Latest / The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast / Become a Literary Matchmaker | a conversation with author, speaker and revival starter Sarah Mackenzie

Transcript

Become a Literary Matchmaker | a conversation with author, speaker and revival starter Sarah Mackenzie · The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast

• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: Hi friends, welcome back to the Simply Wholehearted Podcast.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: And if you are new here, we are so glad you've joined us.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: Ashley Pittman and I, Amy Wicks, are your hosts of the Simply Wholehearted Podcast.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: We believe we are all on a journey to live out the call to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: Our mission is to inspire and equip you to live an unplugged, purposeful, and intentional life.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: We hope to encourage you by sharing stories of friends, new and old alike, who are living out their calling and purpose with passion.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: And thanks to our friends from Inner the Worship Circle.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: The song you hear in the background has been written by Ben Pasley and Carla Adolph.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: They have been so kind to share the song Heavenly Things from their album Down Here and Up Above.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Be sure and follow them on all the socials at entertheworshipcircle.com.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's April 5th.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Can you believe it?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: This year is flying by.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: We've been joking around here that we are still searching for spring as it's been snowy and cold during this first week of this month.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: And we are enjoying greener grass and the buds on flowering trees, but we are hoping they didn't get killed by the freeze before they got to show off.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I'm if you haven't figured out so far, I really am big on seasons.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: And my husband cringes just a little bit when I talk about seasons.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: But I can't help it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's just the way my life and my brain works.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: I have to encourage you to take a few minutes to do a seasonal evaluation once again.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: We've done this after summer last year and after the fall, and now it's time to do it after the official end of winter.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: It has really been such a valuable way to take quick inventory of my year so far and to learn better how I want to spend and focus my time.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I have questions just kind of prompting you to think through was your schedule life-giving to you?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Did you connect with the people you most enjoy, or did you make some new friendships that you want to keep?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe did you take time to enjoy the slower pace winter can bring?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you read some books and you should definitely write them down so you can share them with others and maybe read them again sometime.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Did you perhaps give yourself a little more time to a favorite hobby or start a new one?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: And are you gonna keep it up?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: And did you do a better job of keeping in touch with your family, whether they're close or far away, whether you live with them or they live in another state?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: Did you make some more time for them?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this winter has been a little busier than we are used to, but it's been a really good rhythm for us.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: There are some things that I'll write down that I want to make sure we do differently next year, and it also helps me evaluate some of the commitments that we're facing this spring, and some things I maybe want to add or take away and make sure I do before the summer season.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things I started this winter was training to be an Aneagram coach.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm learning so much, and I'm often watching or really listening to each episode or lesson twice.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: I go over all the printouts and I'm constantly reviewing this fascinating information and learning how I can put it into practice.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: I am finding it especially helpful as I've been diving into some of the natural parent-child relational dynamics with each Aneagram type.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I know I want to focus on understanding how our parenting style can grow and what we can do specifically to better connect and with our kids and understand ourselves better and how we parent, and just also how to connect better with how our child was created to be, not what we hope they are.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: So if the Aneagram is new to you, we do talk about it a wee bit with Sarah.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if you want to check out more currently, you can find out a ton of information at your Aneagram Coach.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: You can find her information on all the socials and her website.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: She actually has a free assessment to get you started and tons of helpful information.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: And Aneagram, I've had a few of you ask me how is that spelled?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because it sounds kind of funny, and it's spelled E-N-N-E-A-G-R-A-M.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: So check out your Anneagramcoach.com.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: I was so excited to get to talk to Sarah McKinsey, founder of Read A Lab Revival.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: She has truly begun a movement among millions to take the opportunity to instill a love of learning through picture books, audiobooks, classics, and brand new genres of all sorts.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: She lives her message on a daily basis because she has six kids.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: She's amazing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: But what I love about Sarah is she is incredibly down-to-earth and so practical.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: Her podcast, her membership site, and now her book gives you everything you need to start no matter the age of your kids.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: And even though I've been putting her ideas into practice for a while, Ashley was new to Sarah's ideas, so she had a ton of questions for her, just as you might.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: As you listen in, I know you'll be ready to head to your local library or fill up your Amazon cart with great reads for yourself and the kids.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so I homeschooled for five years.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, this is my first year tonight in some capacity, and Ashley has never homeschooled.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, I had my ninth grader.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she's not, she's 20 now.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And she was the only home for her ninth grade year, and it was a sad, sad educational year for her.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: We moved, we did a major move, and lots of life was happening, and so it was just not good here.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was just a thing we had to do.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it it's hard to get anything out.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like right now, with all the traveling, it's um homeschooling is looking like a lot of independent work this month.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: And the older teaching the younger.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, those are invaluable life skills.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: So nothing wrong with that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: But it is really, really tough.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, she's a very driven, she's very driven anyway, and she just did the work.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, I didn't have to push her.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but we did talk about um when we first started meeting, she and I would uh meet at like 5 a.m.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: at Starbucks, you know, before kids and husbands got up.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: We were dedicated.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: We actually still do this.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's we're both a little crazy.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: But um 5 a.m.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes it's the best.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: Starbucks opens at 5 a.m.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: and everyone's sleeping and it just works.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's something special about that, just rolling out of the bed and getting there.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: But all of that to say, we were talking for a little while.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: She was reconsidering, you know, do I need to pull one or two of the kids out now of the youngers and homeschool them?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so we would talk a lot of it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: For connection, for heart connection as much as anything.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Their education is going fine as far as math and reading and whatnot.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you're in a great school.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of benefits that way.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I still consider it on occasion.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that I think about.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so Ashley needs your help to settle a family argument.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're gonna dive.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, it's a book related.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is a book related to very much a book.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just like, hello, here's a help me.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, we have this debate in our home currently.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I have a child who's 11 who loves to read, but she only wants to read books about animals, where the characters are animals.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: She cannot connect with human characters or something.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: She just does, she's like, I don't want to read about people.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So she only wants to read about animals.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and my husband is saying, You need to stop reading.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's read, we need to read some other kinds of books.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he wants to he wants her to divide diversify.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she came to me, she was like, What is diversify?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, it means variety.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I heard her, she went to him last night.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I asked mom what diversify means, and she said variety.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you want me to read?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and so we're kind of in this dilemma.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: She wants to read, and she can't get to her animal books until she's read several several other kinds of books.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, it's that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, like I thought I thought, well, maybe Nancy Drew, but he didn't really, he wasn't really into Nancy Drew for some reason.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, like, it's classic.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Nancy Drew is classic.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: So he, you know, we're looking for books with either good Christian values or just good good life, you know what I'm saying?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like good, you know, moral values, whether it's directly Christian or not.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like recommendations in that department that are enjoyable books and for the future, even books with animal characters who also have these things.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a girl?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is that you said a couple of things?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is a girl, and there's also a nine-year-old boy who wants to read, and and we're saying no more.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you cannot read Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we need something else.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: But something that's how they capture the imagination.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like animal books.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, there's this whole series.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, there's it's about cats and they're warriors.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Warriors, the cats.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: She loves those.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was another one that was dogs before that, and I can't remember what they were called, but it was it was the same thing, but it was dogs instead of she loves wolves.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: She is fascinated by wolves.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so she's read, you know, she had a recall of the wild.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: She liked that, and you know, stuff like that.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what she's really been into lately.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And she had to stop halfway through one of the Warriors books, and she is bitter.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: She just had to stop short.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: She's very bitter.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: She wants it back.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: She does.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: She's so mad.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, that's it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I figured you could probably help this.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: I have a couple ideas.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean, one, and this is more for your own peace of mind, but you know, um so much of what we connect with when we're reading with our kids, or when when our kids are reading with like whether the characters are animals or they're people, there's some interesting, um some interesting things are happening in that.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Catherine Patterson writes about this in one of her essays about uh reading and writing for children, about how we get to eavesdrop on someone else's soul.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's like why the characters in the books feel like closer to us than sometimes our real life friends do, you know?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I think the way that uh animal characters actually do that, it's it's kind of like other fantasy where it there's this wonderful quote by Chesterton where, and I'm gonna botch it here, but he says something like um we are told that that the apples are gold.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna totally mess up.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're told that the apples are gold in order to remember for one wild moment that they're red.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Or that the rivers run with um wine to remember to remind us for one wild moment that they run with water.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the things that like books of the animal characters do is they almost help us see our world like the world around us with new eyes.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um but if you're wanting her to read more books with uh human characters, I find Andrew Clement's books to be really good.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Have you are you familiar with that?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like we have some of those.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wonder if tell me what he's written.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: He's written hundreds of books, but my favorites are um the one that he's most well known for, I think, is Frindle.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then like School Story and The Map Trap and Um No Talking.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we have no talking.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, they're shortish and they're fast.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're not really intimidating and funny, um, but they are all realistic.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: They're set in school with kids, not animals.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and when I interviewed him, it was so interesting to me because he really talked about how one of the things that he tries to do in all of his books is make sure that his books are worth having a place in your child's childhood.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, like you know, those books that we read when we're 10 and 12 really form us, and so making sure his books are worth that.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me why his books would be worth it.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, okay, so Frindle, for example, which is my favorite, yeah, you read it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: I love giving this one too, like unsuspecting adults because you read it and you think it's just a lighthearted school story, and what ends up happening by the end of it is you realize it's this beautiful tale of the power of the teachers and parents to inspire the best in kids.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and then also the power of kids to be able to do big things that I didn't think they could.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: So um but there it reads really like a like Nancy Drew in that it's just easy to read and it's a page attorney, you know.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's my kid's favorite, one of their favorites.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we have it because Kaylee read them.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: We still have some of these books from when Kaylee was at home and she read those.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that is good.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good start.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very good earn her back the I guess.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just confused.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Has she read the Pender Wigs?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Amy someone.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're just starting now.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Someone mentioned that before, and I kind of threw it out there, like, hey, I heard these are and she's like, no.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's no are there animals?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: She does just her question.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it may be that that's what we'll do for us.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: We might be looking for, I don't know if we're looking for overt, overt um Christian themes or what.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I one thing I want you to speak to though, just to help, because he and I kind of we were actually texting up back upstairs and downstairs about this last night.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: This wasn't a face-to-face.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't know, but it's okay if he does.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: But no, I don't think he ever actually.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure he listens.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: He might.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: He might need to listen this time.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna probably find an ask.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's so so timely that you're here.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but I, you know, kind of one of my points was is there's a lot of value in just having the enjoyment of a story, just for the sake of imagination and enjoying a story.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what would you say to that?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just the value of sometimes you know, a book that has value in it, but just to for the enjoyment.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Are are we always looking to inspire the kids or to leave them with a lesson?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or is there something to just let's enjoy a good story?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's this really um interesting research that Dr.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Daniel Willingham uh pointed out to me.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: He came on the Read Loud Revival podcast and um he had written a book called Raising Kids Who Read.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And they're I think actually is it his book?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: It might have been his or it could have been the Read Lad Handbook.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm gonna botch it before I got the research.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, it's in the Read Loud Handbook.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the idea, the actual um study shows that parents who think that reading is primarily a source of entertainment and enjoyment, they have kids who read more, and they have kids who read better, and they have kids who do better in school.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And parents who think that books should be read or reading is important for academic success or for um a lesson, I guess.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um and one of the things that I think is so powerful about a story is it meets us in a place where a lesson can't.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: So when I think about, you know, what if I want to teach my son about courage and what it means to be courageous and stand up against um, you know, seemingly insurmountable odds or do the right thing when no one's looking, I can talk to him about that in sort of a didactic, logical way.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I think reading something like The Chronicles of Narnia, where he gets to decide he wants to be like the kids, you know, where he gets to be them and do that.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and even if it's not so much about a lesson, like teaching them a lesson, the stories that we hear, especially in childhood, they just form us, they become a part of who we are and the person that we think we can be someday.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: So even if it's not an over Christian message or an over lesson, I think the power, the power of the story just sort of lies in the story itself, whether or not we can see we can see the benefits.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's just I mean, I think sometimes we expect fiction to do something it's not meant to do.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, I don't know that it's really meant to give us answers or lessons with a typo as much as it's meant to help us ask questions and to find out what we're gonna say.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good answer.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's actually a different too.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is a totally different tangent, but um, my husband and I always argue about what we watch um because I have a totally different experience watching, you know, the same movie that he does or a show or whatever.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because and it and this is the difference.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: And he he definitely reads, but um, I was a racist reader and I love reading, I love the writing process.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, I experience the same thing when I watch a movie or a show where I put myself in their shoes, and so I can't help but like live through what I'm watching just like when you read.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you can see that.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jerizman Chris, I can't watch zombie shows, he has no problem with it, but I'm like, no, because this is what you know.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we have this whole thing, we go around and around, and I think it comes from you know, all of fiction reading, as much as twaddle as people try to put it in this category, it's not beneficial.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I learned a lot and they had a lot of adventures and experienced a lot of things, yeah, just from reading a book.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know what's so interesting?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's some research now that shows that kids who have read a lot of fiction or who are read to a lot of fiction as they're growing up, they end up becoming these adults who are more compassionate and empathetic.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: And this makes so much sense because when we're reading a story, we're basically sliding into the shoes of someone and walking a mile in their shoes, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've done this again and again and again as we're reading about a kid who lives um in the jungle, and then another kid who lives in a New York City apartment, and then a kid that lives in who's you know in the Colorado wilderness, and then all these different time periods, and we're just constantly stepping into the shoes and walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: By the time our kids are adults, they've had all this practice of looking at the world from someone else's perspective.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think then it makes it easier for them to look around them and see, you know, that person at the grocery store or that person down the street or in the car behind them, and realize that person has a story with fears and desires and who's made in the image of God just like they are.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's powerful too to encourage them to wonder to because I think that's one of the best things we can do is to be curious and to wonder about other people and then to ask the questions.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I like that.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: When we read it, then we realize that not everyone thinks the same or has the same experience or whatever.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: It expands the worldview and yeah, helps look.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, even um the work of Gary Schmidt, are either of you familiar with his work?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like The Wednesday War is okay for now.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: What's the one he's most well known for?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think strong to goal.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Most of his stuff is more for teens.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: I usually recommend it for teens, by the way, because it's not it it deals with some hard, there's some hard stuff in there, um, like abuse and things like that.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: But um he's a Christian writer.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: He is you not overtly Christian.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like the aren't necessarily overtly Christian, but one of the things that I think he does so well is, for example, in the Wednesday wars, we hear that um we we read the story of Holling Hoodhood, and he's bullied by uh I can't remember the bully's name, but anyway, he's bullied by someone, and that whole book you just think this bully is this horrible person.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: The very next book that Gary wrote was okay for now, which is the bully story.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And what blew my mind was realizing, like, oh my goodness, this is why you're acting that way.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it gave him like uh it didn't excuse his behavior so much as it made me feel compassion for him in a way that I hadn't been able to feel before.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's powerful, and that's a life skill we need to have, all of us, when there's somebody that's causing pain or that we just have, you know, it's hard to go, there's something going on in that other person, too.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, also helps us forgive them.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, totally.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's that's good.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things I loved about Wonder, uh, the book Wonder, because you see, you know, Augie's story, and then the sister, and then you find out what's happening with the sister's friend who's over here, who's not doing her, and it's like, oh, yeah.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was powerful.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I loved having a book.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: Did you see the movie version of this?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought the movie version was just as good as the book, which I don't usually say, you know, like the I loved about that book too, is that you leave the book realizing, like, I mean, I actually finished watching the movie while I was on an airplane, so then I get off the airplane and I'm walking on the airport, and you just can't help but see all of these people and go, every single person here has their own story and they have their their fears, and that's why they're making bad decisions.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And they have you know, all these we're all it just makes you feel unified and compassionate and loving.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: And for our world right now, I feel like that's a real gift we can give our kids.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and that is a huge Christian value.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's Jesus on the earth.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus asking us to love.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you can you see beyond the behavior?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Can you look beyond the sin to the heart and go there?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you get from fiction.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tie that up with a neat little bow.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: The gift of fiction.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_04: Boom.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, okay.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't loud.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: That was dioclimactic.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I need to pull like my microphone.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not go.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking of books going into movies, have you seen A Wrinkle in Time yet?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: I have been traveling constantly since the movie came out.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: I reread the book in anticipation, and I promised all my big kids that we would go together.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, see, I I heard your episode the day it released, so they dropped it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think you released it early in honor of A Wrinkle in Time coming out that week.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I listened to it and it was just so fun because I thought, oh, well, maybe she got a sneak peek and she could tell us, you know, if it's like it.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: But I haven't seen it either.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I haven't reread the book, but I really want to read it with my kids before we go see it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I was just curious because we did that with Wonder and I so many actually, because last year in particular with homeschooling, um, that was kind of our carrot.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: I chose a lot of books the first semester that I knew had a movie, whether I thought it was a great connection or not.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was just kind of like the reward, you know, I needed to incentivize.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, what we do.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: But um, it worked.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so anyway, I wanted to do that with a wrinkle of time, and but I was just curious to hear your take on that.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: I have not seen it yet.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: I have heard mixed feedback.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: I've heard about half of my friends who've seen it say it's so good, and half of them are really disappointed.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think um, like anticipating they're going, I mean, the wrinkle and time has a very like uh Christian message, but embedded like in the fantasy.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And of course they're gonna take that out of the movie.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I I wonder if the disappointment is mostly the um surprise that they're gonna they're gonna remove that from the movie at the same time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of think um that's one of the great things about stories when you have good versus evil and you have these messages of love, you can't really take the Christian message out even if you try.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's there.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: You try and take out the overtness of it.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: But absolutely I don't know though.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: I would I I don't want to speak to it until I see it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and I think it's so hard, like the I mean this the sci-fi element, the imagination, the creativity, yeah, that that takes life and it takes shape in each of our minds differently.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, some people could have visualized exactly what they ended up seeing on the screen as they read the book in a way, and other people it looks, you know, completely different from our imagination.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that can be the disappointment.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So have you seen it?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I did see it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: What did you think?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing, I didn't read the book first.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I kept wanting to read the book first, but I had said to my kids it came out right on my birthday week, and I was like, we're going.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because my son has read it and really he really liked it.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so I was like, we're gonna go see the book.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: So no, it did.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: It had some beauty, it was beautiful the way it was done, the colors, and everything was beautiful, but I can't compare it.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: My son really liked it, and I do know there were some differences.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we saw the old, there's an old, really poorly made version of her of the movie.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen that?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I don't know if it's from the 90s or whatever, but it's just not you know, it's not great cinematography.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: But they they liked it anyway.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: My kids liked it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, but you know, I so there are some elements missing in, and I can see I can see the point that um the friends were making.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of that was missing, the Christian element.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, again, I think you can't, like you said, you can't remove it.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: If it's good versus evil and it's there, it's it's there, you know, and so I kind of think that's a gift to be able to um in general to be able to de-Christianize the message, I think is actually a good thing sometimes.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially for a broader audience.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, yeah, I liked the movie.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I wonder how many kids would will read the book because the movie and now they're you know excited about it who wouldn't have read the book before.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean she quotes scripture pretty outright, right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And how many books did she write?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like I know there's like five in the series.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Five, yeah, but written others too, of course.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, like 50 or something.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: I just I think that would be great.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's the the beauty of it, getting to be made a movie.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: Then you know, you s you read one, you like it, and then you're like, oh, let's read some more.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: So well, it's kind of like the Chronicles of Narnia.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know that so many people watch those movies not realizing how Christian of stories that they are.
• 24:24
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: The real message in it, uh, yeah, I loved it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: I and then they did such a beautiful job with it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, of course, again, not verbatim, but I felt like captured it really, really well.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I loved it because that's what um we I would say my parents actually, you know, did some of the reading aloud before it was ever a term or anything like that.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: And in particular, they read the C.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: S.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: Lewis series, and then um, I think we dipped our toes in Gerald Tolkien and some of those, but that was a little bit tougher.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a hard reading.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm leaving those to Audible for me.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like me too.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I tried reading.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't do it.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh, yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it takes a devoted parent and also some narrative uh narrative skill, I guess, to use well.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Totally, totally.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: I have I have um brought in my um skill set by reading, you know, books in you know, with a British accent, though, you know, no one for real, like judge me, no one besides my kids can hear me.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, but beyond that, forget it.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: All of my accents sound British, and so it doesn't even matter where the book is set.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm reading it in a accent, like maybe that's right.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: We Mary Poppins, you know, yeah, I loved reading Mary Poppins.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: That was a fun one for sure.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: And we um we recently just we actually this morning on the way to school finished chitty chitty chitt chitty chitty bang bang.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: Have you guys done that one?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't done it as a read-aloud.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that one's a great one.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: And they even have a fudge recipe in there that's part of the storyline that's cute.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: That they're like, oh, we gotta make the fudge.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: But um, the movie is terrible, the 60s movie.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think my kids have seen it.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I mean, it's just like a bad acid trip.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's all.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's a Disney.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's a bad acid trip.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: Not that I would know.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: But but my mom and sister, who live in another state, they're gonna be in a theater production of Chitty Chitty Bing Bang, which is actually more like the movie, um, the Disney movie than the book, but it was kind of one of those, like, oh, I want my kids to, you know, like hear the story.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: And the author is the guy who wrote the James Bond books.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so for boys, it's a great boy book.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: Just gonna throw that out there.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's it's pretty quick.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's not very long.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um but anyway, so just that's kind of our fun.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know where I got on that tangent, but it was kind of like, well, they're gonna see it on the stage.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: They can it'll be a lot of well, that can actually just lend itself to good, um, even if you don't like the movie version.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's that kind of thing with Wrinkle in Time, even if the movie is your version is bad.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right, even if it rips out all the Christian meaning, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's a good conversation starter, especially with your teens, anyways, to be able to start.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because that's what we want is we want our kids to be readers who can discern, not just readers who aren't only reading the things we want them to read, but readers who learn to ask questions so that when they're in college and beyond, they're reading with that sort of discerning nature, right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's so good.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we've you know, we've had that conversation attend too when it comes when it comes to music or just different things, and you have to use wisdom per kid.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, each at their ages it looks different for each of them.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: But um, there's such value of you know, getting to have those conversations before they leave the home, exposing them, you know, to these elements, and we can do that through the word in a real, I think, kind, appropriate way.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Great way to do it through books and to introduce ideas.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, it's it's a comfortable way for parents to.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: I know that um some of the conversations we have about hard things in the world come up because of the books we read, and that I probably wouldn't bring them up otherwise, you know.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: It just they're they're sort of uncomfortable, but it feels like a more comfortable way to talk about it than to turn on the news and discuss it that way.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: How do you handle that?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Books with hard topics.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how do you choose, you know, or or do you go into books knowing what's in there, or do you sometimes go, we're just gonna read this book and take it as it happens, you know?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of both.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really if I'm reading a lot of book, I really like to know what I'm gonna encounter so that I'm re prepared for those conversations.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: But there's been plenty of times where we've just read and been surprised.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Or one of my kids will read something and bring it to me and start telling me about it, and I think, oh no, no, no, that was in there.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: What I realized is uh that if we just ask some open-ended questions, if I can ask them open-ended questions, one of my favorite questions to ask uh when when there are hard things in books um that I w wasn't or gritty things in books that I wasn't really excited that was in the book, is to ask them who about the characters, like who was the most courageous or who was the most cowardly, or who was the most noble.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because then when they say, Okay, if if they're reading a book and you say who was the most um cowardly in this story, and they can tell you, you can ask them what did they do that was so cowardly, and now you're sort of digging into like their motivations and you can open up sort of a conversation about why the characters are acting the way they are.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, which sort of sheds light then on why characters in life feel like in the real world are acting the way they are, why we all act the way we do when we behave poorly as human beings, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're even presented with uh a similar situation.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: What do we choose then?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because just because we're reading it doesn't mean we're gonna mimic it.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's the opportunity to think through well, I mean, chances are we're gonna be faced with these difficult circumstances.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: How are we gonna handle it?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that reminds me of uh Jonathan.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, I almost fell off my chair.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Jonathan Rogers had um come to the Read Lot Revival and he talked about the best Christmas pageant ever.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Which have you guys read that book?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: So in that book, he says there are no good role models for our kids.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want our kids to be like anybody.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want them to be like the herdmans, we don't want them to be like the smug, self-important narrator.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want them to be like the Christians at the church who don't think the herdmans belong with them, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: There are no really good role models.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: But he says that once you get to the end of the book, uh, it's not that your kids are going to mimic, they're not gonna start smoking in church like mimic that, but it just sheds light on the human experience.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: It just sort of sheds and it helps you see yourself more clearly.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like, actually, am I like those self-important smug Christians in the book?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: If that is that me, you know, and it makes us kind of stop and look at ourselves a little bit differently.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's not so much about role models as in people we mimic, like you just said, it's more about just helping us look at ourselves and humanity a little bit more clearly.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's the fear a lot of times with hard books, and even I mean, I know I've heard so much debate about even, you know, there's the Harry Potter books, and you're like, well, if my kids read that, they're gonna go out and start casting spells.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's this fear that if they read something, automatically they're gonna want to mimic it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes there's just more to it, you know.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think maybe the important thing is that you're talking to them.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're not leaving with a book, especially if there's hard stuff.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Don't just leave them with the book and hope they come ask you a question if they have one.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe that's it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: Have you always been a reader?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because your book lists are amazing, and you are always reading, obviously, and always talking about what you're reading.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: Has this always just been your way of life?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Are you a voracious read reader?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: Are you a speed reader?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: How do you do it?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm not a speed reader.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I was.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not, I wish I was a faster reader than I am.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I did read voraciously as a child, and then I kind of got out of the habit of reading when I first became a mom.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I wonder what about survival.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you can't keep your eyes open.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then I rediscovered it maybe when my kids were um, maybe my oldest might have been around five, and I started listening to some audiobooks, like that would get me on the treadmill.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, yeah, and then I think I became a more voracious reader as an adult once I realized it was just mine.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, as my as mothers, we're like always doing stuff for our kids and our our world so wrapped up in our kids, which is good.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's how it should be.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, at the same time, it just felt like this only thing that was my own.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: So um, there have been seasons where I'll read more when I was writing the book list for the Read Loud Family.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's like 400 book recommendations in there, and I was amazing.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's so good.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's incre I mean it's Sarah, you outdid yourself, like truly like it's um I I am not just saying that.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was an amazing, like I'm gonna hand it to everyone who likes a new one.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: Just put all of these now.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: And you're shopping Amazon's shopping cart.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was really insistent that every book that we mentioned in there I had to read front to back because um because things are putting your name to it, you know.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if you're gonna put it on a recommended list, you need to be able to stand behind it.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a huge couple reading years, and where I read more than normal too, because I was trying to find specific books for different age groups and things like that.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and books that would read aloud well, which are different as books that read aloud on or read alone well.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then it's funny because after that book was done, I could I could feel myself slowing down or at least shifting.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I wanted to read like more adult nonfiction.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: Don't blame you.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, there's like seasons where I'm better at it, and if I let myself um get into the habit of picking up my phone all the time, I will read less, just like everybody else, you know.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and um, I'm probably in one of those seasons right now where I just thought the other day, I have not really read very much.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um I usually kind of keep a log and I'm like, ooh, I'm not reading very much right now.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just because it's so easy to always when you have 10 minutes of time just to pick up your phone and look through Instagram, yeah, instead of picking up your book and reading for 10 minutes, you know.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I know.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: I heard of um I actually did end up reading the book because I heard a podcast first, but uh fringe hours, and I don't remember the author, you know, but it was Turner, I think.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, yes.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh, but it was just um it's kind of something that I had naturally done, but she articulated it in a way that I'm like, oh, I actually need to be thoughtful about that.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: But she talked about how she always had a book in her purse, you know, different things.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so I I am that like I'm that person who I'm standing in line at Costco and I pull out the book.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's Kaylee.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: My oldest daughter is that she has a book everywhere and she just stands in line reading.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, like it's amazing how much you can get done in that 10 little minutes.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: It is because if you wait and think I'm gonna rate until right before bed or until I have a half an hour.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, you won't have a half an hour in the middle of the day.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got kids, you will not have a half an hour, no matter what's true, what your schedule's like.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: So and if you wait till before bed, you will fall asleep on the third page or anything like that.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Or third paragraph.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I'll even bring, you know, my phone to bed thinking, I'm just gonna set my alarm.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Then I'll like put the phone down and I start reading, and I get to like the third paragraph, and I think, oh, I just wanted to check on that one thing.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'll pick up my phone and it's that kills my whole read reading time.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: So when I started realizing that just in these little 10-minute chunks, like right before we get to soccer, or I'm waiting in the grocery store line, or I have if I'm like uh my instinct is to pick up my phone.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: I actually put a little message on my screensaver at one point when I was really trying to break this habit.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do you really want to pass like it?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: You like open, unlock it, and you're on Instagram and you don't even know, you don't even know you did it.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's because for your kids, and you talk a lot about this in the book.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's I I loved how you kind of just weaved in the stories in and out with the practicals and the myths and you know, all your different like practical pieces.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: But um when and I know a lot of it is like you started when they were really, really young, and your oldest was I don't know, you talked about picking up that book when she was like six months, and it kind of got you started going.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I had this vision of reading to my firstborn, and when she was little, I attempted it, it didn't work.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: So tell me, did some of your kids are were they easier to read to than like say your twins?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: You talk about your twins a lot, and they're kind of easy to pick on, but yeah, they're considering double trouble, I know love life.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: But like, how did that work really?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think for sure, like the kids' temperament that themselves will lend itself either to what wanting to sit and listen to you read aloud for a long time or not.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: I also think our own expectations as mothers, you know, how much time do we think we need to sit and read aloud, or what do we think they need to be doing while we're reading aloud?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: If we expect sitting and listening quietly, it might not work quite as well.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um I read aloud once, you know, ever since she was a baby, because I had stumbled across Jim Treleese's Read Aloud Handbook, but I really didn't ramp it up into a lot until she was, I think, about uh six or seven, and I listened to Andrew Pudua from the Institute for Excellence in Writing talk about how reading aloud helps our kids become better writers and speakers.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: And because I was interested in their academic benefit, you know, the academic benefits, I started ramping it up.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then I started realizing that there was way more benefits than just the academic benefits.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, but just like any other mother, I go through seasons of where we read aloud a lot.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: When my when my first three were about eight, six, and four, I actually found it pretty easy to read aloud to them for hours because we weren't doing a lot of like really concentrated hard academic schoolwork yet, and we were homeschooling, so we had the time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Then you add a couple more babies and it gets a lot harder.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can only imagine.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: And there does start to be the age difference of what they're interested in.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: So how have you handled that?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because there are universal books and and you're reading ahead, which is fine for some because it's expanding their knowledge base.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but then you have to, you know, read a little bit lower for the older kids.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: How have you determined what you do?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: And how does that do you actually gather all the kids and read at once?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: The same I don't usually read to all six at once.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: So my kids are 16, 14, 12, 6, and the twins are four and a half.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so I tend to read to them in like two batches, like the older kids and the younger kids.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and my older kids, 16, 14, 12, I'll oftentimes shoot for the middle, figuring that the older kids will be able to get more from it, and the younger one, he'll be he won't be so lost.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: When I was always reading to my oldest daughter, um, you know, he wasn't first of all that interested in Anne of Green Gables, but secondly, right, right.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um a lot of it's just lost on him, and he was still at that stage where I wanted him to fall in love with reading.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, she already did, and he didn't yet.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I tend to read to them separately, and then I read to my little kids separately.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Occasionally we'll read a book like we just read Um The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street over Christmas.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: I read that one.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's new, it came out this last fall.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I usually recommend it for kids who love the Penderwicks.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: It is really good.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: And what I love about those those stories like that, where there's lots of siblings, is there's a character for every every kid.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I ended up being able to read that one to all six of my kids because the as long as the little kids had something to do, like coloring or like play-doh or something, right?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: They listen, I don't know how much of it they got, but I wasn't really that worried about that.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about that for a second, because you did reference you're trying to read to kids of different ages and your expectations about what they're gonna be doing while you're reading.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like how do you handle?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think there is the frustration of you're being disrespectful if you're wiggling, moving, like you should be listening intently.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, what really what should we expect and what's okay?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and how are they listening and learning, even if they're moving, or like how's that?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Dr.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Michael Gurion came to the Read A Loud Revival podcast and talked about how for a lot of kids, especially boys, but just for a lot of kids in general, their brains actually ramp up and start paying better attention when their bodies are moving.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: So he said if you're reading to your 10-year-old son and all of a sudden he gets up and starts pacing or doing somersaults or something, we think that's a disrespectful when really what he's his brain just went into high gear.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's listening about it.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that's just it surprises me sometimes because my son is my most active, my oldest son, and he um he oftentimes can tell us more than the girls can about what they've read, yeah, or about what I've read aloud.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's sort of that idea that like if you give your body something to do, then your brain can stop being distracted.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: It can now so um I will keep a shelf of activities, things like coloring and sketchbooks, play-doh.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'll let my kids play with Legos when I read aloud as long as they like dump them out ahead of time because oh my god, I get noise.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's like that when they dip their hand in and then oh my gosh, like all my nerve endings are in this, right?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Totally get that.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: My oldest daughter, she likes to do things like hand lettering.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we've gotten pretty good at is um keeping a stash of things so I can say, hey, we're gonna read a lot in 10 minutes.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to do something, get it now.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like get your stuff now.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: I like how you talked about the how you learn to keep it in one place because you're calling for them to do that, and they're like, oh, just one more thing, one more thing.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that's my school year.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that about sums it up.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like anytime you're trying to get out the door, same thing, right?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I I I I think it was Sally Clarkson, and I don't remember which book, or even if it was like a podcast or something.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, I think it was the the book Different that she wrote with um Nathan.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: And she talked about that too, where she finally embraced the fact because our three older were a little bit more inclined to sit and listen and participate.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: But her boy just had to move.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: And that really, really helped me because I'm one of those who just had to move.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that that kind of you know framed our times a little bit better.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's true, he would, and he's still to this day, he'll protest, but he gets into it and he doesn't want, you know, to stop, whether it's the listening or me rating and all of that.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: And he might be upside down, hanging off the couch, you know, like doing all sorts of flips and cartwheels, but he's he's learning, he's listening, you know, he's he's taking it in.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that's really cool.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: It looks different than the others.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's it does.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: I know, and it can be hard too if we're not the same personality type as those children, yes, or the same learning style as those children to understand.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why is why are you doing that?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, right.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's good.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really cool.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a 16-year-old that you're still reading aloud to children of that age.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's fun because those are um the most fun read alouds I do, I think, are with my teenagers because we can read a lot of things that I enjoy just as much as they do now, you know.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's sort of bonded us in a unique way toward to where now when they're reading on their own, a lot of times they'll hand me a book and go, mom, you love this, or you should read this one aloud to all of us because it was so good.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's happened a few times, but um the benefits, the act the academic benefits alone of continuing to read aloud to our older kids are kind of surprising.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's all because of those um grammatically correct and sophisticated language patterns that come in through the ear.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And really, what Andrew Puttawa from the Institute of Excellence in Writing said that day that convinced me the first time I really started to ramp up reading aloud was that we're not getting our kids aren't getting grammatically correct and sophisticated language patterns in conversation, not with us, not with their parents, not from me, not from TV, definitely not from texting.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Where are they getting them?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: They only get them through books.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then he said, if you when we read words from a page, we actually skip a lot of words, and then all of the nectar words, and um, and so it's just when we read them aloud that those patterns get in through their ear.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then he says, you know, you can't get out what you don't put in.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want your child to be a good speaker and writer and communicator, which is helpful for all of our kids in their future life, adult life, then we need to be putting it in through the ear.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of one of those things where you realize um, you know how like our little kids will say things that we've said to them a hundred times and it sounds terrible because you realize, yes, you don't appreciate it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um there is a podcast listener who wrote in and told us that she was reading Charles Dickens' um a Christmas Carol with her kids, and some of them were really little, and she thought they were not, I mean, they could not possibly be understanding because it's Charles Dickens, right?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, big.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: And she said her, I don't know if they were five and three or six and four, but her little kids were playing with toys and they Started to the little one didn't want to share.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: And her six-year-old says, You covetous old sinner.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think we can use the term correctly.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: In the right context.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I love it.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: That is so great.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's amazing what they're absorbing.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's amazing.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Amy has she's done the read aloud being a homeschool mom and stuff.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not something I've been doing.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a thing I gave up long ago because of all the wiggling.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then we would sit down and they would start fighting over who got to sit by me and then who got to sit by each other.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just, and I was like, forget this.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is ridiculous.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's too hard.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why I why would I torture myself this way?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I've listened to your podcast and I'm listening to you now.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I really need to do this.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna have to add to my, we were talking super summer challenge, which this I need to add this into my summer, but really it's just I don't know, it's something I need to do, and I want to do it.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you've convinced me that it's a thing I need to be doing.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, an easy way too to get back into it, especially if you have older kids, because they might not take really well to you saying sit down, I'm gonna read it right.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, is audiobooks in the car.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because audiobooks then take all the pressure off you having to do it well, which it can be tiring or just frustrating um to try and read a lot, especially if kids are complaining.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're in the car um turning on something like The Hobbit or whatever, they're trapped.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: Would you say?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they're trapped.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's like captive.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can enjoy it too, which is and even if you especially if you have teenagers who go, you know, I don't, I don't, why are you turning this on?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want this.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: You can just say, I'm just listening to it for me, and then they'll just happen to be there listening, right?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: I actually don't enjoy reading aloud because for whatever reason, I just I don't know if it's the way I breathe, but I start yawning and it's like, why is my problem?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I get you know, and so I don't like the way I read aloud.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so so, but if audiobooks are just as good, I can at least start there.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can read aloud, but yeah, I just don't like it.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they are actually audiobooks are just as good.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things um like we can remember is that two of the best benefits of the whole read aloud thing is those sophisticated language patterns, which they get from audiobooks, and then it's the connection from a shared story, which you get if you're listening to it together, like in the car.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I've heard people say, Oh, you know, but there's a a sentimental value to hearing your ma mother or father's voice, and maybe that's true, but I don't know.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm pretty sure my kids think they hear my voice plenty.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right, exactly.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think my kids might want to break from my voice.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: I know, right?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I think.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: I want to break from using my voice.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things though I love, and I don't, I know you don't spend a ton of time this um in your book specifically, but it was a podcast that I don't know, it was maybe two years ago, but you talked about picture books and being okay to read them to your older um use those those read alouds.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that I just share a little bit about that because that was really transformational for me and really helped me.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: What's a picture?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: What how small of a book are we talking?
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, a picture book can be any um any book where there are pictures on most every page.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think technically there's a difference, like a pic like if we got really technical, the a picture book, um the half the story is told through pictures and half is told through the text, and a storybook is like a store, like um a story that you could read and either show the pictures to the kids or not, they'd still be able to see it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, for our purposes, we can just think of like a picture book as any story where there's lots of illustrations.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things um that's been really helpful to me to remember is that picture books are read, or actually, I'm sorry, they're written for you to read aloud to your kids.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: The publishers and the authors, they expect you're gonna be reading all these aloud with little kids.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: But chapter books and novels are um different because they think kids are gonna be reading them to themselves.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, because of that, a lot of times the um complexity and vocabulary in the language is actually more sophisticated in a picture book than it is in a chapter book or novel.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then there are picture books that are they cover some bigger topics and weightier issues that are actually meant for older kids.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: So in the Read Aloud Family, in my um chapters where I recommend books for teens for by age, there's a chapter for eight to twelve, and there's a chapter for teens.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I have picture book recommendations for all of those.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: And the teen recommendations are picture books that tackle hard topics like civil rights and slavery and racism.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of times um we don't have time necessarily to sit and read to kill a mockingbird with our 14-year-old.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you can read a whole picture book in one sitting, yeah, get the whole story and a good conversation, you know, over 20 minutes while you're eating lunch or something.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so it feels a lot like we could tackle a lot more stories and a lot more topics and open up a lot more conversations by doing that through picture books.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think for one of the benefits that I saw was just I had um I had one eager reader, one not so willing.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it was just harder for her to find topics that she was interested in.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: And the thing was is that she was being pushed um too quickly past the picture book element and that, you know, and not just the easy reader, but like the delightful, like I think rocks a box and um like right off the top of my head, you know, just like these beautiful pictures.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: But like you said, um uh deep issue books that were in a you know more adaptable, palatable format.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, doing that helped stir in her a love for reading because she's an artist, and so she wanted to be able to see it.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so her, the visual was really important to make that connection and for her to like start formulating it in her own mind's eye as well.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: When we would then, because we would do some of those, but then we would read something heavier, and I just saw that transition grow in her to be able to make that connection where, like, oh yeah, I can I can visualize as I as I listen.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because we continue to incorporate, even though maybe some people would say they're too old for that.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it was just, I don't know.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: I loved, I felt like you know, being okay with the picture books was just when it's kind of funny too.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, when we really think about I'm I I'm guilty of it too, thinking, oh, they're too old for that.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we go to art museums as adults and we look at beautiful art, right?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I think like to myself, think of Laura Ingalls if you had said you could hold in your little cabin in the woods, here's a beautiful picture book, you can hold all this amazing art right in your lap and stare at it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like we have this access to it and we forget uh that you're actually never too old to look at something beautiful and appreciate the oh yeah.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_03: And there's so much app out there.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't think we could possibly read all the picture books.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I just go to our little library and I'm like, I gotta read all of these.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_03: But that's the thing, it's so fun is that I didn't get to read, you know, maybe these when they were three or four, whatever I thought was appropriate for it.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: But there's no reason why I can't take them now and read them and enjoy myself, and then yeah, the kids see me read them and they're like, Oh, what's that?
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: And what is that?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just my favorite is when I'm reading picture books with my younger kids, and then the little kids get up and kind of scatter and I look up and all my teenagers are looking over my shoulder.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: It happens.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: It is so, so good.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: How long have you been doing um your read aloud um podcast?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like podcast started in 2014, so four years.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, have you just loved getting to talk to all these authors?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, it just seems like a really fun thing.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: It is really fun.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's so funny because when I started the podcast, I really thought it would be a couple episodes and it was kind of impulsive, really.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: What happened is um I thought, oh, it would be fun to start a podcast.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: I love listening to podcasts.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um, at the same time, I was really noticing that our read alouds in our family were pretty transformative on a whole bunch of different levels.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought, you know, if I could talk to anybody for the podcast, I would love to talk to you, Andrew Pudua from the Institute for Excellence in Writing.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: But I didn't think um, I mean, I shot an email off to his company asking if he'd want to talk to me for my podcast, but like he's kind of a big deal, so I thought he's not gonna say yes.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: And also I didn't have a podcast, so then that's so funny.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: And they wrote back right away and said, Oh, he'd love to talk to you for your podcast.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh my god, wow, how to start a podcast.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then it I thought it would just be a few episodes long, but it really took on a life of its own.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it just this is because uh, you know, we're all overwhelmed, we all have too much on our plates, we all feel really distracted, but we all real as parents, like our deepest heart's longing is to connect heart to heart with our kids.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we find out that you can do that through 10 or 15 minutes of reading every couple days, doesn't have to be every day, just reading aloud to them can can form these bonds and meet them and connect us together.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: It just feels like too good to be true almost, you know.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I know you've done so much.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: I I mean, I know you don't even maybe you talk about it a little bit in the book, but I mean you have a whole community built around a huge community built around this, and you have you offer some special like insider um, and I know you it's probably not open right now when this is gonna release, but every once in a while you open up a membership.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um because you have a membership site where you have like exclusive content and things like that.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: So talk a little bit, give us a little sneak peek of what that looks like and what how that I mean I just think it's amazing.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: Which by the way, are you do you know the Enneagram at all?
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, what number are you on the Enneagram?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a seven.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are you really?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh that's so fun.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is fun.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you both.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a four.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a three.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm a seven.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, you're super you're super fun.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, sorry.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I just wondered, because like it went from you like stumble into this podcast to, oh, you got something really cool going.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love it.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so the premium membership is great because um what we're able to do is I remember from my own childhood when an author came to visit our school, just thinking, oh my gosh, it's like a real person.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of think I'd think of like these authors as like living up on a mountaintop, like I don't know, right?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: Rich and famous.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized that because we homeschool, my kids weren't getting any of those author visits.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not actually sure a lot of schools are able to pull off author visits anyway.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: Probably, yeah.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: With technology, I thought, why don't we bring this into our homes?
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so one of the key things we do in the premium membership is every month we do this family book club where there it are some ideas for sharing a particular author's work with kids of all different ages.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um we try to pull in um ideas for activities and books that can span a pretty wide age range, and then that author or illustrator of the book comes on and does a live video stream, like a live webinar, basically.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so great because the kids get to ask these questions and it and get them answered.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, like when Hannah writes in and says, you know, to Tommy De Paula, how did you come up with the idea for Streganona?
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he looks right into the camera and says, Hannah, I'll tell you, they just you know wig out because of my.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh and what we hear from these families is they go to the library and they'll see then those authors' names.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's like they feel like they know them, you know, it's a different kind of connection.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: So um, there's some other features in premium membership too.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like we have a pretty awesome forum um where we're always tossing around book recommendations for each other and those kinds of things.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: We just open a few times a year, um, and we're opening up right before the next time we open up anyway, is right before summer at the very end of May, because we've got some really fun summer things, especially for kids who are about between seven and fourteen.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be a pretty good summer, I think.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, awesome.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's exciting.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: And you're always like um encouraging foot clubs and even like uh you do kind of like a read aloud challenge every once in a while, is that right?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like a 30-day challenge.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so that in January we do a 30-day challenge where uh we encourage kids to do the reading aloud, okay, which helps because then they can read a lot to siblings, you don't have to do as much yourself, but it also really increases their own skill in reading and reading aloud itself is kind of its own unique skill, you know.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, no, it is.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think that was like um the the thing about the picture book that got my middle one in particular to advance her skills because she was wanting to read it, she was wanting to read it aloud to the other siblings and try it out.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it, you know, she wouldn't have you know with the Lori Engels Wilder book, but she did because they were had pretty pictures beside it.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so then they would fight over who got the longest, which I was cracking up.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I can't get you to read, and then you're gonna fight over who has the longest paragraph and whatever.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: So that is so funny.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's such a sibling thing.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: Make it a competition, you can probably get them to do a lot of things in terms of exactly it's so true.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: Sarah, thank you so much for this.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: We just wish you the best success with this book.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: I know I really like these are one of those views that I'm like everyone, every family needs to have this book and the book list handy and to understand the value of reading aloud and what literature can do for not only you know your kids' lives, but your life too.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a win-win for everybody.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you so much for having me.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_03: It has been so much fun to chat with you.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Sarah.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: Have a wonderful rest of the day.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: All right, you too.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: All right, bye.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_03: Bye-bye.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: So, what do you think after getting because like you said, like oh yeah, maybe this is a little bit more like my family culture for me.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but for you, it feels like okay.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: So, what do you do now?
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's totally different now.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess I could just start small.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go get some good picture books or something.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think my kids would be into it now.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's just um you just have to push past uh some of the behavior stuff and and and let the boys do flips or whatever they're gonna do.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: As long as they're not hurting each other in the process or being a total distraction.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think it'll be really good.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, kids just love our one-on-one attention.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: They just want our, you know, at times, our full attention.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is a great way to do it, and to do it with all three younger ones at one time.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: So um and I do want to encourage a level rating, yeah, because it's just it's it's valuable.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really encouraged and challenged.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's challenging.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've listened to her podcast now for a while, you know, and I think okay, this is something I need to be doing, and then so it's just a matter of go and to find some good books to get started, and I'm not gonna shoot too high, like I'm not gonna read the hobbit to them.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, I do not have a minute.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, but maybe some good picture books and some good audio books.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe Narnia star there or something.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I think this is definitely one of those things.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and talking about like or thinking about the summer and super summer challenge, creating a simply summer, then that this is an element that definitely goes in there.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this is for sure something I can do.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, we've got our you know, our schedule that we talked about earlier, and then maybe give them some free time, but definitely have and even if it's not every day, but you know, a few times a week.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I love it that too, I guess in my head I'm picturing if I'm reading aloud, it's gotta be like 30 minutes or an hour.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a long time for kids to be still, and it's a long time for you to be reading aloud.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so just the 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes or whatever, and then um she gives a lot of creative ideas in the books, but um in the book and in her podcast.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: But one of the main things that I have done is do it um in conjunction with a snack or a meal.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that makes sense.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't feel stressed and they're busy stuffing their faces and they they glean the most part.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: Or again, driving right um the summer when you're driving back and forth from the pool or you know, kind of at the gym or at the park or you know, all those sort of things.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it makes it it breaks it down to something that's doable and easy.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was that way as a kid.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: I always had to draw or doodle.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in church, in class, yeah.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: My papers were always full of doodles and notes, whatever notes I was taking.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that's how I listened.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it looked like I was doing something else, but this is me listening, you know, and I I'm just that way too.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes sense.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I love it.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's so good.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the last thing too, and we I I think Sarah mentioned it just real briefly, but it's the bond that you create um between the siblings, but also between, you know, also mom and dad and siblings in particular.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a thing I need to work on and want to work on.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, or dad.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um I have some friends who the dad is the main re-allow person, which is awesome.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's not really how it works in our house, but I just think that would be a really neat piece.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_03: I, you know, just think of that like you know, the father's voice and you know how that can mean something even more you know more special.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so that could be a real special way to, you know.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: So if this is something that you really couldn't do, but your husband maybe has time and or he doesn't have another way to connect with them, and that's a quick, easy, like hey, ten minutes before bed, or or I don't know, at the if you can have breakfast together, yeah.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I just think of all the ways that you know you can incorporate that because it's pretty cool.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't wait to read the book.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't read it yet.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: So did it is it officially released?
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um March.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: You just have the early.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I have the early release and I will I will maybe let you borrow it.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, maybe I'll get it back though.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to get it back.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: I actually had some other books I needed to bring out to you today.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that one and the spider.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're on my desk, and I started to pick them up out the door, but I was running.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, I love it.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so blessed to get to I have a huge stack of books that I need to read.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_03: But um, we've got a new friend on the collective who's gonna help me read.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: She's gonna be which is really great.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_03: She's gonna help me read.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_03: How's she gonna help you read?
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, because a lot of publicists have been sending me books that oh, she's gonna read some of the books.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, just to see if they're a good fit before we invite them on and schedule them.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to make sure.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, I haven't met many books I didn't like, but well, some don't fit.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they just don't fit.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: Which is yeah, what we're doing here and stuff like that.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's pretty fun.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm excited to um we're gonna be starting a new book this afternoon at pickup.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: So excited.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: What are you talking about?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: The Pender Wix.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's just funny because if you cover Pender, it's Wix, like spelled like our last name.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's like lost reads.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: We did read one of them before, but we're gonna do the audiobook.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: And we do carpool.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: So we have another little girl with us often, and she gets into the stories just as much as my kids do.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's so you just leave it in the car, and every time you turn on all of the kids, it's just there.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's just there.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a good idea.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: I may or may not have listened to it without them and then had to like, you know.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wait, oh, it must have been playing.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: It must have gotten fast forward accidentally.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:01:51
  unknown: Oops.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I find I get into my kids' stuff, and and this is embarrassing, but even like kids shows like Disney Channel, I would find like they would not even be in the room, and I'm just like, oh, I like this show.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they come in and like, why are you watching this?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I wasn't watching that.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have no idea.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, well, that was fun.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: Sarah's lovely.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: She is lovely.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: I like her a lot.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be your friend then.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: I know, me too.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: She's greatly.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess we'll have to listen to her on her podcast.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, obviously, we had a ton of takeaways from our conversation in Sarah's book.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's officially available pretty much everywhere books are sold.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_03: And seriously, her book lists are some of the best I've ever seen.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: Check out our show notes for all the details.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_03: And Ashley did do a fantastic Insta story about her experiment with the kids.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_03: She put everything she learned from Sarah into practice, and we're gonna be sure to save it as one of our favorite Insta stories so you can still find it when um after you listen to this podcast.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, while you're in the show notes, if you could take a quick minute and leave us a rating, it really does help others know that they're welcome in our community and what to expect from listening.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_03: Heidi MyFowler recently left this review on our Facebook page.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: Heidi wrote, I love this podcast.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: Amy asks excellent questions and interviews the most inspiring people.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_03: My favorite podcast so far is October 18th, 2017, The Gift of Being Hidden.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much, Heidi.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_03: We love our podcast listeners, and we're so grateful to share these amazing messages.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: So until next week, we hope you'll be joining us as we discover more ways to live a simply wholehearted life.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: Unplugged, purposeful, and intentional.