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Creators and Guests
Host
Penny Kittle
Penny is Chairman of the Book Love Foundation and is dedicated to helping students and teachers develop a passion for reading and writing. She has taught English and coached literacy in public schools for 34 years.
Guest
Julia Torres
Julia E. Torres is a veteran language arts teacher and librarian in Denver Public schools.
Guest
Laurie Halse Anderson
What is The Book Love Foundation Podcast?
Celebrate the joy of reading with the Book Love Foundation podcast. This is a show filled with information and inspiration from teachers and leaders across grade levels, states, and school systems. We interviewed authors and educators for the first five years and now turn our attention to leaders in public, private, and charter schools. Find out more at booklovefoundation.org or join our book-love-community.mn.co of 2500 educators from 28 countries. We sustain joy together, one kid and one book at a time.
Penny Kittle 00:00
Welcome to the Book Love Foundation podcast. I'm Penny Kittle, and I'm sitting here in my office watching the snow recede into the woods in New Hampshire. It's been 65 degrees and up this week, but multiple feet of snow in my front yard takes a bit of time to melt. I hope you are safe and well, wherever you are, and soon vaccinated. I'm taking a break to introduce this amazing podcast from Julia Torres and Laurie Halse Anderson. I have read every one of her books, and I have a story for a student with every one of those as well. The kind of moments that fuel me to keep doing the work that I do. Think about Andrew and Twisted this is the first time I've read a book in high school, he said, a multilingual snowmobile racing car tuning senior who finally sunk into a story he wanted to finish because of Laurie's writing, or the three girls in prom committee who suggested our meetings include a book club, since Laurie's novel Prom probably included me, they teased when the math teacher steals all the money for prom and they can't have one a book club during prom committee, those moments are not unlikely. When you fill your classroom with books written by Laurie Halse Anderson, the young woman who read Shout in my college class last fall and asked if she could keep it to read again. Books engage teenagers. Lorries do and keep them reading. They delight and hear them. The kids can see themselves in her stories, and sometimes they even heal them. Laurie joins us on the podcast to talk with Julia, but wait before we tune in. Wouldn't you love to have two or three copies of every one of Laurie's books in your room this fall? You can or the entire collection by Jason Reynolds, Jackie Woodson, Renee Watson, Angie Thomas, how about all of them? The Book Love Foundation is accepting applications through April 15 for grants to fund your library you choose. We pay the bill. Apply now at booklovefoundation.org, now here's Laurie and Julia.
Julia Torares 02:25
Hello, Laurie, how are you?
Laurie Halse Anderson 02:27
I am doing wonderful. It's springtime, and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, can't we?
Julia Torres 02:33
Yes, we can. Things are starting to come up from the ground and out from the trees, and it's such a relief. We've needed this. This has been one of the long winters.
Laurie Halse Anderson 02:47
Yesterday I told you earlier, we just moved recently, and so I've been buying silly things that you forget you need to buy. And I was singing loudly in the car with the windows rolled up, because I love silly but I realized I haven't sung in the car in more than a year. It was like one of those things that just kind of went away for me, yeah? And just feeling like, wow, there is joy in my heart, yeah, instead of fear right now. And that's a nice feeling.
Julia Torres 03:12
I agree. I'm so happy to be here with you today. Penny and I are sharing the Book Love Foundation podcast so that teachers can understand how this might apply to their everyday practice. So of course, I want to talk to you today about memoir and about telling our stories. And I think one of the reasons why we wanted to reach out to you is because, in my opinion, you've done something so bold and so inspiring in talking about very personal things that have happened in your life on the page in such a way that it, I think, gives the rest of us a little bit more bravery to be able to dig into the deep places inside of us too. That is the scariest thing to me, to get something like what you have put out on the page for everyone to read. But I'd love to just hear a little bit more about how you came to a place where you felt like you could do it, and what sorts of thoughts you had leading up to it, and then how we can encourage our young people to tell their stories in such a way as well.
Laurie Halse Anderson 04:08
Okay, so for me, Speak was written, oh golly, almost 25 years after I was raped. I was raped when I was 13, just before ninth grade started, and I didn't tell anybody, and for a lot of reasons that felt at the time like they were the right reasons, but it really complicated my life. As most people who go through a traumatic experience and don't get the support they need after that, I tried to bury it deeply, and then wound up becoming very depressed, using drugs, making really dumb choices, and it took a long time, and finally, you know, I realized that that my depression was not only affecting me, but it was beginning to affect my young children, and that's what finally got me to a therapist office, and after crying several rivers at my therapist's office, I finally, you know, began that that work of recovering my voice and seeing myself and that eventually became the writing of Speak. But I didn't want Speak to be I didn't want it to be a memoir. I didn't want it to and I wasn't going to tell anybody that that was me. I wanted to process the emotions. So Speak has my emotional truth in fictional form, and because it's a fictional form, the life of Melinda Sordino is very different than my life. The fact that she can find the courage to speak up nine months after being assaulted is very different from my life. So when Speak first came out, which has never I was the person and continue to be the most surprised that the book was published, right? I didn't have an agent. It went into the slush pile that when the Barrassos and Giroux bought it, they said, now don't get your hopes up, where it's not going to sell many copies.
Julia Torres 05:41
Wild to hear about that like we hear that now. It's just wild to hear that.
Speaker 1 05:46
No advertising budget. They printed 3000 copies so and then it blew up. So for all the writers out there, just stay true to yourself, because publishing, I do, like a lot of the folks in publishing, but they're the first to admit that they don't understand how this works. But then teachers started to invite me to schools when speak came out, and I quickly learned that the students did not want me to talk to them about my careful crafting of metaphor. They wanted to know what miss, did this happen to you? And then they wanted to know and just those questions, they were not rude. They were never rude. They were asked from this place of absolute curiosity that we must respect when we see that in teenagers and little kids. But I'm really focusing in on teens today, because they don't know if we don't tell them. You know, when a kid asks that question that that's to me, is signal that the the adults in their life haven't been able to have conversations with them yet about healthy consent based sexuality as well as sexual violence. So I realized that if I was going to, you know, be a person of integrity and continue to show up at schools, that I had to start sharing my truth. Yeah. So I spent about 20 years telling a lot of the stories that are in memoir in poetic form. In the memoir, those are the stories that I was telling on stage to auditoriums filled with teenagers. So that's a long warm up time. That's a great warm up I really, yeah, but more importantly, I think, well, equally as, at least equally as importantly as me telling those stories, was I had the opportunity to listen to a whole generation of teens from every part of the country, from all different backgrounds, all different identities and orientations, and you know, where they would fit in the pecking order in any school community. And listening to those stories, that's what made me angry enough to need to shout instead of speak, because I realized, you know, even after speak had been in curriculum for a long time, we are just harvesting generation after generation of perpetrators who often, usually are perpetrators, because no adult has had the courage to talk to them honestly and appropriately about healthy sexuality and more victims. Yeah, so that's why I shout now.
Julia Torres 07:58
And I remember meeting you, I think it might have been the first time here in Denver, at the tatter cover, and you had Shout on the table. And I wanted to read that book so badly, because we have tremendous success, but also just appreciation for Speak on my campus. And when Speak, the graphic novel came out, then it was so awesome, because we were able to share with multilingual population, connects to the story told in pictures in ways that it was a little different experience we were reading it, right? So, you know the power of the graphic novel for telling certain types of stories and the page that's just one illustration that's really weighty and emotionally resonant. I think that really comes across in the graphic novel version of Speak. So I remember some of my students, they really resonated with the graphic novel because I've got a lot of English language learners. That was also their question. Was the connection between Shout and Speak? Were they the same story, or what elements did they have in common?
Laurie Halse Anderson 08:59
Oh, that's wonderful. That's a great question. See, they ask the best questions, don't you, and we're so lucky to have all these teens in our lives. Yeah. And before I forget, let's do a shout out to Emily Carroll, who is a very powerful illustrator who did the artwork in Speak. And I've heard that from other educators who work with multilingual students, but I've also heard that the graphic novel helps students who don't really have a framework or maybe parsing the text novel. So because the main character is our narrator, and our narrator is a traumatized 14 year old who can barely herself admit what she had been through, so we're seeing the world through her filters of depression and trauma. And I think the artwork in the graphic novel carries that message in a way that is easier for some students to access. So what's this? Are we going to do? You know, one of these things is not like, what's the Venn diagram, right of Shout? And what are the overlap? Well, the overlap is I, like Melinda, I was a few weeks before ninth, I was raped by somebody that I knew. I didn't know him very well, but I kind of thought that there's a line from in Speak that I took from my own head. He was a couple years older than me, and I can remember being really excited because I was going to start high school in this new school, in a new school district, and I was going to have a boyfriend, and I thought that would make me safer, you know, be more secure, yeah, well, and that didn't work out, but my assault did not happen at a party. There was no alcohol involved. We were actually in a beautiful, very remote Park, and he kissed me, and I was so I like that kiss. And I thought, Okay, this is good. This is and I, this is my first dating experience with this guy, and and then he raped me, and it was, it was there, are there. I think the things that are similar between my attack and Melinda's, you know, the fact that it happened for me in such a bucolic setting with trees all over the place, and that, that, along with some other things, probably was why I leaned into the imagery of trees as witness, as a form of life, as a reflection of the internal journey of the character in Speak. And I think that there's some like the sarcasm that Melinda has in Speak, that's definitely who I am, and that's absolutely who I was when I was in ninth grade. I was just like, I walked around with my fists up. I just, I couldn't stand a high school I couldn't stand high school culture. I was from a broke a family that was in the middle of a colossal breakdown because of my dad's issues. And I was just, I wanted to punch everyone, and I didn't have anybody I could tell Yeah, and that's how she feels. And then so those are and within the Shout in the memoir, which doesn't open with me, and I don't, I would love to know if you have any feedback about how the kids understand that. It opens with some stories about my parents.
Julia Torres 11:51
I think that everyone's very curious. A lot of the questions that I get are mostly around how much of this is is real, and especially because Shout is told in verse? Yeah. So I think there are a lot of questions about how you would take your own experience and put it in verse, And do you have to manipulate things in order to have dramatic tension or whatever? And most of my students, some of them will write poetry, but something that I've experienced a lot, especially in my environment, is that they're they don't have a lot of faith in their own ability to create. Yeah, they're constantly consuming, but their own ability to be creative has been suppressed something.
Laurie Halse Anderson 12:31
Yes, yeah, absolutely, I, and I understand that. You know, we should do another episode of this. Maybe we should do it on a zoom call, and I should put together a presentation to show some of the drafts of these different poems. Yeah, and that's if the problem with art is that the thing you have in your head this vision of a poem or some music or visual art, and then you go to try to create it, and it's always very clumsy at first. And because we're all a little anxious, and we don't have a lot of confidence, including me, the temptation is to go, oh, I can't do it. It's too you know? And that's a completely legitimate response. And so I got that. The only things that I manipulated in shout, though, were when I was telling the stories of other people, okay, I moved some of their details, like where they were in the country and things like that, so that they wouldn't recognize it. Nobody else would recognize who it is, because to me, that's just the honorable thing to do. Everything about me and everything about my family is 100% true.
Julia Torres 13:32
The parts in Denmark were just so cool. I think for me to read, obviously, because I lived in Brazil in high school. But then also for some of my students, who I have some from the Denver Center for International Studies. So part of their program is that they travel internationally if they can or want to, at some point during their middle or high school experience, that have gone to Costa Rica students that have gone all over and I think that just that idea of you coming outside of yourself and coming into yourself in this foreign place, that is something that really resonates with a lot of young people, and it did obviously with me for obvious reasons as well. Yeah, I loved that, and I loved how I would love to know about your process of creating multiple drafts of the same time period. You know, how do you decide? How does that work? How do you decide what works, what doesn't, what to keep, what to toss, what's part of the narrative and what's distracting.
Laurie Halse Anderson 14:28
Well, and this is why writers have editors and students have teachers. I see the role of a good teacher as being very similar to the role of a good editor. And for me, my editor doesn't tell me if something is good, because that's such subjective. My editor will tell me if they respond to a piece and emotionally, it's like, Whoa, I connected with this, and or if they have questions, right? And the questions are actually more helpful than hearing that somebody likes something. And so I wrote hundreds of poems originally I was it was just like flying out of my body. I was writing about my grandmother's I was writing about this. I had a lot of mean things to say about some of the people went to high school with. Got that off my chest.
Julia Torres 15:11
But people in your life and your descriptions of your family members too, those I found really intriguing.
Laurie Halse Anderson 15:18
An interesting, bizarre group of well, all families are interesting and bizarre. Yeah, so. So my editor said, just because she I talked to her about this, when I really felt that I needed to do she's like, go ahead, just do it. And she said, Send me like 50 at a time. And so I sent her a bunch. And then I said, I think I've sent you the ones that I like the most, the things that are the significant parts of my journey, and I hadn't really written anything at that point. This is like first draft land. I hadn't written anything about my high school experience after I was attacked, and I hadn't written anything about Denmark. Wow. Okay, and my editor's a smart woman, and she said, so here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that somebody in high school probably wants to know how you got through high school. Oh, they do. And I was like, Really, but looking back, a couple years now, have passed since I wrote that, and I think that was all about me protecting some really tender parts of me, right? Because when you've been through a traumatic experience, and it doesn't get processed in a healthy way. What can happen is that there's parts of you that stay frozen at that age. Though, 15 year old me, 14 year old me, 13 year old me, was trying super hard never to think about high school like I was. I didn't even listen to the music of my of my era for a long time, yeah, because it just brought everything back. So I took my editor's advice, which you should always do, and I went down that rabbit hole back to high school. I put on the music of the late 70s while I was writing, and yeah, and oh, it was so cathartic. It was so cathartic. I actually went as a result of having written those poems, and kind of finally made my peace with some stuff. I went to my 40th reunion.
Julia Torres 17:06
Wow, yeah, yeah, that too is really bold, because I'm telling you right now I'm not there.
Laurie Halse Anderson 17:10
Well, the people who were jerks in high school are still jerks now, and to hell with them, I mean, I don't have time for that. Didn't have time for it, then don't have time for it now. And they all just went off and talked together. And that's lovely.
Julia Torres 17:23
And there's got to be something great about going there with, like, I don't have anything to prove to anyone I, you know, observe and hook up with people who I have good memories from.
Laurie Halse Anderson 17:32
But also, there were a number of people there who, because I was, I was at a big high school. How many kids do we have in our class? We had like, 400 kids in our class, okay, which is ridiculous, but, and so we with lectures, we see that's like three, four in the morning. And just finding out that we, some of us, had gone through very similar things. Yeah, I was not the only, I was not the only victim of sexual violence in that high school. Wow, that's scary. Yeah. And there were reasons that some we wrote guys names on the walls and said, Be careful. So that was why and how I wrote the high school poems so that all that stuff happened and the Denmark poems were that was actually really fun to write that section.
Julia Torres 18:09
I just love that part. I feel like it's a part of you that most people don't necessarily know about unless they've read that book, or they maybe have heard you speak. And it came up at some point. But I liked knowing that part of you because maybe it felt like something that you could share, that was private and that people wouldn't necessarily know, but wasn't actually the thing right leading up, right? It's an adjacent to it, but it was something that was kind of a part of you that you could share with us. And my students are always intrigued by that, for the reasons that I shared. You know, that's a goal of theirs, to travel internationally and get to know who they are in a different place. That's a powerful idea, too. How do you change as a result of the places you're in, not just that happen to you and the people that you meet exactly?
Laurie Halse Anderson 18:56
And I really think learning another language, learning how to communicate in another language, because language is just such a deep marrow expression of who we are, and the sounds resonate differently in your bones and in your skull and and I think the more languages a person knows, I think it grows their heart.
Julia Torres 19:15
I think so too, absolutely, it grows empathy. And I'm always trying to learn some language. My daughter and I were watching a movie in Danish the other day, which I always think of you when I with Denmark, because you're really the only person I know. You know spent an extended amount of time there, yeah, and so we're watching it, and I guess it was about some king and queen way back in the 1700s in Denmark. It's called A Royal Affair.
Laurie Halse Anderson 19:44
That's a good one that's got Mass Mickelson in it. It's so good. It's so good.
Julia Torres 19:47
It's interesting, right? We were watching it. And then we go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, and we start learning about what happened during the Holocaust with Dana Hughes and how that was so different from anything that happened in any other country. So I want to shift us back before I go down the potential rabbit hole that interests me, but for the purposes of our listeners, I want to keep it focused on what we can do to help support young writers and bringing these stories out. That's the piece that hearing you talk about your process is really helpful, because there are things that have happened in my life that I absolutely would be too timid or scared to share with the entire world, but I see how that would be really cathartic and healing and well, just get it out there. And our young people have those experiences within them too. It's one thing to share it with the teacher. It's another to have like the whole class, or potentially the whole school, or publish it online and the whole world reads it. So can you share with us just a little bit about as you talked with teachers and students and journeyed all around virtually or in person, what are some tips that you could give any listeners about helping young writers bring memoir to the page and pulling it out of themselves?
Laurie Halse Anderson 20:59
Well, I think it's important to recognize that the writer is the boss of the writer. The writer is the boss of the story or the poem or whatever. And one way to do it would be to write it like it happened, write it like it felt like to you, and don't show anybody, right? And then maybe what would be an interesting exercise to lead up to this would be take a chapter or a short story or something or a song that they're really familiar with, and then have them rewrite that in a different character's point of view, right? And so they'll be thinking about this, is this experience, and this is what it felt like to this character, what would it look like to a different character? So they then have them kind of sketch out in a rough form, whatever kind of personal experience they want to be writing about. And if, for a lot, there's a lot of legitimate reasons not to share that with the world, and if they're feeling any of that, then have them create a different character and put those fiction that's like Melinda Sordino. Notice the first two letters of Melinda's name is me.
Julia Torres 21:59
Wow. Definitely got chills there. Didn't put that together.
Laurie Halse Anderson 22:05
It's okay. You're not supposed to. That's like subtext, right? That's the hidden code that we put in in things.
Julia Torres 22:12
Yeah, which is so it's always an act of bravery, I think, to share something that you have written with other people, because just to put it down on the page, gives it some sort of permanence. There is so much podcasting these days, and there is a lot of power in telling our stories orally as well. Something that I've been doing a little bit of here and there is podcasting with young people and encouraging them to tell their stories in different formats, one of them being the visual format of the graphic novel. You can draw it if you don't feel up to writing it or don't feel language to write it. And there's so many different ways now that we can tell stories. Some of them, the most fascinating too, are through even though social media is so evil at times, the stories we tell through social media are so interesting too, right? There's that Humans of New York, oh, yeah, that tells the story of different people united by, you know, being in a certain place. And there's this one. She's a Swedish videographer, and her name is Yona yinton, I think, and beautiful stories that she tells on YouTube and their blogs. So she, like basically tells the story of her life in the winter and how she survives extreme darkness and extreme light in the summer. And she tells it through images and a little bit of music. And she's a visual artist, so she does all kinds of different things, but I love that now that we are forced to kind of do virtual school. We can encourage young people to use all that's possible to tell their stories. You don't just have to type it out or hand write it down right with words.
Laurie Halse Anderson 23:52
Exactly. And let's make sure that we're taking the time necessary to honor teenagers, because we're talking about it's a brave thing. It's a brave thing to be a teenager in the world. It's a brave thing to show up to school every day. It's a brave thing to turn on that zoom and you got your family in the background. Yes. And teenagers are also allowed to feel, I'm going to make up a word, courage, fatigue. You know, they could be like, you know, it's hard enough to get through the day right now. Yeah. But another slight shift of the frame might be because teenagers are so sensitive to the needs of younger children, right? Because they've started to cross over into adulthood, and when they look behind them at the littles behind them, they're you can see how tender they get about them. So one way that they could frame their story would be write a version of what you experienced in a way that you would hand to a pick the grade, a seventh grader or a third grader, and so you're creating an audience for that student. And knowing who your audience is has a lot to do with your choice of structure and language and things like that.
Julia Torres 25:07
Absolutely, and you can see that in the. Many different ways that they are telling stories every day with Tiktok, for example, I don't go on that yet.
Laurie Halse Anderson 25:15
Oh, you're missing some amazing, amazing. I mean, it's like any social media. I think of social media as like a very large city, right, with all the great things and all the not great things about a large city. But when you find the neighborhood that people that you care about like you love that neighborhood so much, and so you have to curate your social media feeds to stay in the neighborhoods that are good places for you.
Julia Torres 25:42
Yes, absolutely. My daughter does a lot on the Tiktok. She watches a lot, and I'll see it. I don't have my own account, but I'll watch a little bit from her. And I saw this brilliant storytelling with this couple that dressed up like they were from the 40s, and it was a boy with his Tiktok and a girl with her Tiktok, and they were telling this romance story in several chapters through letters that they wrote to one another. But it was just this form of storytelling that I think we adults need to be more expansive with what storytell can look like, right?
Laurie Halse Anderson 26:15
There's also a lawyer. He's vegan, and the word vegan is in her Tiktok name. Her parents are Korean immigrants, at least, at least, I know her father was a Korean immigrant, and she makes vegan Korean food as her Tiktok. But while she's making the food and she's really fast paced. She tells you a story that has nothing to do sometimes, like she there was one dish she made and it made her think about her dad, and like she would be embarrassed about his language ability and things like that, but she liked this incredible wisdom in however many seconds. Wow, but she's cooking, and so you're learning, and now I have all these new recipes to cook too, right? And that might be something for students, you know, show us something like draw something while you're telling your story, or build something, or, you know, be on your skateboard, or instead of just being a talking head, let the action show some bit of you as well.
Julia Torres 27:05
I could definitely see a lot of young people gravitating toward that, because it's almost like what we're used to is one dimensional, and now there are so many possibilities that young people can tell their stories. It's up to us to become familiar with those we can learn about. Hey, this is a fabulous example of this particular genre of storytelling. This is somebody that you can learn from. Because it used to be so simple, we would just take shout. We would say, Okay, everybody copy this, or text, do this. Yeah. You know, there's so much the world is so full of possibility now in terms of what you can do.
Laurie Halse Anderson 27:45
And the bottom line to all of it is effective communication. Effective communication in as few words as possible. That's what this is. And as this generation of teens takes their place, I can't wait because they're going to deal with climate change. Sorry about that, guys. We screwed that one up. Yeah, but, but they're going to, I think you're going to see science developing out of this blossoming of storytelling techniques and styles. They're going to need all of those tools as they go forward in the world, and they'll know how to use them, and they will use them to create such good.
Julia Torres 28:20
I can't wait, really excited to be the elder that's just like, oh yeah, let me observe you. Yes. Observe you and enjoy what you're doing.
Laurie Halse Anderson 28:31
You are so good at this, yeah, because you were so good at this.
Julia Torres 28:35
Yeah, be the encourager. I'm totally down for that time, and I still capable. They are. They really are, and I know that some of the stories that are possible these days. I was just thinking about this at lunch, because I had lunch before we met, and I was thinking about how conversations about sexual assault and conversations about quote, unquote sensitive topics would not be allowed in schools in former times, and for all I know, I'm not in the environment where these types of things are not talked about, but there are probably some today that still you're not allowed to discuss things like sexual violence and rape culture and all of that. So I think before we go, love to hear about any memoirs or stories that you have read and really enjoyed. And then I'd also love to just hear any advice for educators who might be facing a struggle with censorship, or folks who are trying to keep them from being able to talk and teach about Speak, Shout, and you know the graphic novel version of Speak.
Laurie Halse Anderson 29:37
Well, censorship is definitely on the rise. This is like another wave. And it I was speaking to you earlier about an incident going on in Texas where they pulled the Speak graphic novel and seven or eight other graphic novels, and it was a group of parents who didn't like it and wanted and these were choice books. These were not books that were in curriculum. They just didn't even want the books in the school. One of them was a Handmaid's Tale. Oh, and I think four of the books had LGBTQ characters in it, and they just didn't want that at all. And this is the United States. We have intellectual freedoms here. And. Kids want to know this. What a great way to teach the Constitution is to look at those kinds of issues. Let me back up first, because you asked me about other memoirs everybody needs to read. Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes, yes, you have it behind you. Really good books behind Yes, right here, yeah, yes, it's a great book. And you know, she not in high school. She was in her early 20s. She went and lived in Sweden for a while.
Julia Torres 30:35
I didn't know that. Yes, so that's Ordinary Hazards.
Laurie Halse Anderson 30:28
No, because Ordinary Hazards ends before she goes to Sweden. But I think I heard her say, we did a thing a little while ago. I think I heard her say she's going to do a follow up book. How wonderful. That's a powerful, powerful book, yeah, so that's the one that I think everybody needs to put on top their pile.
Julia Torres 30:56
I love that. I love that. And I will recommend Becoming by Mrs. Michelle Obama in verse. I'm going to tell you right now reading this book and the adaptive young adult version, there's a young adult version. There sure is right here. Yours truly was honored to be able to write the educator guide for it. But it is the most beautiful thing. It really is. It is hopeful, it is exciting, it's heartbreaking at times, but it's so personal. It is the most beautiful book. So I just want to recommend that while we're on the subject of memoir, because I think that it's a wonderful example of somebody who was really willing to go there and be vulnerable on the page. And ultimately, I think I, at least I can speak for myself and say, you know, the unwillingness to be vulnerable on the page is rooted in the ego and the fear that people will just tear you apart, you know, once you're finally there on the page. Yeah, and it's an act of bravery to just confront that anyways.
Laurie Halse Anderson 31:53
It is, and let's just take a moment and shout out for those educators who are able to make a space that feels safe enough for students, because that's that takes a lot of work and a lot of heart and compassion. Kids thrive in that environment. There's beautiful things that happen then.
Julia Torres 32:10
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I'm so grateful for you, Lori, I'm grateful for who you are, for you sharing your art with the world, and it's good to see your face. Yeah, I still remember seeing you here in Boulder, Colorado, and you know how nice that was. That was probably two years
Laurie Halse Anderson 32:26
That was the Shout tour. That's I was, I was in conversation with Yvette Dion, yes,
Julia Torres 32:30
And that was still one of my favorite times that we have met in person. I'm grateful for all that you give to teachers and for the example that you are for. You know you were saying you wanted to talk a little bit about teachers having writing lives as well.
Laurie Halse Anderson 32:50
Teachers will often ask, well, how can I get my kids to write? And the best thing you can do that will not only model it, but but also in terms of strengthening your relationship with your students, is you have to go there first. You're the adult in the room. Show them what that bravery looks like. And we have, this is such a great age of memoir. There are so many that you can pick passages from. Look at Brown Girl Dreaming. There's so many stories out there, and I hope that there are so many more to come. So yeah, teachers, if you want to understand how to teach writing, then you need to start writing yourself.
Julia Torres 33:20
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more, and that's an act of bravery and courage, but surround yourself with people who will support you in doing that. And I know our Book Love Foundation community has been really supportive of folks. Every summer, we've got a summer book club. We hope that you'll come back and join us for a conversation of some kind, because summer book club is just fun. It's people coming together and just talking about best practices and teaching these books.
Laurie Halse Anderson 33:46
So anything I can do to help my friend, anything I can do.
Julia Torres 33:50
Yeah, so much. You are the best.
Penny Kittle 34:05
Doesn't that interview make you want to write your own books or maybe huddle up next to Julia talk to her about what she's reading? Well, I want to end today by saying, coming soon are the signups for our fifth annual summer book club. We are scheduling authors and educators to speak. We are ordering books and swag, and so excited for another summer of learning. Watch Twitter, Facebook, Instagram for updates, or visit our website, booklovefoundation.org, and click on summer book club for a preview. Lastly, I just want to say thank you for all the hard work you've done this year, an unbelievable heavy lift. So many of you have been hybrid teaching. You've been reaching out to students who sometimes respond and sometimes don't. Yet you've hung in there. And I just want to say that the world will never recognize all that you've done, but you know it is good and important work. Thank you. We'll see you next time you.