Katherine Marsh

Katherine Marsh:
I want to be aware of the market. I want to be aware of my audience, but at the same time, I don't want to just write for the market and the audience, I want to do something that I feel is substantive.

So it's that finding exactly where that balances that is... It's something that you're constantly doing as a writer.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Typically, we try to keep that opening quote as short as possible. Don't want to lose your attention right away, because let's face it, in 2024, our attention is being fought for everywhere, 30 seconds at a time. Katherine Marsh is very aware of that and doesn't admire it.

Katherine Marsh:
There's a part of me that has always wished I was born in the 19th century, and I could be a 19th-century writing invalid who just like... But I'm not. I'm born now in this time, and we can't live completely separate from our times.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Katherine is an award-winning author, best known for her novels, the Night Tourist, Nowhere Boy, and The Lost Year, which was a National Book Award finalist. And while she may not have been born in the 1800s, she does sometimes set her stories amidst the harsh but true realities of prior centuries. Her works have earned multiple accolades, including the Edgar Award for best Juvenile, Mystery and recognition from the New York Times. In this episode, Katherine suggests how we can repair the damage that the pandemic did to kids reading, and talks about how loving a daughter can sometimes end up holding her back.

My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, 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. We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations.

This show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating students to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com and make sure to check us out on Instagram @thereadingculturepod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter. All right, onto the show.

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I'll start off with your grandma who, I wonder if you called her Gigi. Did you call her Gigi?

Katherine Marsh:
No, I didn't, actually. So I just called her Grandma Natasha. That's what I called her, but she was certainly an inspiration for the book and somebody I grew, I grew up with her. She was my second mom. She was just really instrumental in my appreciation for storytelling, but she was a great storyteller.

But she had no education. She went to school in Ukraine for four winters, which is, I guess, what people did because you'd work on the farm in the fall and late spring. She was literate, but not at all intellectual. She read Harlequin romances, like the big print ones, I remember seeing those in her room, and watched a lot of... She loved her opera and her game shows and things like soap operas.

But she really told great stories, and it was a tradition of oral storytelling that she came from, and she just brought Ukraine alive to me in her childhood there. And that really shaped my decision to study Russian, which was available at very few schools and Ukrainian nowhere in high school, so I couldn't study that. But to travel there as a young person and to write The Lost Year, obviously.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, I can imagine. And also, it was the nineties, right? So hard to find a place where else you could do that.

Are there any stories that your grandma used to tell you that really stand out or have stuck with you?

Katherine Marsh:
The one that comes to mind is a story about...

My grandmother lost her father when she was five years old. He was murdered. And he had gone out to a neighboring village and promised that when he came back he'd bring her candy. And so he was found wounded and died shortly thereafter, but they brought him back to the house and my grandmother, who was too young to understand what was really happening, started to scrounge in his pocket for the candy, and when she didn't find any, she started to cry.

And I remember hearing that, and it was such an anguishing story, but also really about childhood and the way that grief takes all these different forms, especially when you don't quite understand what's going on. That death shaped my grandmother's whole life. I don't think I would be here if my great-grandfather hadn't died, because after that point, the family had a lot of insecurities, and problems, and eventually that led to two members of the family, my grandmother and her brother, coming to this country. And if he had lived, they probably wouldn't have done that. And it split the family in two, and really different destinies. So that is a story that will always stay with me that moment. I can almost see it in my mind.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What a visual, the way that a kid, like you said, experiences something, and the fact that she can really remember it like that and could communicate it.

Katherine Marsh:
Yes, absolutely. And in broken English, because her English was not... It wasn't particularly strong, so she was using really basic language. And I think that was something that, even though I went on and had this fancy education and went on to schools where I was learning reading and writing at a very high level, that always stayed with me, that I want to be able to bridge that gulf, and I want to be able to use basic language and basic feeling even when I'm writing about things in a, I don't even want to say intellectual way, but I try to do both.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, hold that thought because I do want to talk more about that, and we are going to circle back, but I do first want to talk a little bit more about what you were growing up. So if you can share a bit more. For starters, were you always really bookish?

Katherine Marsh:
I was tiny.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Physically tiny.

Katherine Marsh:
Physically small. I was not athletic at all and I am not. I always loved books, but I didn't have a lot of confidence about school right out of the gate. I was not in the highest reading level in first grade or anything like that. I was a little bit intimidated by school and the other kids.

And then in second grade, I had this great teacher, Miss Lazovic, I still remember her, who encouraged me to write poetry. We started to write poetry, and I realized I could do it and it was really fun, and I loved language and I loved the sound of rhyming words, and I just liked... I liked the attention I got for doing it and it just felt like that was something I could do. And then I dove into school after that and became more bookish and was really one of these kids who read anything I could get my hands on from more elevated stuff to really trashy stuff.

I talk a lot about...

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Those Harlequin novels.

Katherine Marsh:
Not with the Harlequins, but I definitely had my, particularly in middle school, like Clan of the Cave Bear years.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, yes! I was talking about Julie Murphy. I hadn't thought about that until she mentioned, I'm like, "Oh, yeah."

Katherine Marsh:
It's funny. So anyway, basically because I was an only child, I didn't have siblings, I spent a lot of time with books, and so that was really something that shaped me a lot.

And middle school, who loves middle school? It was really a difficult time. My parents separated when I was 10, and then that was a very tough time for me, and I think I write for that age, that 10 to 14 age, because those years were really tough. I was dealing with parents who were in a very contentious divorce. I was, as I said, small and non-athletic, and a slow developer, and all those things. I just remember feeling miserable a lot. I was anxious.

And so I remember at that point that books and writing, which I'd started to do, felt like a big escape for me. And I'm sure this is really common. You probably hear this from a lot of writers, but that was really a big part of my decision to become a writer, although it didn't obviously happen for some years.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you keep journals and things?

Katherine Marsh:
I kept some journals, but I also wrote stories. I started doing that maybe in fourth or fifth grade and then got really into it in middle school and wrote really ridiculous stories about things I knew nothing about, which was...

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
For example?

Katherine Marsh:
I think I wrote a cowboy western in the voice of an old doctor. Things that were... I wrote something, a Bible-inspired book about Pontius Pilate. I had all these crazy things that I just tried out, and they were all horrible, I'm sure. But it was the idea that I could be a writer and the idea that this was something that I enjoyed doing that stuck with me.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You knew you loved writing and you saw that from a really young age that you love storytelling because you had your grandmother's oral storytelling. Your home sounds like it was a book rich, not rich, but a lot of reading happening.

Katherine Marsh:
When I look back, in some ways I feel like I had less books than my kids had, but it was more book rich, obviously, because there was no tech back in the days, and I hate to say that, but I'm going to be honest. But also just because there was more quiet time. There was more downtime, and that also is just by virtue of the fact there were no other children in the house. So it was a quiet house. It was a house of clocks ticking and people moving slowly. And the good part of that, the boredom that came with it, was also a lot of time to daydream and read.

In a quiet corner of an overgrown field where the snow lies deepest and the oak trees hold their leaves all winter, a beloved hound named John lies buried. Three cats are buried here, Webster, the first Siamese, a dear, dirty white cat named Crook who stole from the table, and Fat Boy who looked like Max. In this quiet corner, the best wild flowers grow and the first peepers are heard in the spring, even before the snow melts. Here, owls call from the treetops in the early morning, and the irreverent crows hold their noisy conventions.

Here, the mother deer has her fawn and the migrating geese come to rest. It is here that the fox is safe from the hunters. The animals that were, the animals that are, and the animals that will be bring joy, laughter, and life to the lives of the people who live in a house that needs painting, at the end of a road full of holes: Maple Hill Farm.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That excerpt is from Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm, a 1974 picture book by Alice and Martin Provenson, part of a series that brings a lively cast of farm animals to life.

The book is simple and engaging, yet, as you just heard, has deep and meaningful lessons about the realities of life and death, lessons that, because of this book, Katherine was exposed to early.

Katherine Marsh:
This book, by the way, I got when I was three years old and I still read it, and I've read it to my kids, and I just read it sometimes to read it to myself, but I chose it because this is an example for me of a book that meets readers where they're at, but also slips in something much bigger and deeper, which is it ends at a pet cemetery, essentially. And talking about the cycle of life, and the fact that we're all part of this world, where we are and where people we love were and things we love were, and which the future will be, and it's an imperfect world. It's a world with a house that needs paint and a road full of holes.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That house that needs paint line is really... It's killer.

Katherine Marsh:
And this is a book for small children, and yet we hear about irreverent crows in their noisy conventions. They slip in this incredibly elevated, beautiful language.

And the reason I chose it is because this is what I want to do with my books, is I want them to both be relatable, and interesting, and fun to kids, but to also touch on those bigger, deeper things that I think kids feel, and they know about, and are part of their lives, and they want ways to process. And this does it, I think in just such a perfect way. It's the temper of it's gentle, it's elegant, and it's meaningful.

So for me, it's that perfect combination of substance with something that is meeting kids where they're at, and relatable.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
A page-turner with depth, that's an apt description for Katherine's award-winning titles like Nowhere Boy, and Jep Who Defied the Stars.

But her most recent book, Medusa, also fits the bill. It's a great read, capturing the fierceness of a seemingly not-so-fierce young girl. And while it's got plenty of Percy Jackson style action-adventure, Medusa also has some weightier themes tucked below the surface. Katherine told us about the ideas she was exploring as she wrote it

Katherine Marsh:
For me, on one level, I wrote it just to be a great read, for kids to just enjoy the world, and have fun, and want to know what happens next, and just read the story and enjoy the emotions. But, I would not be a writer if I wasn't also doing things at a separate level that's accessible for some kid readers and for some adults who might read, and that makes it interesting also for me.

And so with that book, I was certainly interested in the fear. My mother, she is an incredible woman because she was such a fierce advocate for my education, and really the only one in my family who was. She did all this research on schools and figured out how to get me to the ones that she thought were the best. And at the same time, I have, as an adult woman and as a mother myself, seen the ways in which she's wanted me to be a caretaker in some ways that could be construed as traditional, and that feel like run counter to putting me out in the world.

And some of that is also, it comes from fear of wanting me to embrace those roles, not only out of tradition, but also because she worries that a career in the arts is not something that's financially sustainable, and it really isn't. No! It really isn't. You'd think like a National Book Award finalist and all these things would add up to secure living, but it doesn't.

But to get back to Medusa, I was really interested in exploring, because Ava and her mother have this dynamic where her mother is frightened for her. I understand that as a mother, I understand that as a daughter, and I think that is something that really drives love, but can hold women back, is that fear for their safety in a male world.

So that was something that I wanted to play with, those ideas as I wrote this book that was just fun. I feel like this is what unites my books, even though they're very different. It's confusing to people. I think you write these fantasies, you write the Lost Year. I have a book about a court dwarf and the Spanish Habsburg number. They're like, "What is it? Who are you?"

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
It's like your second grade self writing those stories just everywhere.

Katherine Marsh:
It's like all over the place, right? It's not a great commercial decision to be like that as a writer, because people want you to do one thing, and I do not want to do one thing, but the one thing that unites all of my fiction is that I'm trying to tell a good story while also exploring something that troubles me or you can go deep into.

And so all of my books, you'll find that you can read them on a very superficial level, some are easier than others to do that, but you can definitely do that. But, I also put a ton of stuff there for people to find and to think about, if they want to. And my great struggle as a writer, and I think this is true for a lot of writers, is to find that balance, because the audience is changing. I've been doing this for almost, I can't remember, 18 years or something like that, since my first book came out, and you're always gauging where your audience is at.

I want to be aware of the market, I want to be aware of my audience, but at the same time, I don't want to just write for the market and the audience. I want to do something that I feel is substantive. So it's that finding exactly where that balance is, that is something that you're constantly doing as a writer.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Katherine's goal of striking that perfect balance between keeping readers on the edge of their seats and delivering valuable intellectual insights is something she traces back to a writing job she held before she became well-known for fiction.

Katherine Marsh:
So I would say the other formative influence on me, besides growing up with my grandmother and an immigrant, is that I was a journalist. And one of the foremost jobs of being a journalist is clarity, and concision, and making sure that people understand why you're telling them something. And I feel like my training as a journalist is the other piece that's shaped my writing, is that I realize that you always need to be serving an audience to some degree, and you definitely want to create something that makes them turn the page or keep reading.

And I think the two most important things you can do as a writer is to make people wonder what will happen next and to understand why it matters, and if you can do those two things, then that's a way to hook readers and to take them on a ride that might not be what they necessarily thought they were in for, but you can take them in all sorts of directions.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And you mentioned that the audience is changing, and I wonder if you can comment a little bit more about the differences that you see in readers tastes now as compared to years or even generations ago.

Katherine Marsh:
I think that there's a lot of noise. Our metabolism has become very fast. There's a lot of frenetic storytelling. There's a part of me that has always wished I was born in the 19th century and I could be a nineteenth-century writing invalid who just like... But I'm not. I'm born now in this time, and we can't live completely separate from our time.

I do think we have to keep our pace faster, because that's what kids are used to. At the same time, I do think that it is important to slow down. You see it in movie pacing. You show your kids a movie you watched as a kid and they're like, "Oh my God, when's something going to happen?"

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What about the credits coming at the beginning? Imagine.

Katherine Marsh:
Imagine, exactly.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You can't sit through that.

Katherine Marsh:
This is something we talk about with kids, and I want to be totally honest with you, Jordan, this is a problem for me. This is a problem for adults, and I think we need to be really honest about that, too. I read less than I used to. I check my phone more than I should. It doesn't make us happy. I think we know that. I think there's an addiction piece to it. I think we'll look back at this, the way people look back at smoking in the fifties and be like, "Oh my God, it was so unregulated the way we did this and we didn't..." And we all know it's not good for us.

I was listening to Ezra Klein, he did a podcast on this and just how often we turn to, when we're tired or anxious, and we turn to our phones hoping for that little hit, and it doesn't actually satisfy, but it also just doesn't give us the rest we need. And so I think we need to find ways to model and to encourage that moment of stillness. But I don't have the answers. I wish I could be prescriptive. And I think that's part of also the problem at the time we live in is people are all yelling, saying, "I have the answer! I have the answer!" And I don't have the answer.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Actually, the answer is five slides or five things you can swipe and get a sentence. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This is how to do it.

Katherine Marsh:
I don't know the answer. I know that in my own work I am trying to figure out where that middle ground is. I'm trying to, again, meet the kids where they're at, write books that are a little bit shorter, keep my chapters shorter, keep the action coming. Because also we forget sometimes who we're writing for, and I'm as guilty of this as everyone. This is not me pointing fingers. I do feel like sometimes I get wrapped up in the issue that I want to write about, and when you talk to the kids, they're not as interested in issues as they are in action and adventure.

There's this real disconnect right now I think sometimes between gatekeepers who are reading as adults, making decisions on behalf of readers who may have very different priorities.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Can you say a little more on that?

Katherine Marsh:
I'll just talk about myself, because I don't want to seem like I'm finger pointing. I have different readers for different books. The first thing I think we have to realize is that you're going to find there are a lot of different kids out there with different tastes, and this is where I, if I will point a finger, I'll point it at the publishing industry, because they want in places like Barnes, &, Noble, which have hurt middle-grade authors terribly with their...

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
If any listener doesn't know, they basically stopped having sections, or selling the middle-grade books.

Katherine Marsh:
They don't really take anything in hardcover now unless it's a definite bestseller, but those bestsellers are appealing to a mass group of kids. But there are a lot of different readers out there. There are kids who like historical fiction, there are kids who will read a fairly sophisticated story, there are kids who really want visuals, and a lot of them. That's increased.

But there's different types of readers. And I've written some books that I realize are not for every middle-grade reader. The Lost Year is a sophisticated book, I have a lot of adults who read it, I've had a lot of kids who've written me and it's been very meaningful to them, but I think it's a book that a lot of middle schoolers need to read with an adult, too. Now, Medusa, I think on the other hand, is a book that kids will pick up and read on their own and don't need that, but I would say it's a less literary book, and that's not casting aspersions on my own book, but it's just a different experience and it's a different kind of reader.

I think that publishers should be supporters of all these books. I think that there are readers for all of them and that there's different kinds of reading experiences, but we're not looking at this in a dietary way, almost. You want to have a mixed diet. And that's what I tell kids when I visit them. As I say, "I don't care what you read, you should read everything, anything, but make sure that you're getting different things."

And what I worry about as a kid reading one type of book and then never reading, that not going anywhere. They're reading Diary of a Wimpy kid and reading it and reading and reading it, but that's not getting them to other books. So I feel like what I would love to see with both the publishing industry, and the gatekeepers, and the teachers is yes, you have to hook kids on reading, but you should also be bringing them to new types of books that they might not have picked up on their own, which includes doing more read-alouds. I love when teachers do read-alouds. I love when parents do read-alouds. We need to put reading into all these different contexts, so it's not just like, let's give the people what they want all the time, but yes, let's give them what they want, but let's also find ways to bring them into all these different other worlds.

And I can't tell you the number of letters I've gotten from kids for some of my more, I would say, literary books, whether it's Nowhere Boy or The Lost Year from kids saying, "My teacher gave this to me. I didn't think I would read it, and then I read it and I really liked it, and now it's my favorite book!" And I love those teachers. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But it's tough out there right now. I see it with own kids. It's really tough. Kids are over-scheduled, they don't have the downtime, the pandemic has really had a profound effect on reading stamina.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What do you think about, because I think a common thing that I many times will hear librarians say, so I wonder if you have a divergent thought on it, or if it's just yes and. So let's say a kid only wants to read graphic novels and that's it? I would say most librarians will be like, "Whatever they want, they can read. I'm never going to restrict the things that they read."

I think what I hear you saying is let them read for pleasure, whatever you want to read. Also, as an educational system, as educators, as parents, it's incumbent on the rest of us to make sure that that diet that you describe is diverse, and that you are getting these other things infused into your education as opposed to what you've written about, which I have seen so much. My son, seventh grade year, he did not have to buy or was not given a book. They're just reading passages.

Katherine Marsh:
Did you read the Atlantic piece I did on this?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes. So when I read it, I felt like, "Oh my God."

So I think that's what you're saying is like, yes, whatever you're going to read, if you're just going to read, read, whatever the heck that is, if that's reading Diary for Wimpy Kid is like a junior in high school, but the rest of your reading life, as it were, it's incumbent on the rest of us to make sure that there are real and diverse types of reading being infused by the rest of us. Or is what I'm saying wrong?

Katherine Marsh:
Okay. Okay. So here's my caveat to what you're saying there, and this gets at so many different things, but the Atlantic piece that I wrote, which I'll just summarize here, was basically about this downturn in middle grade and in reading among that age group. And I want to say that obviously phones are a piece, but another piece for me was seeing and hearing at schools across the board, whether public or private, that there was fewer books being read, that there is much more passage reading, which comes from the common core and this idea that you want to prep for the test, and that you're teaching kids to read and analyze passages but not whole texts.

And the problem with that is that when you talk to most adults and you ask, what books do you remember from when you were young? They remember a whole text. They remember an emotional experience that they went through. And if you're just reading a piece of a book, you're not getting that joyride. And so I talk a little bit prescriptively, and I hate to do that, but I did, about trying to write a little bit shorter reaching the kids where they're at, but also trying to realign the system.

Now I want to give my caveat, which is that when you describe it that way, which is the way I did describe it, what we're saying is, "Parents, teachers, you need to do more and you need to fight the tech more and you need to make more time to sit and get these kids into these books. You have to stop teaching for, if you're at a public for doing all your curriculum work, and you have to make time for read-alouds."

That is a lot to ask people after the pandemic at a time in which the surgeon general is saying that parents are completely overwhelmed and I believe, and see this, and experience it, and in which families are not really supported in a lot of ways in this country. And teachers, and we have a lot of teachers in my family, my husband's whole family are public school teachers. They have just been put through the ringer with the pandemic and they're playing catch up with kids, right?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, yeah.

Katherine Marsh:
And they are still having so many problems at schools with teacher retention, with all sorts of things, and then we're asking them to do more.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
But still to be measured on this thing back here, but also do more.

Katherine Marsh:
We don't have unlimited supplies of energy. The fact is that we need to start to prioritize, and those priorities have to come through changes in policy and changes in the way that we educate, the way we support families, all of those things.

And I'm not talking about what's going on in politics. I'm just saying about the way that our culture has developed around how we want our children to be in the world and why this matters is because I think that literature actually makes... We know literature makes people more empathetic.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
It does.

Katherine Marsh:
We know. There are studies about this. And you know what doesn't make people more empathetic? Social media. And what doesn't make people more empathetic? People screaming at each other, and that heightened energy that we all have, and we need to bring it down. We need to bring it down. But you can't do that without the actual, tangible support that families and educators need.

So we're finally getting to a point where there is so many more experiences, and voices, and all of that coming out in the literature. So the books are there, the problem is getting the kids to read them. There's not enough of an alarm bell going off about that. There's a lot of alarm bells going off about other things that are alarming, like book banning. I definitely feel like that is... I'm totally opposed to any book banning. It's a problem. But I feel even more alarming is okay, book banning, but are kids even reading? Are they even going out and trying to get all these books and reading?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Right, I hear you. If no one's reading anyway. Although we still, no book bans, but I absolutely get what you're saying. Ellen Oh, I was talking with her recently, actually, about how she's now getting into writing short stories. She has been for a while, but has really viewed short stories, you should say, as an important answer for a lot of the same reasons that you've been laying out here, that short attention span and need to just consume more quickly. Do you feel discouraged at all from writing longer or higher-level books because of this?

Katherine Marsh:
No, not entirely. I'm working on a book now that is realistic fiction, that I'm hoping is hitting that sweet spot. At the same time, I firmly believe, in the same way I do as a parent, that my job is not just to give my kids whatever they want, but to try to get them to some point where I feel like they, in the case of reading, that they're finding a joy in it that's going to sustain them during difficult times in their life as adults, and that they're going to find characters and experiences that are going to inform them in their lives when they're facing difficult times and meeting new people and shaping their own views of the world.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Speaking about that empathy that reading does bring out in us and our kids, it really is so true. I think anybody knows that, but when you have your own kids and you ensure that they have a diet, which I like that framing, of a diet of books that really give them a range of perspectives, you do really see how much empathy they can have, and how much just reading about a character that is not like you, or is from a different era can just completely open your mind in a way that when you're really sitting with their story that is just not the same.

Movies are wonderful. I love a movie, I love a show, but it's different, because you're obviously inventing that story yourself, too, you're visualizing it and putting it together, filling in those gaps. And I wonder what the kids that you talked to, if you've seen that, come out in some of your school visits. I know you've done a school visit nearby. But are there other visits and experiences that stand out to you that are emblematic of that?

Katherine Marsh:
I'll speak specifically first about letters or responses, and I could think of two that just pop out of my head about empathy. And one was a kid who read Nowhere Boy, and wrote me and said he had started a coat drive for refugees because the book had touched him. And he'd realized that that was something that he really wanted to be involved in.

And another was a letter I received from a girl who was Chinese-American, and she had read the Lost Year, and then went back and talked to her, I think it was her great aunt or grandparents, but had talked to them about the famine in China, and had realized that they had experienced that. And she wanted to write me just to say that she found it something that had made her look back into her own family history...

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That's amazing.

Katherine Marsh:
And think about it. And so those two were really fantastic letters to get.

I'll say with school visits, and maybe this is a chance for me to get on my soapbox about this, is school visits really I think are one of the things that have, they're really a mixed bag for a lot of authors, and partly that's been true post-COVID because schools and teachers are so maxed out that...

I've had some excellent, amazing ones and I've had some ones that have been sad in the sense that I feel like earlier my career, you'd go to a school and there'd be this rockstar feeling, even at that point where I only had one or two books. They'd be like, "The author's coming! The author's coming!" And the kids would be like, "Yay!" And they would talk you up, and you'd get there, and the kids had read your book. And I feel like I've had a little bit more of the experience of coming to schools, and they haven't read the book, and the kids are a little bit withdrawn and they have to remind the kids to pay attention. And I think that's really covid related, but also the fact that teachers like parents, like everyone are tapped out. We're in a time of being tapped out, and I really wish that there is a way for all of us to catch our breath and just slow down a little bit.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
A fun fact about Katherine is that she and I, and our script editor, Josiah, actually went to the same boarding school growing up, not all at the same time, but still a fun coincidence. And that connection, and her time away during those years, is exactly what inspired her reading challenge Boarding School Ties.

Katherine Marsh:
I should preface this by saying that boarding school was also somewhat of a mixed bag for me. I was a little bit of a fish out of water. I also had some amazing experiences and amazing friendships, and I also know kids love to read about boarding schools, because there is that sense of independence.

And Medusa obviously, and the myth of monsters, and the next one comes out in the springtime and is also set at the Magical School, which is a boarding school. So I decided in honor of that, that I'd put together a reading challenge of books for both children and adults that are set at boarding schools.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I love it. What are some of the books on your list?

Katherine Marsh:
So I have three that are in the fantasy category for kids, and obviously School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani, pretty big one. The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, which is a lot of fun, a British one. And then the Myth of Monsters: Medusa has been compared to this book a lot, because it combines that fantasy and feminism, the Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu. I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. I don't know if you've read that one.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes! I haven't read it. It's on my list. It's next to my bed.

Katherine Marsh:
It's not a perfect book, but it's a very interesting book about sexual abuse and assault at a boarding school. And then The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart, which is also about busting the patriarchy.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You can find Katherine's full reading list and all past reading challenges at thereadingculturepod.com.

This episode's Beanstack featured librarian is Ms. Mari Martinez, an Assistant Manager and Librarian at Broward County Library. She's incredible, and she still met me on the day that Helene was coming and about to make landfall. She's awesome. And she tells us about how sometimes the best strategy for the library is to get out of the library.

Mari Martinez:
First of all, you have to get out of the library. And if you think about it, the library is much more than four walls. Now with online resources we're reaching people outside of our counties and countries. So you have to think about it that way when you're promoting your programs.

I did an assessment of, okay, how were other summer reading programs? What did we do great and where we can improve? And one of the things that I wanted to improve in that specific summer reading challenge that was so successful.

And one of my favorites is that I noticed that not many people were registered. I was like, "Why? What's going on?" And I studied the audience who had registered, who had completed, and then I connected with the schools. Whoever you are, if you're working with youth or not, and you need to get kids in the library, the teachers are your best friends, media specialists, the parents.

You who I connected with through this particular summer reading program? The PTA. I would never... It's a group of people in the schools that I didn't think about. They were super supportive of the program. I went, I did promotion at the school, like the morning announcements, the calendars, and that's how I started to get people to come in. And a lot of grassroots connection with nonprofits, putting things on people's mailboxes. You have to get out of the library in order to get people in.

And in the end, to give you a comparison, and for people listening, the prior year of this library, summer reading program, reading completions was 12, and the year of the success, I think it was 276, in general.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow! Oh my goodness.

Mari Martinez:
And this was across the board and completions, only registrations, these are people that completed. And those are emails, those are readers that we are cultivating for next years to come.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This has been The Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Katherine Marsh. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. And currently I'm reading The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer and Colored Television by Danzy Senna.

If you've enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five-Star review, we appreciate each and every one of them, and I know it just takes a second to do, but it really helps. 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, check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and remember to sign up for the newsletter at readingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers and bonus content.

Thanks for listening, and keep reading.