Gregg Behr (WHEN YOU WONDER, YOU'RE LEARNING: Mister Rogers' Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids) & Joan Koenig (THE MUSICAL CHILD: Using the Power of Music to Raise Children Who Are Happy, Healthy, and Whole)
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:06]I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology,
[0:12]which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to Accarantine Anthology.
[0:16]I'll proceed to that book, go to COVID-19 Vaccine Research.
[0:20]And I'm the editor-in-chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium,
[0:24]and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there.
[0:29]And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram, at Zivi Owens, and my website is Zivi Owens.com.
[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Today was a double episode of Between Greg Bear and Joan Coney.
[0:42]Greg is the author of When You Wonder Your Learning, Mr. Rogers enduring lessons for raising creative, curious kids.
[0:48]Greg is a father, children's advocate, and director for the Great Bull Foundation,
[0:52]whose work is inspired by his hero, Fred Rogers.
[0:55]From more than a decade, he has helped lead remake learning,
[0:57]a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers he founded in 2007, to international renown.
[1:03]Form Rogers' real-life neighborhood of Pittsburgh, remake learning has turned heads everywhere.
[1:07]From forums to the World Economic Forum for its efforts to ignite children's curiosity,
[1:11]encourage creativity and foster justice in belonging in schools, libraries, museums, and more.
[1:16]A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, and also Duke University,
[1:19]Greg holds honorary degrees from Carlo University and St. Vincent College.
[1:23]He's an advisor to the Brookings Institution and the Fred Rogers Center, and has been cited by Barack Obama, Richard Branson,
[1:29]and the Destructor Foundation as an innovator and a thought leader.
[1:33]His co-writer, by the way, Ryan Reidzewski, who we did not have on the podcast,
[1:38]is a writer about science and education, and is also on many awards.
[1:42]Joan Coney is the author of The Musical Child,
[1:45]using the power of music to raise children who are happy, healthy, and whole.
[1:49]She is an American-born musician, educator, author, public speaker, mother, creative,
[1:53]gervish, and science nerd.
[1:55]She's a graduate of the Juilliard School, and has performed worldwide as a soloist and chamber musician.
[2:00]Jazz and Hindu, stony music, classical music of Northern India,
[2:03]have played in an integral role in her musical life and reflection on human musicality.
[2:08]She has made her home in Paris for the past 40 years.
[2:11]Welcome, today I have two guests, which is so fun.
[2:15]The first Joan Coney, the musical child, using the power of music to raise children who are happy, healthy, and whole.
[2:22]I will use anything to make my children happy, healthy, and whole.
[2:25]Keep and pick up some sort of violin or something.
[2:27]And also Greg Bear, whose co-author is Ryan Reidzewski.
[2:32]Reidzewski.
[2:33]Reidzewski, I was close.
[2:34]When you wonder your learning, Mr. Rogers, enduring lessons for raising creative, curious, caring kids.
[2:39]I would also do a lot for that.
[2:41]So there you go.
[2:42]I feel like with both your books, we'll have, like, perfect kids.
[2:44]Right?
[2:45]If we take all these skill sets.
[2:47]Well, maybe slightly more curative creatives, good kids.
[2:50]There's still a lot of work to be done.
[2:52]Greg, so why don't you go first and tell listeners about your book and kind of what inspired you to write it and what the main takeaways really are.
[3:01]And like, Mr. Rogers, this is amazing.
[3:03]I grew up with Mr. Rogers as so many people did.
[3:06]Yeah, so did I.
[3:07]So thank you, Zippy.
[3:08]Thank you for having me and it's a joy to be here together with Joan.
[3:11]So I'm a Western Pennsylvania kid, which is important because Fred Rogers also was a Western Pennsylvania kid.
[3:18]So like you, Zippy, I grew up with Mr. Rogers and those model houses, the community gardens he went to.
[3:24]Those were like my houses, those were my gardens.
[3:27]And so I've always had a deep emotional affinity for Fred Rogers.
[3:31]Second, in this little corner of the world in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, educators in and out of school.
[3:37]So early learning centers, museums, libraries, other sites of learning have really been working over the past 15 years to fundamentally change our learning landscape.
[3:45]And they do so in a way that's very much like the neighborhood.
[3:49]Yes, schools are important, but Mr. Rogers built a neighborhood, not just a classroom, not just a home learning space, but a neighborhood.
[3:55]And so it's that work over the past 15 years that really inspired us.
[4:00]And the aha for me and Ryan McO author was really starting to see Fred Rogers not just as that loving caring person that we knew on television, but as someone who in fact was a learning scientist.
[4:12]Now they didn't use those words 50 years ago, but in fact, he was a learning engineer who was taking advantage of whole child development theory and really applying it in ways that today the field of learning science would say make some a learning scientist.
[4:27]And as Ryan and I were reading papers from MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, increasingly, they seem like scripts from the neighborhood.
[4:35]And we thought, you know, there's a story to tell about Fred Rogers, not just as that loving caring person that we all knew, but it's someone who is deliberate and intentional about creating learning environments.
[4:46]And someone who's worked each of us in our own ways could emulate whether it's in our home or in a classroom.
[4:52]Awesome, I love that great.
[4:54]Okay, so Joan, we'll talk a little about your back and then we'll meld the two. Go ahead.
[4:58]Absolutely. I think it's pretty easy for me to say way in here because I'm quite fascinated by what you just said and the fact that neuroscience is very recent.
[5:08]You know, we only started being able to look at how the brain worked a little over 30 years ago.
[5:12]There were people who were studying learning a long time before that.
[5:16]There were a lot of people doing amazing things, but you couldn't put the absolute science label onto it.
[5:23]So, for example, the multiple intelligences Howard Gardner, Harvard and this kind of thing.
[5:27]When you were saying that Mr. Rogers was actually an education scientist.
[5:30]I think there were a lot of them out there, but they didn't have the label and they didn't have that scientific sort of signpost saying yes, this is valid because we can look in the brain and we see how the brain is functioning.
[5:43]So, neuroscience is amazing, but sometimes I feel as though a lot of these things, they were working wonderfully 40 or 50 years ago and some of them should be brought back as opposed to thrown out because they're not new.
[5:53]And so, obviously, music has been around as long as, you know, the world has been around and its presence in all societies is undeniable.
[6:03]I think also the fact that most of us have had some major moment in our lives that's marked by music.
[6:09]And when we have big moments in our lives, we go to music for support for solace for happiness and children do as well.
[6:17]So, we have this kind of conundrum, which is that music is as old as the hills. It's nothing new. It has been denigrated by school systems for I'd say for quite a while now.
[6:27]And yet, all the neuroscience of the past 30 years is showing us that music is absolutely part and parcel of how we develop as human beings.
[6:36]And it gets even more specific. The fact is that there are so many salient links between processing music and processing language that when you do them both together, the children are just going to have a better conversation skills, literacy skills.
[6:54]And avoid some problems. There are extraordinary links between dyslexia and the lack of the ability to sense pulsation in music or feel a beat.
[7:04]And the science is all there and it just begs you to put music back into the schools in a big way.
[7:11]And I'm just very curious about why we're not doing it. And it's kind of like the Mr Rogers thing. Is it because it's not new.
[7:19]It's something new. We want something with a shiny label on it. So I just think that I have decades of experience firsthand right now about seeing how it works.
[7:28]And I just want every child in the world to benefit from this.
[7:32]And I share because I'd love to make a connection between music science and thread away. I'm just going to share. I love what Joan.
[7:39]I love what Joan just said because we are distracted by the shiny new things. And, but really innovation is finding something new and something familiar.
[7:48]And that's what we found in the work of Fred Rogers that dates back, you know, half a century and seeing it in some new ways. And Ryan and I took the title of our book when you wonder you're learning from a song that Fred Rogers wrote in 1979 called did you know.
[8:04]And among other things, Fred Rogers was an amazing musician and lyricist, you know, running hundreds of pieces of music.
[8:13]And as Ryan and I looked at that song, Fred Rogers wrote in 1979 and compared it to a learning science paper published by researchers at the University of California in 2014, they basically said the same thing.
[8:27]And the research paper talked about curiosity and curiosity as a vortex and a vortex that sucks you in and absorbs your learning but also prompts you to start learning other things around you.
[8:37]Whether or not you want to be learning those things or not.
[8:40]Well, that's essentially what Fred Rogers song and the lyrics to did you know say and that he wrote in 1979 and it's seeing in something.
[8:49]So I think at some point it's just as John just said seeing something new in things that are familiar and in fact emotional to us, as we think about the things we need to do for kids today.
[8:59]Absolutely. And the, and the, there, there are things that have never changed. It's just that right now we can actually measure them.
[9:05]And I feel like, I feel like quoting Greta Thunberg, you know, saying just listen to the scientists because in fact, we remember things better when they're set to music.
[9:15]And when they are the memorization part is just a snap. But in terms of the notion of emotion, we now know that a brain that is happy is a brain that's flooded with nice hormones like serotonin and dopamine and that those are the maximal conditions for the child to be learning a child who's upset or stressed cannot learn.
[9:40]emotion that learning needs to be difficult draconian and austere to be effective. It's just, it's just bullshit. You know that I always used to say laughing child is learning child and science proves it now.
[9:53]So the more fun the children are having and the more they're encouraged to wonder about.
[10:00]things and to do realized projects together,
[10:03]the happier they're going to be
[10:05]and the more these early years will count later on
[10:08]in their entire approach to learning.
[10:11]And I would also say in turn,
[10:13]their entire approach to learning with other people.
[10:17]Very true.
[10:18]I could sing to you all of the 50 states, if you would like.
[10:22]But I won't.
[10:23]But I could never say them, right?
[10:25]Because my kids had to do that song.
[10:27]Do you know what I'm talking about?
[10:28]Yeah.
[10:29]50, nifty, whatever.
[10:31]You know it's from the beginning originally.
[10:34]I didn't want to do it.
[10:35]It wasn't going to be me.
[10:38]I'm too old for that one.
[10:40]But if you can imagine that you can actually
[10:42]have a day in which most of what's going on,
[10:44]things that need to be set or set in music,
[10:46]for example, when it's time to come sit down on the circle
[10:49]and actually sit down as opposed to standing up
[10:51]or cross your legs or become silent and listen
[10:54]to the person who's speaking, when you do it with musical cues,
[10:57]none of the teachers have to shout.
[10:58]Nobody raises their voices, because the children
[11:00]are automatically listening for that little cue.
[11:03]They like hearing it.
[11:05]They like identifying it.
[11:06]And everything that they sing together,
[11:09]there's a helpful, there's this kind of hand-holding
[11:12]qualities that music allows.
[11:13]Because the melody and rhythm pull you along,
[11:16]even if you can't quite remember what the word is.
[11:20]And the next time you sing it, probably
[11:21]going to get that word, because the melody and the rhythm
[11:24]just kept on you along, even if you couldn't get that 39th state.
[11:29]One of your ends did.
[11:31]And so you might watch them.
[11:32]So we know that this works.
[11:36]And I just want to invite schools and parents
[11:39]to use it, because especially in a post-COVID world,
[11:43]imagine if you're learning days more than 50% in music,
[11:47]the enjoyment, the feeling of togetherness children will have.
[11:51]And even before they go to school,
[11:53]there are things they can do with their parents.
[11:55]I try to put a maximum number of exercises in the book,
[11:58]because it's all about communication.
[12:01]Yeah, I was going to ask both of you for the parent at home
[12:04]who's just looking to raise a good kid and get through the day.
[12:10]And all of that, what can they do?
[12:11]It seems like there's so many things that both of you
[12:14]could do to impact change on a societal level,
[12:17]from the education side.
[12:18]And Greg, you know, you started like remake learning.
[12:20]and you have a whole thing dedicated to affecting change
[12:23]on a widespread scale.
[12:25]And your books are mostly designed to take all the stuff
[12:28]that you've learned and then give parents
[12:30]tools to use not just for educators.
[12:32]So if you had to pick a couple things
[12:35]that a parent might not know that you have found
[12:39]from all of your research and whether or not
[12:42]educators adopt some of your things
[12:44]that I'm sure would be better off.
[12:45]Like what are a couple sort of take home suggestions?
[12:50]I mean, should I be singing when I try to get my kids breakfast
[12:53]and out the door in the morning?
[12:54]I mean, they would like run screaming.
[12:55]So yeah, maybe they'd get in the car faster,
[12:57]but you know, what should we do at home?
[13:00]Well, what you've just asked, and I think what Joan shared
[13:03]is really about creating an atmosphere for learning.
[13:05]And I will not pretend to be a perfect dad.
[13:08]I make a lot of mistakes during the course of the day.
[13:10]But something that Ryan and I tried to do in our book
[13:13]is curate examples from educators really around the world
[13:18]of really doable things, things that you and I
[13:21]can do in our own homes or teacher or librarian
[13:24]in the places where they are.
[13:26]And one of my favorite examples is the Ask It Basket.
[13:29]So head a sharpen, an educator herself
[13:33]who worked alongside Fred Rogers
[13:34]beginning on production in 1968, shared with us
[13:38]walking into a classroom and seeing that the teacher had
[13:41]this wicker basket in the front, and she thought,
[13:43]well, that's interesting, like what is that?
[13:45]And as the classroom went on, she was observing
[13:47]how this teacher had created an atmosphere,
[13:50]an atmosphere that invited questions.
[13:52]And so kids would ask questions.
[13:53]And you would, you know what it's like.
[13:55]Some of the questions were right on point,
[13:57]and some of them came from right over the left field wall.
[14:00]Like, who, what was that question?
[14:03]But what the teacher did is this.
[14:05]One, she wasn't quick to answer it.
[14:07]Two, she acknowledged the question.
[14:09]So she paused the knowledge with the question.
[14:11]Three, she took a post it and took time to write it down.
[14:15]And four, put it in the basket and said,
[14:17]you know what?
[14:17]Later, we're going to wonder about this question together.
[14:20]Now that very simple thing, which is something you and I
[14:23]could do in our own kitchens, right?
[14:25]Because imagine, you know, you know how many questions
[14:27]kids ask is you're like, running to get ready for school
[14:29]or on a Saturday night at home.
[14:31]You know, each of us can have an asking basket.
[14:33]And what that did is it created an environment
[14:36]where the kids felt respected.
[14:39]They felt like they belonged.
[14:41]They felt like it was comfortable to be curious.
[14:44]And it was an atmosphere for wonder
[14:46]that was inviting, joyful, and permissible.
[14:50]And to me, that's a beautiful example of a small thing
[14:53]that each of us can do.
[14:54]And in our book, we try and give some other examples
[14:56]that we've, in fact, borrowed from great educators
[14:59]around the world.
[15:00]I feel like my ask at the basket is Google.
[15:02]I just like pick up Google and answer the question.
[15:05]You know?
[15:06]Yeah.
[15:07]Yeah, maybe not.
[15:08]That's a very serious, a serious Alexa or my helpers here.
[15:12]Anyway, what about you, Joan?
[15:13]What's something we can do at really easily at home?
[15:17]I think that, first of all, I'd like to say something.
[15:19]It may sound a bit strange, but I raised my children
[15:21]in France.
[15:22]And I think it was a very, it's a different time.
[15:25]This is 30 years ago, but I think it's also a different country
[15:27]in which the idea of being a parent is just sort of
[15:31]part and parcel of what you do in life.
[15:33]And the notion of parenting or being the greatest parent
[15:36]in the world, it just was not, there was not
[15:38]this pressure on me or frankly any of my friends.
[15:41]I think we had much more of the idea
[15:42]that we were enjoying our children
[15:44]and that nobody society was not expecting us
[15:48]to be perfect parents.
[15:49]So I think that the biggest thing that characterizes
[15:52]my experience with my own children in early childhood
[15:54]was we just had a lot of fun.
[15:56]And because we had so much fun,
[15:58]when things needed to be sanctioned,
[16:00]if there was a real problem,
[16:01]they knew very well that they were going to lose that fun
[16:04]because of what had just happened or what might happen
[16:06]if they decided to really do something awful.
[16:09]And it really frankly lasted into adolescence, you know?
[16:12]It really did, this idea, this privileged relationship.
[16:15]But on a very basic level,
[16:17]I'd like to come back to the music thing
[16:18]because when you have little songs
[16:20]for getting dressed in the morning
[16:21]and I've got to put a few more on my website
[16:23]putting shoes on brushing teeth and so on,
[16:26]you're creating this temporal moment
[16:28]when you're doing something together with the child.
[16:30]And so you're really in unison with them.
[16:33]And it's not you asking them to brush their teeth
[16:36]or put their shoes on.
[16:38]When you're both doing it,
[16:39]we're going to brush brush brush brush brush,
[16:41]brush up and down the side to side
[16:43]and you're both doing it.
[16:45]Your child is just going to jump in there with you
[16:47]and they're not going to want to get out of the song
[16:49]same thing with getting the shoes on.
[16:51]So I think that combining the idea that you're enjoying
[16:54]doing it and yes, it's a pain in the neck
[16:56]to put your shoes on and get all dressed
[16:58]in the morning, especially in a cold New York winter.
[17:01]But if you're singing through it,
[17:02]you're bringing the children into it
[17:04]in a way that engages them
[17:05]and they're having fun with you doing it.
[17:07]Interesting.
[17:08]Just something, Joan, that Fred Rogers did so well.
[17:11]And in fact, the producers of Daniel Tiger's neighborhood,
[17:14]the animated modern version for today's parents,
[17:18]I think all of us who have young kids
[17:20]who are maybe watching shows like that,
[17:22]we sing these songs when we're getting ready in the morning
[17:25]or getting ready at night,
[17:26]or what do you do with the mad that you feel?
[17:28]It was something that, among other things, Fred did so well,
[17:31]using music to do exactly what you're describing.
[17:34]That's fascinating.
[17:35]We have to talk about this another time,
[17:38]that's fascinating.
[17:39]I have a dim recollection of Mr. Rogers too.
[17:42]I think I must have been too old,
[17:43]but I can picture him perfectly well
[17:45]on a black and white TV set and hearing him sing all the time.
[17:48]So maybe I was unconsciously affected by Mr. Rogers.
[17:51]He's everywhere.
[17:54]I still sing the song.
[17:56]My mother used to sing me this ad for some sort of toothpaste
[18:01]called alpana or something like,
[18:03]brush up, brush up, brush up with the new eye pan.
[18:06]I had some ad jingle from like probably 1952.
[18:10]And she used to sing it to me when I rushed my teeth.
[18:12]And I sing it to my kids when I'm rushing.
[18:15]I've never even looked up this toothpaste.
[18:17]I should really go look it up right now
[18:18]that I'm saying this out loud.
[18:19]Nor have I actually thought about this consciously
[18:22]unless I'm in the tooth brushing mode,
[18:24]but now that you mentioned it,
[18:25]I guess I do that as well.
[18:29]If he thinks it, if we want to bring children together,
[18:33]one of the things we do a lot of courses
[18:35]is using music to learn foreign languages
[18:37]because everybody knows it because it's in a different way.
[18:40]But in a lot of cases,
[18:42]we can have as many as 20 different nationalities in a classroom
[18:45]and in a lot of situations where in countries
[18:48]that are dealing with a lot of immigration singing
[18:51]is something that's a pathway in for children.
[18:53]And we see children that speak neither English nor French,
[18:57]singing songs before they can actually speak.
[19:00]So there are just so many ways
[19:04]in which music is such a tool for so many things.
[19:09]And once again, I think the question is,
[19:11]whoa, why isn't it back in the schools
[19:14]especially in early childhood?
[19:16]I think that the thing that I really want to bring home
[19:18]most to people is that children are born musical.
[19:21]They're auditory systems are fully developed.
[19:24]They're their limbic systems,
[19:25]their emotional systems are also fully developed.
[19:27]So those two things alone are the groundwork
[19:31]for musical practice.
[19:33]And a lot of studies are showing
[19:35]that children prefer music to actual speech
[19:37]when they're very, very young.
[19:38]Their own speech sounds like music.
[19:41]And there are so many benefits, one of them being
[19:44]that when children may be used together,
[19:46]they begin to synchronize.
[19:47]They actually begin to tap their feet
[19:48]to the beat and this kind of thing.
[19:50]And this is one of the biggest things
[19:53]that separates humans from other mammals.
[19:56]And also, the ability to synchronize
[19:58]with another person determines
[20:00]A lot of things, including whether the children might have trouble with by find themselves
[20:04]on the autism spectrum, lack of synchronization indicates a lot of potential problems that
[20:09]I personally think could be helped a lot if the child started a musical practice early
[20:13]enough.
[20:14]So I like to say, you know, we nobody would dream of not speaking with their children
[20:20]and just taking them to a weekly language class, but that's what we do in music, you know,
[20:25]it's a once a week class and a lot of parents don't feel comfortable singing with
[20:30]their children or they think that it's a put on Freddie Mercury that's not good or that's
[20:35]not right or something.
[20:36]But you know what?
[20:37]If the parent is enjoying, if the parent loves Freddie Mercury, you know, I'm a classical
[20:41]musician, but I love Freddie Mercury and the dance parties you can have with your children
[20:46]listening to a lot of, you know, good, very rhythm-based music, that's it togetherness
[20:51]that you, you don't need years of professional classical training to be able to do this
[20:56]with your children.
[20:57]I love that you keep raising your hand, especially if you might be the first person who's
[21:01]ever raised your hand in a zoo, but I love it.
[21:04]And you know, here we go to education.
[21:06]So anyway, you raise my paw.
[21:08]I just, I respect them too.
[21:10]You're so much.
[21:11]I don't want to interrupt what I love what John is saying because there's a joyfulness
[21:14]and kids observing joyfulness in the adults in their setting is so absolutely critical.
[21:20]So whether it's music or making a cake or whether it's me skateboarding down my street
[21:25]and pulling out my own skateboard for my childhood, you know, kids seeing the adults around
[21:31]them in grading and participating in creative things that they love is absolutely critical.
[21:37]And Fred Rogers used to borrow from Margaret McFarland, a premier child psychiatrist of
[21:43]the 20th century, someone with whom he worked, someone whom she studied and Dr. McFarland
[21:48]borrowed that quaker sensibility that attitudes are caught, not taught.
[21:53]And part of creating that atmosphere for joyful learning is the adults engaging in joyful
[22:00]things in front of their kids.
[22:02]There was this great story related about Margaret McFarland.
[22:06]She had helped create the Arsenal Children's Family Center here in Pittsburgh among other
[22:10]things.
[22:11]And she did so with Benjamin Spock and Eric Erickson.
[22:14]I mean, there was a convergence of some amazing whole child development theory, pediatricians
[22:20]and practitioners of the 20th century from whom Fred Rogers benefited.
[22:24]But the three of them among other things brought this world-renowned sculpturalist to
[22:29]this early learning center, you know, two, three, four-year-olds.
[22:33]And the sculpturalist said, like, what is it that you want me to do?
[22:36]And Dr. McFarland said to him, I just want you to love the clay in front of the kids.
[22:41]It was that sensibility of being joyful in the thing that you do.
[22:46]And so that little moment you described Zippy, of singing the toothpaste song with your
[22:51]kids, or if it's, you know, pulling out your old guitar and just playing it and, you
[22:55]know, sort of smiling and joyfully remembering what that means to you, those moments
[23:00]are impressionable and important in kids' lives.
[23:03]That whole thing was designed for you to tell us that you are a good skateboarder when
[23:06]you were growing up, right?
[23:07]Is that, you know?
[23:09]So, actually, this is funny.
[23:10]So, well, it's not, it's a pandemic story, which isn't funny.
[23:13]But in the first month of the pandemic, you know, here we are at home, I went into my
[23:17]garage.
[23:18]It admittedly looks like an episode of Horters.
[23:19]It's a bit embarrassing.
[23:21]But I found my old Madrid skateboard.
[23:23]I hadn't pulled that thing out in, I don't know, like 35 years.
[23:27]And I just got on the skateboard and I didn't put on a helmet, I didn't put on my elbow
[23:31]pads or anything.
[23:32]But I just started skating down the incline of a hill that's in front of our house.
[23:36]And I just was laughing hysterically because all of those emotions, the joy, the fun of
[23:40]skateboarding came back to me.
[23:43]And do you know that today, a year plus later, there are eight girls on my street who
[23:47]skateboard?
[23:48]Now, I can't draw a line from A to B, but I can tell you those eight girls saw me skateboarding
[23:54]down the street, saw me laughing.
[23:57]And we're probably provoked to say, like, well, what is that?
[23:59]I want to try that.
[24:01]And if it brings him happiness, maybe it's something that I might enjoy too.
[24:05]And they tried it and liked it and now they're, well, they're certainly better than
[24:08]me.
[24:09]Wow.
[24:10]Maybe you need to brand your own line of skateboards, you know, like one reveal or something
[24:15]with your, I don't know, one of these little, I don't know, you never know.
[24:19]What advice, both of you have for aspiring authors as we close out this session?
[24:24]I feel like these are all therapy sessions for me in some way, shape or form.
[24:28]Anyway, what advice would you have for aspiring authors having both, you know, having
[24:33]these new books out today on the market, not that they're out today, you know, in today's
[24:37]world, I should say.
[24:38]Yeah.
[24:39]I'll start because I'd like great to finish, because I think actually this is my first
[24:42]book, Sibi, but I have to tell you a funny story, which is I admire what you're doing so
[24:46]much because I am a self-confessed readaholic.
[24:49]I used to hide in bed with the flashlight when I was five years old reading and just, I've
[24:55]never stopped.
[24:56]I just reading and music to me are just, you could take either one of the way I'm probably
[25:00]just going to wither and die.
[25:01]But my own experience with it was, it was a joy to write.
[25:04]I think I immensely benefited from having a great editor, Alexander Littlefield at HMH,
[25:09]because I didn't start the book with a book plan and I'm not sure I would do that again.
[25:15]I was so excited to start and I discovered that my mind goes all in all sorts of directions.
[25:19]So my basic advice would be maybe work with a great editor and be very clear about where
[25:24]you're going with a book when you start.
[25:26]Excellent.
[25:27]Sibi, it was just starting.
[25:30]I've had the opportunity to write and speak for decades in the work that I'm privileged
[25:35]to do.
[25:36]And I always had the idea of a book in my head and writing a book was scary to me.
[25:41]And I didn't know what I didn't know.
[25:43]And I will acknowledge that for me, having a partner, a co-author made all of the difference.
[25:49]It just allowed me to sort of open that door and say, okay, we're going to try this.
[25:54]Fortunately, we did have a plan.
[25:56]But it took us three years, right?
[25:58]Three years of research, three years of writing, three years of getting it to where we
[26:02]wanted it to be and feel completely lucky that earlier this year has yet released when
[26:08]you wonder your learning.
[26:09]And it's been an absolute joy sharing this book with educators, with parents and others.
[26:16]Not only those who have an affinity and emotional connection to Fred Rogers, but everyone
[26:21]out there in the world who's trying to do better and write by kids as we create the learning
[26:25]futures that they deserve and that we adults need to create for them.
[26:30]Excellent.
[26:31]And there's a little that we can take away as adults too.
[26:34]I mean, it's never too late to learn.
[26:36]That is true.
[26:37]And, you know, Joanne Rogers, Mrs. Rogers, who wrote the forward to our book said this about
[26:41]Fred Rogers, no one worked harder at being Fred Rogers than did Fred Rogers.
[26:46]And for me and Ryan, there's so much instructive for us as adults about the things that
[26:51]we can continuously do to just be better humans.
[26:54]I do feel like I've become or maybe I'm becoming a better human because of what I'm learning
[26:58]still from Fred Rogers.
[27:00]Amazing.
[27:01]Wow.
[27:02]Beautiful.
[27:03]Well, thank you both so much.
[27:04]It was a delight to chat with you today and learn what I should be doing with my kids.
[27:09]And I'm going to think about the Ask at Basket.
[27:11]I really am.
[27:12]We'll see if I can delay, you know, my compulsion.
[27:16]You can get a top of wearable.
[27:17]You can do anything.
[27:18]Just put it there next to the Alexa.
[27:19]Yeah.
[27:20]Because I think they want to hear, they want to hear your take.
[27:24]And the difference between Google and the Ask at Basket is that you're taking their
[27:28]question out of there and you're thinking about it and you're attributing the importance
[27:33]to it.
[27:34]Yeah.
[27:35]We're thinking about it.
[27:36]No, not the machine.
[27:37]Even if you secretly researched it on Google before you speak to them, still is showing that
[27:40]you are caring about that question and you're trying to give it your best.
[27:46]I mean, I do read it out loud to them, but okay, fine.
[27:48]I get it.
[27:49]I won't do it again.
[27:50]Alright.
[27:51]Okay.
[27:52]Thank you both.
[27:53]Thank you for your great books.
[27:54]And take care.
[27:55]Thank you so much.
[27:56]Bye, John.
[27:57]Bye.
[27:58]Bye.
[27:59]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:02]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[28:07]Books.
[28:08]Also sign up for my newsletter, at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[28:12]lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:14]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[28:18]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[28:22]to your music.