of Willodeen. I wrote down, I still have a couple of them on my bulletin board that she had, but it says, "The Earth is old and we are not, and that is all you must remember."

I love that Flo picked up on that. That's so lovely. It's so true, isn't it? I think we tend to forget that, that there's a solace and a wisdom in nature. I happen to live in Las Vegas right now. [inaudible 00:28:34]

When I sent your thing, I'm like, "Wait, what?"

I know. I feel like I have to explain. I've lived all over. I am a long-term Californian, and my husband and I are going to be traveling a lot so it was just... We kind of plopped all our stuff here. I shouldn't speak gull of Las Vegas because the desert is absolutely beautiful, and I've never been exposed to that particular geography. It's gorgeous, but it's very, very different. I find myself longing for jasmine, and orange trees, and all that stuff you get in Southern California, and you actually feel the need for it. I'm not someone out trekking the Himalayas every day, but you do, it's in your bones that you need to be growing things and around growing things. I think that's important to remember.

Yeah. Are you a religious or spiritual person? You have such a connectivity. Your writing is so deeply, there's such connection between humans and animals and then animals among animals, animals with the Earth.

That's an interesting question. No, I'm an atheist and an agnostic on bad days. I do absolutely believe that there's a connectivity. There's just so much we don't understand about the world and about nature, and there's magic there. I find solace in that.

Yeah. Even in the desert, I guess.

I'm struggling. I've got a bougainvillea out in my [inaudible 00:30:09].

How's it doing?

It's not bad.

Okay. Let's talk about The One and Only Ivan, the most amazing book, which turned into this whole series with the world of characters. Now, it's all come to a close with The One and Only Family. I guess I want to know, does that leave you with a tinge of sadness now the story is technically over? Even though I know the characters are going to live on through all the generations and everything of new readers, but how does it feel personally to say goodbye?

It's bittersweet. It is because they do become so real to you. They're your friends. That is one of the wonderful things about series, is they grow, and change, and they become so much a part of you. On the other hand, I really like books with a beginning and a middle and an end. I'm drawn to single titles, probably because I've just done so many series over the years. I never thought that Ivan would generate more books.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. It was written in such a way that they're like-

Not at all, not at all. Kids would ask, "Oh, what happens to Bob? What happens to Bob?" I usually just say, "Well, once you have a book in your hands, it belongs to you, and what happens to those characters belongs to you," but it was fun to revisit all that. Yeah. It was sad to see them go, but I loved bringing Ivan full circle in that way. It put a nice period on it. I've been so lucky to connect with, in particular, Jody Kerrigan, who was Ivan's best friend for many, many years. She's the associate curator of primates at Zoo Atlanta, and so I got a lot of behind the scenes information about what he was like. He was quite a character.

Also just about behavior generally, I was able to go back with her. I never actually met Ivan, although I tried to go, and it was raining that day. He hated wet weather. But Jody took me back and I got to hang out with some of the toddlers, and they are every bit as energetic and crazy as your average two-year-old. It was like going to a preschool. They were just nuts. That, to me, was an added perk, just to be able to learn about these magnificent creatures.

Yeah. Have you ever gotten to see them in the wild or in other...

Jetti does tours I think every couple of years to Rwanda and other places, so I sort of have a standing invitation. I would love to do that.

Yeah. Oh my God, you and, I guess, Jane Goodall, something is happening in that.

I always say, "When I grow up, I want to be Jane Goodall," except that I really, really like a nice cup of coffee in the morning and a hot shower. I did meet her, well, meet her in a long line. I handed her Ivan the book, and it was at a California book event. I marvel at her energy because she does that almost daily. The entire year, she's traveling, and it's because she thinks it's her mission to try to get people more aware of what we need to do to help endangered species and the planet more generally. It's amazing. I hope I have that much energy.

Well, Katherine has certainly brought that positive energy for this episode's reading challenge, Exploring the Animal-Human Bond. She's curated a lively list perfect for these dog days of summer or any time. Of course, the books include many animals.

I realized, I was thinking, "Oh, it's summer." You just want to have fun and you want to read happy books, so I came up with a list I call Exploring the Animal-Human Bond. Some of them were a little darker, like Pax by Sarah Pennypacker. Some are really lighthearted, like Mr. Putter & Tabby Pour the Tea, which is a younger series by Cynthia Rylant that I've always loved. Across the board, even though some are fantasy and some are not, they talk about the way we connect with animals, and I thought that would be a fun way to look at reading.

I like that. Well, you don't have to, but which book or books of yours would you include if you were to include yours? I usually like to at least throw in at least one.

There so many, there's so many. Well, obviously, Ivan is the go-to because it's, I think, really reflects the best and the worst of human behavior. I think that's what was so compelling about his story, because humans were so awful, his entire troop was wiped out. Yet, on the other hand, you had all these humans gathered together, in ways big and small, protesting and legal action, and eventually getting him transported to a place where he could be with other Western [inaudible 00:35:13] gorillas for the first time in almost 30 years. It was magnificent, so I think it's interesting to explore that with kids and to remind them that, as hard as we can be on the animal kingdom, we can always do amazing things.

You can find Katherine's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at thereadingculturepod.com. This episode's Beanstack featured librarian is Lexi Whitehorn, literacy specialist at the North Dakota State Library. Lexi tells us about a heartwarming relationship she built with a struggling student through recommending books.

Lexi Whitehorn:
At my last school, I was teaching eighth grade English. That year, we had a pretty hard group of kids, lots of broken homes, lots of troubled teens, none of them liked to read. My goal was to get them interested in reading. Whether it's a book at lower than their level or a book that really challenges them, I just wanted them to read. It was the last day before holiday break, and I had a student come up to me. This student was very quiet, struggling with some gender identity, so super smart, but just very shy and didn't really speak out in class. They came up to me and asked if I had any recommendations for them over Christmas break. I said, "Here's seven or eight books that I really enjoy that I think you would enjoy." When they returned, they came down to my classroom. They told me that they had read every single book and were looking for more recommendations.

Throughout that second semester, they would come up to me and say, "Oh, I finished another book that you gave me. What else do you got for me?" We really started to build that relationship and they came to me quite a few times with some concerns that they had. "What do I do about this?" At the end of the year, they wrote me a thank you letter. I bawled. It was just so heartfelt. They said, "Thank you for supporting me in this year, as I was really struggling, and all of the books that you recommended opened my eyes to something new." It was just really heartfelt. That's my purpose in teaching, is to be able to reach kids like that.

This has been The Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with the One and only, Katherine Applegate. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. Currently, I'm reading Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Kiss the Girl by Zoraida Córdova. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five-star review. It just takes a second and it really helps. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport in Lower Street Media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto-Egan. To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, please check out all of our resources at beanstack.com, and remember to sign up for our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers and bonus content. Thanks for listening and keep reading.

Katherine Applegate

Katherine Applegate

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