The Reading Culture

“The two most important things you can do as a writer are to make people wonder what will happen next and to understand why it matters. - Katherine Marsh

Every moment of every day, our attention is the subject of a battle. As adults, we struggle to focus on the 'right' things—so how can we expect our kids to? With this in mind, capturing and holding young readers’ attention is a key focus for Katherine Marsh in her book...

“Why am I fighting this? Like, why am I fighting the thing that I want to write? For who? For like a teacher that I haven't seen in five years or ten years? For a critic who I don't know?” - Zoraida Córdova

Zoraida Córdova doesn’t care about what a book should be. When she writes, she’s interested in.. well… what she’s interested in. That means Zoraida doesn't prioritize following rules or meeting pre-set expectations. ...

“I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over [it].” - Elizabeth Acevedo

In an interview, we may hear Elizabeth Acevedo's singular voice, but she assures us she is not alone. Elizabeth reminds us that she is part of a lineage and an amalgamation of many voices. She, like all of us, represents those who cam...

“I talked about how I didn't process things in my journals. Well, in poetry, I did. All of a sudden, it was cracking that door open.” - Ari Tison

When we’re kids, the world still feels so big. Everything is a discovery, from why flowers bloom to why we go to school and what it feels like to make friends… everything is new. But for some kids, life can hit faster than they’re ready to process. The logical side, the “why,”...

“I see my job as trying to soothe the trauma that teenagers don't know they have yet because everybody's so busy telling them that they don't.” - A.S. King

The older we get, the more we understand that life is impossible to actually understand. Things are not often straightforward, and the more we do discover, the more we realize there is to discover. But when we read, we want to relate, to see the words on a page and h...

“I think it has to do with powerlessness, and with the kind of hierarchy that kids endure every day, where these grown ups are not making sense, and the world doesn't make sense, and animals are basically suffering the same fate.” - Katherine Applegate

Why do kids see themselves in animals? Children’s media is full of stories from and about the perspective of animals. But why? Katherine Applegate has been exploring this...

We revisit our episode with Matt de la Peña.
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"Kids are growing up in an interesting time and they're led to believe that if we don't feel happy, we're doing something wrong. I think what I respond to is a deeper truth, which is, happiness is incredible and we should strive for it, but we should also acknowledge that half of our life is challenging or melancholy." - Matt de la Peña

Hailing from a working class bor...

We revisit our episode with Sabaa Tahir.
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"This is happening in our world and at the very least you can bear witness to it. That's literally the absolute least you can do. - Sabaa Tahir

Sabaa Tahir’s (“All My Rage,” “An Ember in the Ashes” quartet) upbringing in the Mojave desert, isolated nearly 100 miles from the nearest city, exposed her to an unforgiving landscape and also many unforgiving truths of humanity...

"I feel like it was this little miracle that in some areas of my life, I'm shutting myself up and shutting myself down. But with my writing, I was always really connecting with that inner voice.” - Shannon Hale

Flaws. We do everything to hide them away and pretend they don’t exist. But what if these flaws  that we try so desperately to mask are exactly what we need to access our power, our story? How does one tap into i...

"I'm not a person that's like, let's throw out the classics. It's, let's move forward. Let's disrupt the canon. Some of these universal themes, some of these ingredients that we love, how do I remix them into a new stew?” - Dhonielle Clayton

What is life without a little magic? Fantasy gives us the space to break free from the confines that reality often brings and the freedom to dream the typically unimaginable. But with a...

"That barrier between what is “real” and what is not, when that's more fluid, I think it's that's where the fun of fiction comes in. Especially when you're writing for kids.” - Minh Lê

Life is full of barriers. Barriers between reality and the imagination, the spiritual and physical world, and perhaps most crucially, the ones we create for ourselves. When a barrier is a boundary, it can be a good thing. But in many case...

"I've found that the books that have resonated with me the most are books where your body is incidental, but it's still something that you can never leave behind.” - Julie Murphy

Julie Murphy has an unexpected story, one that involves a winding road to her writing career. With equal parts quick wit and matter-of-factness, Julie shares that part of her confidence that she could dare to be a writer came after falling deep...

"...the reader's mind is filling in the blanks in between those panels and as a lip reader, that's what I do. I fill in the blanks. I'm trying to piece together what that person says. So, comics really make sense to me.” - Cece Bell

I first came to know Cece Bell through her groundbreaking semi-autobiographical graphic memoir novel, “El Deafo.” It was SO good that I had to read more by her. That's when I found out, thro...

"That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as humans, and then we behave the way we will. We are obliged not to consider them as less than human because that way, all hell breaks loose. - Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire expresses himself with extreme precision. While many of us may grasp for words to communicate a specific emotion or to describe a series of events, ...

"I spend a lot of time trying to hope that I'll remember little things and how a certain simple thing felt. …  Writing is one way of trying to capture that feeling, even if I'm fictionalizing it still.” - Nina LaCour

If Nina LaCour were a drink, she would be a cozy cup of tea. You’re not rushing to finish a conversation with Nina. Rather, you are spending time exploring the details. And that is exactly what we did in th...

"There's something very lovely about feeling like, well, it's not my name, and it's not me, it's just the books.” - LeUyen Pham

To listen to LeUyen Pham is to feel inspired. She is full of hope and ideas and sees potential everywhere and in everyone. In LeUyen’s ideal world, diverse representation is a natural outgrowth of art that truly reflects our world. Her career as an artist and writer has been her contribution to...

"Love is risky. Love always ends. Should you do it anyway?” - Nicola Yoon

Love is a feeling that never exists solely on its own, and those likely companions to love (anxiety, grief) often bring questions such as, is this worth it? It’s this question and others like it that Nicola Yoon explores in each of her novels. 

Nicola is a hopeless romantic. The affliction began in childhood after the discovery of her aunt’s harleq...

• "I'm putting every single ounce of who I am into every single book that I write, so y'all know to expect the blackest books you have ever read from yours truly.”  - Derrick Barnes

Derrick Barnes’ introduction to vulnerable storytelling was through the jazz and R&B records he found in his family’s collection. For young Derrick, reading the liner notes in albums was just as important as any other kind of reading....

"I'm a bad liar. So I'm just like, I'm really good at telling the truth.”  - Brandy Colbert

Going down internet rabbit holes and discovering everything there is to know about random subjects is a relaxing way to spend an evening, according to Brandy Colbert. This passion for research is part of the secret sauce that helps her build such deep and believable characters in her fiction work. In her nonfiction writing, Brand...