Latest / Book Flood Podcast / Rebecca Langston-George on the Joy of Reading (E75)
Transcript
- Tom Nixon: Welcome to the Book Flood Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Nixon. My guest this week is Rebecca Langston George. She is the author of many books, is on the board of the California Reading Association and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Local Contact Person. Welcome, Rebecca. Rebecca Langston-George: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Tom. I'm delighted to be here today and talking about one of my favorite things, books. Tom Nixon: absolutely, absolutely. What led you to become an author? Rebecca Langston-George: that's an interesting question because when I was a child, I never thought about writing books. but I was a huge reader and my mother took us to the library every week. no matter where we live. We moved a lot when I was a kid, but there was always a library. And so we would go to the library every week. That was the entertainment. We would bring home books, and I found some book series I liked. Nancy Drew and you know began to read and make lists of things that I wanted to read. But I never met anyone who wrote books. And I never thought I don't know where I thought the books came from, but I never I never thought of that as like a job that you could have. because I never met an author, not until I was, you know, an adult writing did I finally meet someone else who did that. And so it never occurred to me as a child, even though I was doing all this reading, that that was a way that you could have a job and potentially make a living. But when I went to college, I had a teacher who pulled me aside one day and said, you know, write the best papers. She said, Have you ever thought about trying your hand at writing a book? And I really hadn't, and that kind of sparked it for me. Tom Nixon: Nice, it's nice to have professors like that. Rebecca Langston-George: Nice to have professors like Tom Nixon: You have had I believe two books come out in twenty twenty six. What can you tell us about both of them? Rebecca Langston-George: 2026 has has been a good year this year because it's the year I finally have fiction out. So I've been writing for excuse me, about 26 years. But when I first started writing, I never envisioned myself as a nonfiction writer. But that's kind of where I found the need, the, the, the success, sort of, that people were buying my my nonfiction. But that wasn't really what I had in mind when I started writing. So it's been a lifelong dream to have fiction published. So this year is the year where I finally have a fiction picture book. Rover Rolled Tom Nixon: Show us, show us. Rebecca Langston-George: Over is my first fiction picture book. And it came about in a really kind of funny way. My daughter is an adult, she's in her 30s, and several years ago we had had a dog, and our dog passed away, got old, and passed away. And my husband and I both worked during the day, and my daughter is home. And I said, I want to get another dog. And she said, No, no dog until you retire. She said, You know who takes care of the dog all day? It's her. And she said, I don't really want to take care of a dog. She said, You wait till you retire and then you're home and then you can have a dog. And so I played a little trick on her. We got a room a vacuum cleaner around that time and I turned it into our family pet. I named it Rover and I put big googly eyes on it, and I pr you know, pretended to take it for walks and pretty much acted like a crazy lady about the dog, trying to talk her into the idea that we need a dog. And Then the funny thing was, I I wrote the book and I started sending it out and I retired from teaching. I was a teacher for many years. And the week that we went and adopted a dog, Luna, is the week that I got the contract for Rover Rolled Over. So that's my fiction picture book that came out this year. And then another of my books this year that is fiction is a middle grade historical novel. Called One Fine Voice. And where Rover is fun, One Fine Voice is kind of more a serious look at some often overlooked American history. Back in 1923, the Ku Klux Klan virtually ran the state of Indiana, and we think of them as, you know, the this. terrible group which they are, but we often think about them as being based in racism. There also have another facet of their hate, and that is religious hate. That in 1923, when a lot of Catholic immigrants were coming into the United States, they began a campaign against Catholics. And these were Italians, these were Irish people. Who were coming to the United States. And the KKK in the state of Ind Indiana took over a great many of the political offices there in order to advance their their campaign of hatred. And so this is a fictional story about a girl who's new in town. Her father's the new minister. She's invited to sing at the 1923 Independence Day picnic and parade. She's delighted because she loves to sing. And then she finds out who's really behind it. And so she has to, grapple with her her conscience and decide, is she gonna use her voice to speak up and to do something good or is she gonna go along with the crowd? So I'm delighted to have some fiction out this year. Tom Nixon: that's nice. I did not know of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. You know, you th you think further south. That's interesting. Hm. Rebecca Langston-George: And that topic was just recently explored by nonf nonfiction adult writer Tim Egan and he wrote a a New York Times bestseller that came out just before my book came out called Fever in the Heartland. And it's a nonfiction Tom Nixon: Yeah. Rebecca Langston-George: book about about that same topic of the the KKK in Indiana in nineteen twenty three. Tom Nixon: You've written three books with spies in them. Why the fascination with spies? Rebecca Langston-George: Well, I like to tell kids that when I was younger, I used to go and spend the summers with my grandparents over in Oxnard and they lived in a mobile home, a senior citizen mobile home park. And I would spend a large portion of my s my summer there and there really wasn't anything to do. But my grandmother had a three-wheeled bicycle and I didn't have a bicycle. And so my grandmother had this bicycle that she used to put the laundry basket in the back and take it to the laundromat. And so I would ride her bicycle around her neighborhood where all these elderly people lived. And there wasn't much to do. So I spied on those elderly neighbors and I made up stories about them. And then at night, my grandmother would go and clean what was then the craft paper mill factory in Oxnard. It's Procter and Gamble. But she would go there late in the evening and I would go with her. And before you think, what a nice kid going and helping your grandma clean, I didn't help my grandmother clean. There were all these beautiful, it was a big office that she cleaned, and they had all these typewriters, rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of of typewriters that people worked at during the day in the office part of the paper mill factory. And I would go in there and I would take paper out of the trash can and carbon paper and I would create my own newspapers based upon the spying that I did on her neighbors. So I guess I was writing at a young age, but I didn't didn't really think about it. So I I kinda had a fascination on of spying on people. I d I don't know that I really thought about writing books on spies until till later. Tom Nixon: you were involved with the Society of Children's Books, Book Writers and Illustrators of Central Coastal California. Tell us about that. Rebecca Langston-George: When I decided I wanted to write for children, I really didn't know, you know, how to go about that. so what I did is I looked on the internet, you know, what do you do if you want to write for children? And I found SCBWI, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. And it was founded in nineteen seventy-one by Lynn Oliver and Steve Mooser. And it's founded in Los Angeles. And that's not far away from my li where I live, about an hour and a half. So I joined, and I can remember they had a meeting in Bakersfield where I lived. And I remember going and was clutching my little, it was a critique meeting, and I was clutching my first little, you know, book manuscript. And it was a really, really bad manuscript that didn't deserve to see the light of day. But everybody was really nice and encouraging, and I started getting involved and volunteering, and now I'm the cut regional advisor. And I really wanna encourage anybody out there who is interested in writing for children. It's a little bit different than writing for the adult market. So SCBWI is a great place to to learn that craft and to meet other people who share the same interest. Tom Nixon: And there are local branches of this organization all over. Rebecca Langston-George: Yes, it's actually become an international organization. So you can go to scbwy.org and you can click on there's a little link that says regions. And if you click on that, it'll give you a list of all the regions. Now back in the day, you know, you had to go to things in person, but now there's lots of things that they have via Zoom. So if there's something that's being held in another state or even another country. If it's on Zoom, you can attend that. You don't have to be there necessarily in person. Tom Nixon: Yeah, Zoom has changed a lot of things and I think many things for the better, like this. Rebecca Langston-George: Absolutely. Tom Nixon: you are also involved in an organization I used to belong to, the California Reading Association. you're on the board. Tell us about that. Rebecca Langston-George: California Reading Association is part of a larger organization. that's it used to be called International Reading Association. It's now called International Literacy Association. So California Reading Association is a like a chapter of that organization. And it's dedicated to the idea of serving educators, librarians, and and by extension, then kids to talk about. Reading and reading practices and literacy and writing practices in schools and school libraries. Tom Nixon: How many books have you written now? Rebecca Langston-George: I have written nine I have nineteen. My nineteenth comes out in January. Tom Nixon: Mm. And is there one book that was that was the most interesting or most fun or most something to write? Rebecca Langston-George: Well, I think my most well known book is probably this one, For the Right to Learn Malala Yousofse story. And this was I wrote the first, I didn't write the first biography of Malala. There was a biography of her before she won the Nobel Peace Prize, but this was in progress and all finished, and then she w then she was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was in production and they stopped it so we could rewrite it after she gave her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. So this was kind of Tom Nixon: Nice. Rebecca Langston-George: an interesting one to write. And then my new one that comes out in January is fun to me because it comes from a childhood adventure. So Tide Dance comes out in January and it is about the California Grenyon runs. I don't know if you're Familiar with Tom Nixon: Mm-hmm. Rebecca Langston-George: that. For our listeners who aren't familiar, in Southern California, there are little fish called grunion, and they come out of the water on nights when there's a full moon or a new moon during certain months. They come out of the water and they literally dance on the sand to lay their eggs. And back when I was four years old, my stepgrandfather took me and all my sisters and my cousins, we all went out to see the Grunyon in the middle of the night, eleven o'clock at night. They lived over it near San Diego. And that was such an interesting memory to me. Like I had never seen first of all, I had never seen fish come out of the water. Like I didn't even know that they did that. And then they're sort of dancing around your feet on the water. And I remember thinking it's the most magical. thing I've ever seen. And I had thought about it a few times, but didn't really know what to do with it. And then I read Jane Yolin's book, Owl Moon, which I'm sure you're familiar with. The lovely Jane Yolin Tom Nixon: Absolutely. Rebecca Langston-George: just is a, you know, such a well-known person in children's literature. And when I was teaching, I I ran a RIF program, Reading is Fundamental, where the kids got free books. And in this delivery was Owl Moon. This was, I don't know, around the year maybe, maybe 2002. And I this was the first time I ever read it. And I read it and I had the oddest feeling that I had experienced it. And of course, I had never experienced it. I've never been out owling. I don't know anything about owling. And it took me a little while to realize I was relating to the idea of going out in the moonlight to see an animal. And that unlocked some, you know, some memories for me and some thinking. And over the years I thought about it and I finally realized, that could be a great mentor text to write Tide Dance. And so I kind of used her her book as a mentor text, looking how at how she formatted her book, at how she used lyricism and you know. painted the picture of being out in the moonlight and I used it as a model for my book. And so I was delighted when I got the acceptance and I got to reach out to her about, I don't know, Tom Nixon: nice. Rebecca Langston-George: nine months ago and tell her, you know, I th a little thank you note like, Thank you for this lovely book. It inspired me to write this book. And she and her daughter Heidi wrote back and that was you know, very, very nice. So Yay for Jane Yolin. Tom Nixon: that is nice. Rebecca Langston-George: Yay for writers that unlock other writers and and help them out. Tom Nixon: Hm. What is your writing process like? Rebecca Langston-George: Gosh, that's a good. I was just talking about that at a writing conference, asking people. I kind of joke that now that I'm retired, I get less done than when I worked full-time and did all kinds of things. years ago, when I was, you know, very busy writing, I worked full-time as a teacher, and I also did a lot of volunteer work, but I made a promise to myself that when I came home at night, I would write. And that would be that's really easy to kind of let that slip away from you. You come home, you make dinner, you're tired, right? That's the la kind of the last thing you want to do. So I used to I had a bracelet made, just a very simple silver bracelet, and it had the word write stamped on it. And so in the morning, if it was a gonna be a writing day that evening when I came home from work, I used to put that bracelet on. And then that forced me. I wore it instead of a watch. It forced me all day long to look at it and r remind myself, it's a writing day. No matter what else happens today, you're gonna get home, you're gonna make dinner, and then you're gonna go sit down and and you're gonna write. And that really worked for me for for many years. I and I was telling myself recently, I've got to put that bracelet back on because now that I'm retired and I have more time, I think, I've got all the time in the world, and I don't manage it as well. So I need to get back to that writing bracelet. Tom Nixon: I understand the sentiment about retirement. It feels like you have so much time and yet you end up doing all sorts of things, like podcasts and Rebecca Langston-George: That's right. It kinda s kinda slips away from you, yes. Tom Nixon: You talked about your transition from being a teacher to being an author. What was that like? Rebecca Langston-George: Well, for most of my writing life I have been both. I have taught full-time and and I wrote. And so I taught I have both a single subject credential in language arts and I have a multiple subject credential. So I've taught from first grade all the way up through eighth grade. I've taught some a little college, never taught kindergartner be kindergartners because they're a little bit scary, but I've taught just about Tom Nixon: Right, right. Rebecca Langston-George: everybody else. and I love teaching. And I made a conscious decision though that I was going to retire a little bit early to focus on writing. I have kind of found that I really miss being around kids and I miss teaching. So I do love to go into schools and visit schools and talk to kids and talk to them about writing and try to get them encouraged to write because that is a little piece of my heart that that needs to be fed as I like I realized I really like to be around kids. I really like, to to to be the teacher. Tom Nixon: Get more kids interested in reading. It seems like we're on a bit of a decline. Rebecca Langston-George: I think that's a great question. I know that you are a retired librarian and I would love to see us have more trained librarians in our school systems. people who, you know, really not only know about books, but know about information and handling information and and hooking kids up with things that they want to learn about. Not just looking on the computer and having AI tell you, you know, something about what you're interested in, but really being able to sift through information and find reliable, trustworthy, you know, information that that that kids want to learn about. So for me, not only do schools need a well-stocked library, but I think they need librarians, people who are invested in the idea of information and learning. And here's here's where you can find that information and here's what what to what to do with it. think we get a little and I I think I fall in this category too. We get a little stuck as teachers about, well your reading level is, you know, 4.3 and you need to be reading in this reading level and you know more and more. And I and I fell into that trap. And yes, there's a a part of that that's correct, but Sometimes that really limits what kids, you know, it it takes the joy out of things for them. And I want kids to know that there's joy in finding information. There's joy in stories and there's joy in nonfiction because you're learning about what it is that you personally want to learn about. And you ought to have access to that, even if the book isn't in your reading level. You know, maybe take the book home and somebody can can help you read it and you can, you know, have a joint project with it. So I think we need to to think a little bit more about the joy and the interest that kids have and a little less about the book level and that kind of thing. Tom Nixon: I would completely agree. I think I also that there's my poll Rebecca Langston-George: Yeah, so that's Tom Nixon: quote for the librarians. Absolutely good shout out. but you're absolutely right is we seem to Rebecca Langston-George: yeah, that's going to be right is Tom Nixon: be going in the other direction these days with staffing libraries and making sure we have enough books and I hope we can turn that around. Rebecca Langston-George: And free and I want to just add something else too. Tom Nixon: Mm. Rebecca Langston-George: And and what's available in those libraries, I have a book that was banned. my Malala book I found out was banned in in the Florida public school system. And what a terrible waste, what a terrible shame. I just don't think we need to monitor necessarily, you know, those kinds of things. I mean, I can't, for the life of me, figure out why it was banned. I have maybe a little suspicion. But, you know, it's we don't need to be in that business. let kids read books, you know. Tom Nixon: Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah, I it boggles the mind so many titles that have been banned, you just can't figure out what it is that got them banned. Rebecca Langston-George: And I'm all for if you don't want your child to read a certain book, that's fine. You then your child Tom Nixon: Exactly. Rebecca Langston-George: shouldn't read that book. I agree with you 100%. But that doesn't mean that that you have the right to say what other children can and cannot read. So fully support a parent's right to say, you know, I I would like an alternate title for my child. Sure, we can I can do that. Tom Nixon: Absolutely. Rebecca Langston-George: not not nobody gets to read it. Tom Nixon: Right. Is there an importance of having diversity in books? Rebecca Langston-George: Absolutely. And I think when we think about diversity, we need to we need to be thinking even broader than than what we are thinking. I think we we had a wake-up call about a wide variety of backgrounds and races in books. I'm so happy to see that. And and to see them also being written by by people of of that culture, you know, who who know things. I think it's good if we expand that as well, with books about people of of different religious persuasions or no religious persuasion. And something that's important to my family is I have told you about my daughter, and she didn't really want a a dog. She loves the dog, by the way, just so well. Tom Nixon: Mm-hmm. Rebecca Langston-George: But you know, she is a a physically disabled adult. And Tom Nixon: Mm. Rebecca Langston-George: that's really important, I think, in representation in our libraries is a diversity. of ability showing people doing things who are disabled. My book about Virginia Hall, one of the spies that you mentioned, she was a disabled woman. She had a wooden leg. It did Tom Nixon: Mm. Rebecca Langston-George: not, it did not hold her back. and I think that's an important thing to have access to for all the kids to be able to see themselves in a book. And I know for me as an adult, I don't know, maybe six, seven years ago, I picked up a book called Starfish. And I I should have it on my, I should have had it sitting next to me. But Starfish is about a girl who's overweight and about her coming like to grips with, you know, her her her body shape. As an adult, I mean haven't been a kid for a long time. That was a really important book for me. Like that was the book I was going Tom Nixon: Yeah. Rebecca Langston-George: around telling everybody, you need you need this book. We need, you know, need this book in your library. Because I didn't see kids that look like me, chubby kids, Tom Nixon: Right. Rebecca Langston-George: i in books. And I thought, wow, this is just such a great, great book. So d all the diversity, yes. Tom Nixon: What are working on now? Rebecca Langston-George: that's a good question. I have had an idea for a long time that I would love to see come to fruition that I can't can't quite get it out of my brain. Sometimes something has to has to cook for a while. One Fine Voice took me 17 years to finally get it where I was happy. And I would say the book I'm working on right now or the manuscript I'm working on right now is taking me a lot of time. Also, I've been working on it for a long time. I'm trying to write a book about snow angels. you know how kids make the snow angels in in the snow, and and turning it into like a Christmas book, nativity book. And I can't quite get my finger on how to make it work. And I guess the lesson there is you gotta keep at it. You gotta keep trying. You gotta keep you gotta go at it a different way. Tom Nixon: Hm. Is there a book or a series of books from your childhood that still resonates with you? Rebecca Langston-George: I adored Nancy Drew. Just adored it. And as a kid, I was such a nerd. I had a list. I don't know if you've seen those old books, but they used to have on the back, there would be a list of like all the Nancy Drew books. And I made I copied that list out. And for, you know, birthdays or Christmas or whatever, I would ask for, you know, when your grandparents say, What do you want for Christmas? I was the kid who would ask for the books that weren't in the library. I want this Nancy Drew book that's that's in not in the library because I can't I can't get it. So those series really had me, you know, kind of had me hooked. I can also remember reading Beverly Cleary's books, you know, Ramona the Past, what what fun books those were. And as a young kid, we lived in Tehachapi outside of Bakersfield, which is Tom Nixon: yeah. Rebecca Langston-George: back then was a really small town. It's bigger now. But the library was very, very tiny back then. And there were only like two shelves. two, you know, shelves for kids. There was very there were very few kids' books. And when I was probably in about second or third grade, I the librarian talked to me. I got in trouble with the librarian because I checked out the same book. Over and over and over again. I checked out The Little Leftover Witch. And she's like, choose another book. But I loved that book. And I I bet I checked that book out forty or fifty times. There weren't in in all honesty, there weren't all that many choices. but I I just kept reading it over and over and over again. And as an adult, I went and found it on Amazon and bought it so that I could own it and I could read the little leftover witch whenever I wanted to. And that's another thing is if a kid wants to read something over and over again, let do it. You know, let Tom Nixon: Absolutely. what are you reading now? Rebecca Langston-George: I am reading A writing craft book, Sid Field's Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting. So not not reading any fun fiction, but I've been curious about the format of how do you write a screenplay? And so I, you know, how does it differ from writing a novel? And so I'm trying, trying to learn that. Tom Nixon: Rebecca, I want thank you so much for being on the podcast. For our listeners and watchers, please remember to like, subscribe, and share. And again, thank you, Rebecca. Rebecca Langston-George: Thank you for having me and thank you for your great work you're doing to to highlight books and the creators of books and the importance of reading for children. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Tom Nixon: Thank you so very much.