John Schu, LOUDER THAN HUNGER
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and I am the host of this podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
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[0:25]at Zivi Owens or join the community at ZiviReaders.
[0:31]John Shoe is the author of Louder Than Hunger, which is possibly my favorite book this year.
[0:38]For sure this year, in one of my favorite books of all time, it is amazing. You must read this book.
[0:45]I am kind of just embarrassed myself in this interview being too complimentary that you didn't even
[0:51]really know what to say. So sorry about that. We did have a great conversation though,
[0:55]and I just loved it. I love this book so much. John Shoe is the author of the acclaimed picture books.
[0:59]This is a school illustrated by Veronica Miller Jamison, and this is a story illustrated by
[1:05]Caldecott Honoree Lauren Castillo. He also wrote the adult nonfiction book, The Gift of Story,
[1:10]Exploring the Effective Side of the Reading Life, and was named a library journal
[1:14]Mover and Shaker for his dynamic interactions with students and his passionate adoption of new
[1:19]technologies as a means of connecting authors, illustrators, books, and readers, children's
[1:24]librarian for book delicious, part-time lecturer at Rutgers University and former ambassador of
[1:29]school libraries for scholastic book fairs. Mr. Shoe, as he is affectionately known, has been featured
[1:34]on CBS mornings and NPR and continues to travel the world to share his love of books. He lives
[1:40]in neighborville, Illinois. You can find him at johnshoeacu.com, and on social media at Mr. Shoe reads.
[1:48]Welcome, John. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss
[1:53]louder than hunger. Well, and thank you so much for having me here. It's an honor.
[1:57]John, this is the best book that I have read in a really long time. I read lots of books.
[2:05]I was crying. I was so moved. I am so moved. I feel like I'm going to cry even just talking about
[2:10]your book again. I feel like I never wear red like ever. And I changed what out of what I was
[2:18]wearing earlier. And I was like, you know what, I think I'm just going to wear this wearing
[2:21]laser today. And then the whole thing is about your grandmother and red and red car and her love
[2:29]of red. And I was like, it's the universe. It is the universe. Anyway, that was my first thought.
[2:36]Is your wearing grandma's favorite? I am. I am. I am wearing a grandma type jacket. I mean,
[2:42]wearing. I don't even know. Congratulations. This book is beauty. It's just perfection.
[2:51]You're amazing. So talented. I'm blown away.
[2:56]Oh, thank you. Thank you. Compliments are very hard for me. So I'm learning to accept them.
[3:01]So thank you. Don't worry about it. You can just nod. You don't even have anything. I just feel
[3:05]good saying it myself. I like to hear myself say that. Well, anyway, and I
[3:11]want listeners to know because I picked it up and I was like, oh, come on, all these people
[3:16]blurb this book. Like, really, like the biggest deal people ever, like, didn't you get Dave Pilke
[3:23]and um, wimpy kid? What is his name? Yes, Jeff Kinney. Jeff Kinney, who, by the way, my kids love so
[3:30]much that my son wants us to rent an RV and drive to Maryland to go to the store. That's on our
[3:36]yes, you must book stories. Amazing. Yeah. So that's on our, that's on our weekend plans list.
[3:42]But anyway, I couldn't believe all these people blubbed it. We're saying such nice things.
[3:45]I mean, I, nothing. I couldn't believe it, but I was like, this is like a all star cast. And now
[3:50]I totally get it. Um, why don't you tell listeners what your book is about? Yeah. So I see louder
[3:57]than hunger in four acts. It's a novel universe. And it opens in the year 1996, which I think makes
[4:04]it historical fiction, which many people don't like to say that. I think historical fiction,
[4:10]I'm deciding this for everyone is before 1976, which is when I was born. Anything before that,
[4:16]1996 is not historical fiction. No, it's not historical fiction, but it takes place in 1996.
[4:23]And the main character's name is Jake Edward Stacy. And my real name is John Edward Schumacher.
[4:28]And so we have the same initials. And so Jake is me. I am Jake, but I needed a little
[4:34]bit of distance from myself. And I also didn't want to write a memoir because I wanted to play
[4:39]with the timeline. And I wanted to play with the truth. So the book opens with Jake spiraling
[4:44]out of control. And there's a very, very loud voice inside of his head and inner saboteur
[4:50]that tells him that he's worthless and that he's repulsive and that he doesn't deserve food.
[4:56]And throughout the first act, he takes food away from himself. And thanks to a wonderful lady
[5:02]named Miss Burns at a local nursing home where he volunteered. She calls, and it's really
[5:07]happened in my own story. She calls and tells his mother that she's concerned. And because of that,
[5:14]he's admitted into a facility called whispering pines. And I named it whispering pines because
[5:19]the real facility that I was in was called Linden Oaks. And so I wanted to sound like trees.
[5:25]And then I love the golden girls. And it sounds like shady pines to me a little bit.
[5:30]And so he goes to whispering pines and he is diagnosed with anorexynovosa, obsessive compulsive
[5:36]disorder, depression, and anxiety. And in the beginning, he resists treatment. And he says that
[5:41]he doesn't belong here. But he really knows that he belongs here. And you spend a year with Jake
[5:47]as he starts to get better. And then there's setbacks and there's many trials and tribulations.
[5:52]But because you know the stories based on me and that I turned out okay. And the thing that saved
[5:57]to me was libraries and books and musical theater. So it's definitely true story of my heart.
[6:04]Oh, well, there are so many amazing parts of it. A, the format and how you used letters and words
[6:14]in totally different ways. And I, I just even, even how sometimes you stack two or sometimes you
[6:21]spread the letters with it. Anyway, so that was very cool. But that could be cool. But like, not that
[6:26]interesting, if the content's not interesting. But that happened to be a part of why it was
[6:31]interesting. But B, it's the open raw feelings, the detailing of what it was like being in this
[6:40]impation. And I actually worked at an adolescent impation unit. I was a psychology major. I worked
[6:44]there in college and also worked in an eating disorders clinic in college in a different place.
[6:49]So I'm very interested and for just so many reasons. But how you wrote about the whole thing,
[6:56]how you really got in this character's head. Like we were in it in a different way. And like,
[7:04]I don't know. And just this view on eating disorders and all of it. I don't know. I don't even, you know,
[7:10]okay. So that's more compliments. You're not going to know what to do. So let me ask you a question.
[7:13]You know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. How did you decide? How did you decide on
[7:20]the formatting and just the how you wrote it? And did you, in treatment, when you had the empty
[7:27]journal given to you, which I'm assuming happened, like start writing in this way, the poetry sort of
[7:32]this way? Yeah. So Jake started talking to me right after I finished revising a book called
[7:38]The Gift of Story, which is all about the affective side of reading and writing. And I really
[7:44]applied a framework that I created in order to write this book. And it was kind of distracting in
[7:49]the beginning. But it helped me figure out the structure of the book and what I wanted to include
[7:55]and what I didn't want to include. But the reason I wrote it in the way that I did as a novel
[7:59]in verse is because there's lots of white space in the margins. And as you said, this is very
[8:04]raw. And it was easier, I think, for me to become vulnerable because of that white space. And
[8:11]something that you can realize I was doing, but people have pointed out, and I see it's true,
[8:15]is that Jake has a hard time taking up space in the world. But he doesn't have a hard time
[8:20]taking up space on the page where sometimes one word goes across two pages. And sometimes the font
[8:27]gets so big that it overtakes the page. And so I think being a novel in verse allowed me to play
[8:33]with the placement of the words on the page. And it also allowed me to show Jake's anxiety,
[8:39]I believe. Wow. Yeah. You in the book talk a lot about writing helping you, as you just said,
[8:47]books helping you. There's a wonderful scene where you go to a bookstore and the flying flags outside
[8:53]and you're hoping into someone like mine did there that made your ears go red even talking about
[9:01]telling you about the power of books and reading and how you've devoted your life to it.
[9:08]Yeah. So I believe I became a reader because of a book called Goofy's Big Race. And Goofy's
[9:14]Big Race is almost a character in the book. And I was very close to my grandma growing up and
[9:20]every Saturday we would go to the grocery store because my grandma was obsessed with coupons.
[9:25]And even if she didn't need another container of olives, if there was the coupon,
[9:30]she must go to the store and get them. But my favorite thing about going grocery shopping with her
[9:35]on Saturday was at the time, Jewel Asco, which is a grocery store in Illinois where I live,
[9:40]had books as part of a Disney collection that you could buy. And my grandma read that book to me
[9:46]so many times that it truly became tattooed on my heart. And there's a refrain in it which is slow
[9:52]and steady, steady and slow. That's the way we always go. And it was a very anxious child. And I
[9:57]was a child who always like to rush through.
[10:00]And my grandma would always recite that to me.
[10:03]And I think of my her reciting that to me at an early age.
[10:06]It helped me see the comfort in books.
[10:08]And it helped me see the power of the read aloud.
[10:11]And then as a child, I would read any book that was based on a movie.
[10:15]I was obsessed with novelizations.
[10:18]And I love telling teachers and family members, parents.
[10:22]Please don't look down upon those types of books.
[10:25]I'm a reader because of them.
[10:27]And I think I loved books like that because I was already familiar with the characters.
[10:32]I was already familiar with the basic story plot.
[10:35]And I would connect immediately.
[10:37]And so I really, like, I was a reader, my whole childhood,
[10:40]all through elementary school and middle school.
[10:42]My undergraduate degree is an elementary education.
[10:45]I was a third grade teacher for three years, fourth grade teacher for one year.
[10:49]School librarian for nine years.
[10:51]And in all of the work that I do, it all centers in the power of story.
[10:55]So I just think story is always on my mind.
[10:58]And I think I love books so much because it's the best way to connect with people.
[11:03]And in louder than hunger, you see at one time I had a very, very hard time connecting with people.
[11:09]And I believe I do the work that I do today because I'm always looking for the little jigs of the world
[11:15]and the little Johnny shoes of the world when I visit schools.
[11:18]And I find ways to reach them, perhaps before it's too late.
[11:23]So that was a very long-winded answer.
[11:26]But it's like a 30-minute show, so it's not.
[11:31]That's amazing.
[11:33]You talk about the effects of, well, you don't say it in such an outright way.
[11:38]You say it in a beautiful way.
[11:39]But how bullying is what sort of set you off on this one direction.
[11:44]And you really show us how happy you used to be.
[11:49]And that these kids were the kids in your, that you went to their birthday parties and this and that.
[11:53]And then you show us in this one, particularly moving passage about, you know, what happens in sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade until,
[12:01]and you have the heart breaking.
[12:03]I won't even go, but just, oh my gosh.
[12:06]How do you feel?
[12:07]And I love that you're trying to single-handedly go into stores and protect kids.
[12:11]That's like so on brand with this whole book.
[12:13]How do you look back and feel?
[12:16]Do you feel angry at that, you know, like, here you felt, I don't know.
[12:20]Do you feel any differently about it now than being in Jake's head at that age and processing it?
[12:25]Yeah.
[12:26]Yeah.
[12:27]I didn't think that I was angry any longer, but writing this book brought forth a lot of the emotions.
[12:33]And in order to write this book, I had to place myself right back in elementary school and middle school.
[12:39]And I had to experience the pain.
[12:41]And I didn't fully realize that I hadn't fully healed until I wrote this book.
[12:46]And so even if the book had never been published writing, it helped me so much.
[12:51]It helped me, it's Katie Camillo would say it helps me excavate the pain and the grief of my childhood.
[12:58]And it allowed me really to let go of it.
[13:00]And to be vulnerable enough as an adult to stand in front of people and say,
[13:05]I spent two years in a mental health facility because of anorexia nervosa.
[13:10]Jake is only one year, my own story was two years.
[13:13]But two years would be way too long for a book.
[13:16]I don't know.
[13:17]I could have kept reading, but I'm sorry.
[13:20]Are you thinking of continuing Jake's story?
[13:24]Yeah.
[13:25]Well, yeah, I would like to.
[13:27]My agent and I have talked about it.
[13:30]I think that I could I'm playing with and probably shouldn't say this with perhaps telling a secondary character story because one of the secondary characters keeps talking to me.
[13:40]Excellent.
[13:41]I have a guess of which one it is.
[13:44]And I would love to read your story.
[13:46]If that's who it was.
[13:48]Excellent.
[13:49]That's a good idea.
[13:51]You talk about the relationship between Jake's mom who clearly suffers from depression.
[13:59]And I'm not sure what else, but that's at least, you know, how he interprets it at that age.
[14:05]Can you talk about your own relationship with your mom and how that informed what did she suffer from depression?
[14:11]Like what?
[14:12]Yeah.
[14:13]Yeah.
[14:14]And in one version of the book, I explored my mom's depression more, but I think it started to become too heavy and it distracted a little bit from Jake's story.
[14:24]But I appreciate that you did see that that Jake's mom is suffering from depression.
[14:28]My mom, my own mom is bipolar.
[14:30]She wouldn't mind me saying that.
[14:32]She is still with us.
[14:33]I'm nervous for her to read the book.
[14:35]Last night, I just ordered her a copy.
[14:37]She's not read it.
[14:40]No, no mother has not read it.
[14:42]No one in my family has read it.
[14:43]I kind of kept it secret that I was working on it, but the more buzz it gets, the more press it gets, the more I hear from family members who are very, very excited to read it.
[14:54]So I'll be interested to see the conversation that my mom and I have after after she reads it.
[15:00]Oh my gosh, so it just came out two days ago, right?
[15:02]No, that got moved.
[15:03]It's actually coming out on March 19th.
[15:05]Oh, okay.
[15:06]Yeah.
[15:07]It was supposed to be out already.
[15:10]I see.
[15:11]Okay.
[15:12]Got it.
[15:13]I was confused.
[15:14]Sorry about that.
[15:15]I had the old press thing.
[15:16]Wow.
[15:17]I cannot believe your mom has not read this.
[15:20]I'm really interested to hear what she has to say.
[15:22]What is your relationship?
[15:23]Like, I mean, you can't probably talk about this either.
[15:25]Like, what is your relationship like now?
[15:27]And do you looking back, you know, now that you're more than probably around the age they would have been when you went in or close to it?
[15:34]How do you feel about how everything was handled and all of that?
[15:38]Yeah.
[15:39]It's a complicated relationship.
[15:41]Yeah.
[15:42]My grandma was my best friend.
[15:44]Yeah.
[15:45]I was really, really close to my grandma.
[15:47]And I eventually moved in with my grandma full time.
[15:49]And so I haven't lived with my parents since I was, I think, well, 13 years old.
[15:55]When I, when I left the mental health facility, I moved in with my grandma full time.
[16:00]So it's a complicated relationship as many.
[16:03]We can leave it like that.
[16:04]We'll just leave it.
[16:05]Yeah.
[16:06]I also had a really, really close relationship with my grandmother as many people do.
[16:11]It brought back that bond.
[16:13]And even when your mom, or sorry, Jake's mom at some point, you know, says she actually felt a little jealous.
[16:20]I feel like that's really hard for moms to admit.
[16:23]I don't know.
[16:24]Like when you're in that middle, that anyway, I found that very interesting.
[16:27]Well, that's true.
[16:28]When I was hospitalized, my mom, it almost directly quoted her in the book.
[16:32]She said something like, I know I'm not the mom that you want to.
[16:35]Yes.
[16:36]And, but I'm grateful you have your grandma.
[16:38]Because my mom was always going through her own trials and tribulations.
[16:42]It was hard.
[16:43]You know, she was a very young mom too.
[16:45]Okay.
[16:46]Let's talk about Broadway.
[16:47]So what plays are you loving that are out now?
[16:51]What do you have you seen any of them?
[16:54]Like, what are you into?
[16:56]Yeah.
[16:57]So I am obsessed with musical theater as Jake is.
[17:00]And when I was revising louder than hunger, I saw into the woods.
[17:04]On Broadway eight times, which is why I wrote it into the book.
[17:09]It wasn't there in the video.
[17:10]Oh, that's so funny.
[17:11]But I was watching it over and over.
[17:13]And I always have a notebook in my lap.
[17:15]And I was taking notes.
[17:17]And I thought, Oh, my goodness.
[17:18]This is the perfect musical to use to show how Jake is lost in the woods of his mind.
[17:23]And then he's at a place called Whispering Pines.
[17:25]And it sounds like it's related to into the woods.
[17:28]And so I saw that so many times because I love the musical waitress.
[17:33]And I actually saw waitress on Broadway 38 times.
[17:36]So I could have been a producer.
[17:38]I could have been a producer.
[17:39]And I love Sarah Bareilles.
[17:41]And so right now the musical that I'm seeing over and over is merrily.
[17:44]We roll along.
[17:45]Have you seen it?
[17:46]Not yet.
[17:47]Oh, it's so good.
[17:49]The three main stars have such amazing chemistry together.
[17:53]So I pretty much see everything on Broadway.
[17:55]I often say I only write books that I can see Broadway shows.
[17:58]Do you live in New York now?
[18:01]No, I live in Naperville, Illinois.
[18:04]I thought so.
[18:05]Yeah.
[18:06]You just keep going in New York.
[18:08]Well, I write and revise all of my books in New York City.
[18:11]It's like a muse to me.
[18:13]And I start every writing session every day next to the Bethesda fountain,
[18:17]which is why an angel is in the book because I wrote the angel in because whenever I was stuck
[18:23]or whenever I needed to share something about the story, I would go to the Bethesda terrace.
[18:28]It's a spiritual place for me.
[18:30]Oh, my gosh.
[18:31]Yeah.
[18:32]I wish I lived there.
[18:33]I have to send you a picture.
[18:34]I do not live far from that I should probably shouldn't talk about where I live.
[18:37]But I was walking through Central Park during a huge flood.
[18:43]I'm going to send you a picture of the Bethesda fountain underwater.
[18:46]You're going to love it.
[18:47]Oh, wow.
[18:48]Yeah.
[18:49]It was really cool.
[18:50]It went into the water.
[18:52]Do you realize that it's good?
[18:55]Do you feel good about it?
[18:57]I do.
[18:58]I'm learning.
[18:59]Like the theme of today is I have a hard time with compliments.
[19:02]But I do.
[19:03]That was a question.
[19:04]I realized because it's resonating with people.
[19:10]And I'm seeing that everyone has a form of a voice in their head.
[19:14]It may not manifest it in the direction of those.
[19:17]But we all have a little voice in our head that we have to learn how to manage.
[19:21]And I've never had conversations with people about that outside of eating disorder treatment.
[19:26]And so that has been a gift for people to tell me their stories and for us to engage in a conversation about what we do to make that voice bearable.
[19:37]How, you know, you said here, it still comes back sometimes.
[19:41]And you still have to, you know, regroup and use the skills you learned in therapy and all of that.
[19:46]Tell me about that.
[19:48]Yeah.
[19:49]And so in the book, Jake uses I use capital V voice.
[19:53]And then there's a shift that I hope people notice where he changes it to a lower case fee.
[19:58]And that was liberating, right?
[20:00]like, okay, Jake is finally going to start doing better. He's no longer capitalizing
[20:05]to be an invoice. And I feel as an adult, I have a voice in my head that's always a lower case
[20:11]to be. And I'm utilized the skills and strategies that I learned from years of therapy.
[20:17]And whenever it does start to turn into a capital V, I have to figure out what is going on
[20:22]right now. And what am I trying to control? Because for me, it always comes back to an element of
[20:27]control. So yeah, I'm grateful for all of the therapy that I had during my childhood and
[20:32]during my young adult years. I feel like a total failure that I did not notice the shift from
[20:37]upper case to lower case. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I tend to notice stuff like that. And I did
[20:43]not. Oh, well, see, that's like a voice. Oh, my own voice. Yeah, my own voice is punishing me. Now
[20:49]I'm going to have to talk back to that voice. This is so meta. We're just like going around this
[20:53]here. My life. What advice would you have to an aspiring author? Oh, my advice would be to read and
[21:03]read and read and read. I feel that I am the writer I am because of all of the stories that I've
[21:09]read. And the second thing would be to always carry a notebook with you, which might sound
[21:14]cliche. But all of my books are written in notebooks. I have a hard time writing on the computer.
[21:19]And there was a study that was released a month ago that proves that that is true, that there's
[21:25]some, I don't know the neuroscience of it. So look up the article, everyone, the mechanism is quoted.
[21:30]But I when I read it, I said, oh, yes, that that is how I feel. When I write by hand,
[21:35]something activates differently in my brain than when I'm writing on the computer. So read a lot
[21:40]and always have a notebook with you and eavesdrop. eavesdropping is helpful.
[21:44]My next novel is called Overherd. It's kind of like a year and a half. So yeah, I think authors
[21:52]have to be sort of professional eavesdroppers. Is there anything you want to say to parents?
[21:58]Because I think this audience is probably more parents than young children like Jake. I mean,
[22:02]I'm fairly certain parents who are worried about their kids and want to make sure to do the best
[22:09]for them. And so when I sat down to write louder than hunger, I was thinking a lot about books
[22:16]that I read when I was in middle school and articles that I read that were really, really harmful to
[22:21]me. And there are very few books about anorecter nervosa disordered eating that I recommend
[22:26]because a lot of them are how-to manuals and they teach you how to be sick. And so when I was
[22:32]writing louder than hunger, I always had on a post-it note this, that books can be the perfect
[22:37]prescriptions, the let us know that we're going to be okay. And I was protecting kids who I felt
[22:43]were vulnerable to have an eating disorder and kids who maybe were clarifying that they have an
[22:48]eating disorder. And when they read louder than hunger, my hope is that it's not going to
[22:53]teach them any behaviors that it's going to discourage them from the behaviors. So is what I would
[22:59]say to family members is that when we're going through a hard time or when we're vulnerable for
[23:05]something, books can be the thing that truly can save us and that can be a lifeline. And it's my hope
[23:11]that louder than hunger doesn't do any harm to readers. It's not going to do any harm. Yeah, yeah.
[23:18]So yeah, but yeah, I hope. But there are books that I read as a kid that did. And so that
[23:22]was very much on my mind. And the New York Times just reviewed it. And it was the most beautiful
[23:28]review that got that I was really intentional in not using numbers and not using weight and taking
[23:35]care of the reader as they experience Jake's story. So thank you to the New York Times review.
[23:41]John, I'm so happy for you. This book is amazing. You're going to be a huge. I hope you're ready.
[23:48]I guess is just get ready to you know, build in lots of time in your schedule to regroup and rest.
[23:56]And, you know, write about this. And then the next one could be, you know, louder than book tour or
[24:02]something. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're so glad. Congratulations. Thank you.
[24:07]Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.