Jan Saczawa: 00:00:00.601
I am a fan of graphic novels. I’m a fan of almost anything that gets kids reading. I’m the kid who read the cereal box every morning. They’re still reading. They’re still making that connection of words, story, that link, but it adds the visuals. And I think for some kids, they are visual learners.

[music]

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:28.854
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and I am so excited to have you all join us today. We’re going to have an absolutely fabulous conversation. And this is a particularly special conversation for me because I’m joined by a friend of almost 40 years. We have known each other a very long time. I think it’s safe to say that when we first met, it took us a while to find the value in each other. But I can say that Jan is one of my very special friends. And I hope for all of you who are listening to this episode or viewing this webinar that you have this kind of friendship that’s 40 years long and you can pick up the threads of your relationship just like you saw each other yesterday, even if a year passes between your seeing each other. And Jan, would you please be so kind as to introduce yourself?

Jan Saczawa: 00:01:24.558
Hello, my name’s Jan Saczawa. I am a retired elementary school librarian, elementary school art teacher, and high school middle school math teacher. I’m just confused. I have had a wonderful time teaching all of those subjects, but my true love is library science. It’s reading with kids, even when I taught art. We did reading book-based projects in my lower grades. When my students, all the way up through high school were doing art, I read to them or we listened to books on tape. I think it’s really important. It’s a way for kids to experience things that they might not have a chance to experience on their own. So they can do it vicariously through the characters and the books.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:15.606
And I will tell you that every time we get together, Jan catches me up on what I should be reading or we discuss what I have been reading, and it’s a marvelous time. But my children come away going, “How can you all talk about so many books?” If only you knew. I think I might be a secret closet librarian myself. I’m sitting here today as we’re coming to you all with somewhere around 35 books piled up on my desk, each with tabs and post-it notes and things sticking out of it because they all will be content for the Demme Learning Show in the next couple of months. So I’m really excited to have this conversation. And Jan, when we had our planning conversation, you said, “Let’s start talking about teenagers first.” And I think this is a great place for us to begin because as we tell parents as they begin their homeschooling journeys, always begin with your oldest child in mind because that’s the child for whom you have the least amount of time left. So let’s delve into that a little bit. You gave me a great resource with lots of books and that will be part of our show notes. But can you tell me if you were a parent looking at this list, where would you begin?

Jan Saczawa: 00:03:35.047
That’s a really good– I would begin by talking to my child because teenagers have started deciding who they’re going to be. They’re working on becoming adults. So they have a pretty good idea of what they like. And so you need to meet them where they are. I had one. I have a son and a daughter. My son loved history. He loved fantasy. He loved science fiction, my daughter, not so much. She enjoyed stories about real people doing real things. So you’ve got to meet your child where they are. You’re going to have kids who love dystopian novels. I’m not a fan of them. Yeah, I’ve read them all. Why would you want to spend that much time in a place that makes you miserable? But for a teenager, it lets them know that their life is not nearly as bad as those characters. They come away feeling better about their lives. Same with horror, I’m not a big fan of horror because I tend to dream about it later, and I don’t sleep well. But for a teenager, it allows them to experience that catharsis of the emotion without actually being in danger, and so living vicariously through the characters. Sometimes, characters go through things you don’t like. Mary Ellen Hopkins has an often time banned book called Crank. And it’s about a girl who gets into drugs. It’s based on her daughter’s journey. I would not wish that for any parent, any child. This sort of lets kids experience it without having to go through the misery of what her daughter went through, and at the end, come out of it intact, so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:05:34.947
One of the things I think, Jan, that we talked about is you always provide great librarian advice that you don’t let your children read books that you haven’t read first. I’ve had to read a lot of dystopian novels because one of my six kids absolutely loved them. And I needed to enter into her world to understand what she saw from that. So this is a very interesting point of view to take to be able to understand somebody else’s experience without having to live it.

Jan Saczawa: 00:06:07.844
Right. And there are a lot of books like that, not all of them are comfortable. But it’s important to read them so that you can discuss them with your child and have that relationship. And you’re going to have questions, and you can say, “Do you know people who have been in this situation?” Especially if they’re in public schools, and they have a wider range of people that they’re encountering, they’re going to run into kids who have experienced some of that stuff. And in some cases, they’ll learn how to minister to them. They can learn how to be a better witness to them if they want to be able to help them. But you don’t really want your child to go through that to learn the hard way. So this is in some ways a way for them to do that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:03.588
And you had said that you had a variety of authors of young adult novels that you loved. One of them is Chris Crutcher. So tell me about how you evolved your love for Chris Crutcher.

Jan Saczawa: 00:07:23.223
He is a family therapist living in Spokane, Washington. And I encountered his books first when I was in library school. And he takes, I would guess, little skeletons of the children he works with and incorporates bits and pieces into the people in his books. And some of the characters weave through a number of books, but most of them are not in series. It’s just you’ll see the same character as a side character in one book and then he gets his own book later or something like that. His books are almost all about athletes, but it’s not about the athletics. It’s about the personal relationships. It’s about being a frustrated teenager trying to become a man and your father still treating you like you’re a little kid. And the conflict that we have as parents and kids and letting go is hard. There’s a quote in a book called Iron Man that he wrote. It’s about a kid who is working on a triathlon. He’s training for a triathlon. His dad owns a bike shop. His dad gives one of his rivals a $5,000 bike so he can beat him.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:50.404
Oh my.

Jan Saczawa: 00:08:51.379
And the kid uses the bike for the race, but then he offers it to the boy whose dad gave it to him. And he says, “Why would you do that?” And the young man who’s giving him the bike says, “My dad said something interesting to me. If you want to see how something works, look at it when it’s broken.” Implying that the father-son relationship there is broken. His books allow you to see some of those broken relationships, understand how they work, understand how you can work back.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:26.265
We had a guest last week. His name is Andrew Pudewa and he is a creative writing instructor and many of our audience listeners will know him well. And one of the things that he said, which really struck with stuck with me because I recalled our conversation, he said every 14 year old boy wants more than anything in the world for their mother to stop telling them what to do. And so having a book to be able to sit down and have those conversations through becomes an enormously valuable experience. So tell me about another one of the books you’ve given us on the high school list.

Jan Saczawa: 00:10:03.001
Another Chris Crutcher book, actually, is called Athletic Shorts. And it’s short story.

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:09.632
It’s great.

Jan Saczawa: 00:10:12.062
They’re all athletes, but again, it’s more about relationships. I will give you a caveat. Read the book before you give it to your child. The very first story has a boy whose parents divorced and mom married another woman, dad married another man. So the kid is straight, but he has two gay parents and he’s huge. So he’s dealing with number one, his parents are in an unconventional relationships. He’s not conventionally shaped and the athletes in the school have gotten together to play a joke on him and gotten him voted prom king. And so you kind of think the movie carry and it could turn really bad. But Angus doesn’t turn it really bad. His fathers have some great advice for him. The girl who is prom queen turns out to be a sweetheart. So it turns out well. These are kids you may not ever meet, or kids like this, but there may be people in this situation that your kids run into. How do we deal with them? They’re so different from us. This may give you an idea of what they’re going through because we’re all going through something.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:34.747
Absolutely. That’s a very true statement. We are. And now you have a series that you mentioned by Piers Anthony that you said is full of puns. And since I live in a house with Mr. Pun Master himself, tell me a little bit more about this series. How do you pronounce that?

Jan Saczawa: 00:11:53.224
Santh.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:54.549
Okay. S-A-N-T-H?

Jan Saczawa: 00:11:58.428
Correct.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:59.264
So those of you who are scribbling to try and remember, know that all of these books will be part of our reference list that you’ll be able to obtain in the show notes after our conversation.

Jan Saczawa: 00:12:12.483
These are really funny. I mean when Bink decides to move into a house, he gets a cottage cheese. But when you get the cottage cheese, you have to eat all the cheese to make the cottage. [laughter] There’re spelling bees flying around, spelling words. If you need new pair of shoes, there’re shoe trees. And he would have his readers send him puns that he would then incorporate it into the next book and give them credit and the credits. So it’s a lot of fun. And there’re probably 15 or 20 books in the series now. They’ve been going on forever, but thoroughly enjoyable, really kind of funny and silly and just [crosstalk] fantasy.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:59.469
Half of a senior moment because Norton Juster’s– yeah.

Jan Saczawa: 00:13:05.154
Yeah, Phantom Tollbooth.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:07.416
The Phantom Tollbooth. Oh my goodness. Every one of my kids read it not once, but multiple times and absolutely loved that book. And they needed it to keep up with their dad and his puns and his dad jokes. So it was a perfect device for that.

Jan Saczawa: 00:13:25.538
Well, this would be a perfect series for somebody who enjoys those.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:29.322
Talk to me a little bit about upper elementary and middle school kids, because, boy, do you have a great collection here.

Jan Saczawa: 00:13:35.543
In it, there’s such a wide interest and ability level, difference in abilities and interests. Boxcar Children, a lot of a lot of today’s parents read them as kids.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:49.420
A week ago, I started laughing because I was so offended when my kids loved every Boxcar children book because they’re orphans. And I’m like, “Well, what does that make me chopped liver?” [laughter]

Jan Saczawa: 00:14:01.739
There’s something about being self-sufficient. And being the oldest of five kids, I would worry as a little kid about – or not a little kid, but older elementary, middle school – what would happen if my parents died because I knew my grandparents only took one or two of us at a time. They couldn’t handle all five of us. [laughter] And so then it’s like, “How am I going to take care of five kids?” And so there is something in there that speaks to some of us. Same with my side of the mountain. I wanted to be Sam Grigsby and leave it live in that tree where I didn’t have to share a room with three other people. [laughter] Because we had four girls and a boy and my brother somehow, even though he was the middle child, got the only single bedroom.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:49.073
Single bedroom, right? Exactly.

Jan Saczawa: 00:14:51.215
Yeah. So there were four of us in one bedroom. It was not fun.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:55.235
So tell me how– okay. So I love Jean Craighead George and her My Side of the Mountain Series. That was one of my kid’s favorite books to read. And one of the things I think is really important as a parent is to have those conversations, those intentional conversations about what fascinates you because if you had taken Andy’s book preferences and tried to put them on Mary, Mary would have resisted you at every turn.

Jan Saczawa: 00:15:26.389
Yes, Andy and I would introduce books to her and we both love because we tend to read the same stuff. And she would just go, “Oh, no, this is awful.” [laughter] So we listened to books in the car a lot. When I was teaching, it was a 40-minute drive to school. It was K-12 school, so the kids went with me. So it was 40 minutes to school, 40 minutes back. Mary danced in Nashville an hour and a half away two days a week. So it was three hours in the car twice a week. So we listened to a lot of books, but we took turns choosing. And that way everybody got a chance to– you could veto something. If there’s something you really didn’t want to listen to, we wouldn’t make you do it. But as a rule, we would kind of take turns and we listen. We do book references like most people do movie references.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:21.920
I see. Okay. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference. As a parent who listened to books in the car for years as well, I think one of my fondest memories is driving 13 hours back from visiting my sister in Maine and we pulled up in the driveway in the last half of the last cassette of, I think it was– yeah, well, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, 13 hours in the car and nobody was getting out of the car until the cassette was done.

Jan Saczawa: 00:16:54.124
We did [crosstalk] going to school one day, listening to the end of Robert Newton Peck’s The Day No Pigs Would Die, which is set–

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:02.544
And you mentioned that book last week. So tell me a little bit about that book.

Jan Saczawa: 00:17:06.403
It’s set during the Depression. And it struck me as Appalachia, but I was looking at something. I think it’s farther north, Vermont, New Hampshire. But at the very end of the book, it’s really sad. There’s a funeral. I was maybe 10 minutes from school. We’re all in the car. Now my son is 16, my daughter’s 13 and all three of us are. So I turned it off because I can’t drive and cry at the same time. I can’t see where I’m going. And the kids are going, “No, we have to finish the book.” And it’s like, “Guys, we’re going to get to school and be red.” “I don’t care. We need.” So we sat in the parking lot of the school sobbing, finishing the book. And then we had to go in my classroom and wash our faces and get straightened up. I’m sure anybody who– it was good we got to school early, so the rest of the world didn’t see us sobbing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:05.651
But this is an important thing for parents to understand just because you’re not picking up a book and holding it and reading the words doesn’t mean you can’t have a wonderful relationship with literature.

Jan Saczawa: 00:18:19.811
And it’s important to hear people read, no matter how old you are.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:26.357
Yeah, you brought this up last week and it was something I’d never thought about. So can you give people insight into that a little bit?

Jan Saczawa: 00:18:33.449
Listening gives children vocabulary that’s beyond their reading ability, but they have the cognitive ability to understand it. So I always say you need to read 1500 books to a child before they start kindergarten. And they will have the vocabulary. They will understand the context, even if they can’t read the words. And that way when they do get to that word, it’s, “Oh, I know what that word is. I may not know how to spell it, but I know what it means. So I know how to use it.” And they’re three steps ahead because they’ve got they’re not trying to learn this strange word, how to say it, how to read it and what it means all at once. They understand how to say it. They understand what it means. All they have to learn is how to spell it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:36.790
And I think one of the things that we miss as parents is we think once our kids emerge as readers, there’s no necessity or opportunity or even time – because we live in such a busy world – to read as a family, to read a book out loud as a family. And I disagree with that.

Jan Saczawa: 00:19:53.131
I do too. I read out loud to my kids through high school. I read to my high school students out loud I worked with the Boys and Girls Club. My church worked with the Boys and Girls Club, and the teenagers were helping the little kids. But they had a break, so they came in to do some art. And I read to them, and as we finished up the week, we hadn’t gotten all the way through the book I was reading them, which is on our list. It’s Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper about a girl who is nonverbal, but her brain works well. And it’s from her perspective. It’s an amazing book. They all said, “I need the name of that book. I need the author. I need to go finish that book.” [crosstalk]–

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:46.000
So tell me a little bit more about that because you said something that I thought was real. You are clever.

Jan Saczawa: 00:20:52.950
Sneaky?

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:53.473
I was going to say sneaky. I was going to say sneaky, but I’m trying to keep it positive. You are very clever in creating suspense and creating a desire to continue reading. So tell me a little bit about that.

Jan Saczawa: 00:21:07.175
I like when I’m reading to children and you know that you’re not going to get through the whole book to find a really exciting part and stop there with a cliffhanger.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:21.300
And why?

Jan Saczawa: 00:21:22.285
Because then they want to– they’re ready next time when you open. “Oh, let’s read now.” My son was so– now this is different because he was little. When I had my daughter, my son was three years old, and our regular pattern was I would breastfeed Mary, Andy would sit next to me, and we would read. And one day he brought me her and a book and said, “She’s hungry,” and handed me the book. And it was like, “No, she’s not hungry, but I can still read you a book. It’s okay.” But finding the right place to stop so that they’re ready, they’re primed next time you open the book.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:09.920
I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference, and sometimes as parents, we don’t really think about that. Now, were you the kind of parent who read with different voices?

Jan Saczawa: 00:22:18.178
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, and [crosstalk]–

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:22.514
I got in trouble once because there was one of my children who loved a book called But No Elephants, and I think I read that book 30 or 40 times. And I changed accents one day for the characters in the book, and she said, “That’s not how they sound.” Which I want to also speak to. So now I want to talk about younger kids. Sometimes parents will say to me, “Well, my child wants to read the same book every day.” And there’s a reason for that. So tell us why that happens.

Jan Saczawa: 00:22:59.196
That is developmentally appropriate because they are learning by rote. They are learning. They like familiar things. And then they kind of step out a little bit, but then they can go back to what’s familiar. My son wanted to watch Swiss Family Robinson’s the video, the Disney video, every day. He didn’t get a lot of TV time, but that was what he wanted to watch when the TV was on. I don’t know what it was about that, but it was his favorite.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:30.865

There’s something about that neurological order, that consistency and being able to visit the same thing. In fact, I was just doing some reading about attention deficit disorder and why sometimes adults with attention deficit disorder will want to watch the same series over and over again because it provides us a expectation of safeness and order and complexity. We know what’s coming

Jan Saczawa: 00:24:04.922
It’s like going to visit your parents or your family. You know you’re going to hear the same joke that uncle Jim tells every time. Aunt Martha’s going to complain about her feet hurting. You know you’re going to have the same basic conversations, but you love these people. You still want to go visit them. So this is a child’s version of doing that. They get to enjoy the characters they like.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:32.470
I actually had to apologize to one of my kids who insisted that we read A Fly Went By every [laughter] day for a solid year. My husband’s 60th birthday party, I was going to poke some fun at him, and I looked at him and I said, “I sat by the lake,” and one of my other children says, “And looked at the sky,” and another kid said, “And as I looked,” a fourth kid said, “A fly went by.” My kids can do that whole book without even pulling the book off the shelf because they heard it so many times. And here’s another point that’s important. If you have a parent who’s not always present, but a child falls in love with that parent reading the book, it’s worth taking an electronic device–

Jan Saczawa: 00:25:23.685
Very much so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:24.436
–and recording that parent reading the book. I think we wore out the cassette tape that Duncan had of my husband reading A Fly Went By to him. But I promise you, that book is on the shelf in my office. And the day he gets married, he’s getting it as a wedding gift. [laughter]

Jan Saczawa: 00:25:42.686
Yep. Or when the first baby comes. Yep.

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:45.538
Yeah, something like that. So talk to me about some of these other books that you have on the upper elementary and middle school list. I love the fact that you have Gary Paulsen here.

Jan Saczawa: 00:25:57.357
Gary Paulsen is fun, especially for boys and girls who are interested in– they’re becoming self-reliant. And that’s what Hatchet’s about, discovering that you can do things you didn’t think you could do and finding yourself. And I think it’s a little bit comforting to realize that, yeah, if something happened to me, I probably could figure it out somehow. And I think that’s the lure of those books for us. Gary Paulsen has a wonderful sense of humor. For the parents in the group, you probably won’t want to share this book with your kids until they’re older, but his book Harris and Me is absolutely hysterical. He grew up on a farm. He’s attacked by chickens. Your kids would appreciate this, Gretchen. [laughter] Absolutely hysterical. It’s not really elementary-appropriate, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:03.475
Okay. So tell me about– I know you have recommended this book to me before, when Owen was much younger, and it was one of his favorites, The One And Only Ivan.

Jan Saczawa: 00:27:15.791
K. A. Applegate, Katherine Applegate, she wrote the Animorphs books, believe it or not. She is a fabulous writer. And there are actually two books. There’s a second one out now, and I don’t remember the title of it. She just writes beautifully, and it’s very hard to write beautifully for that age. Patricia MacLachlan does it well– or did it well; she has since passed. Sharon Draper. Sharon Creech. There are some writers who just write beautifully for that age. Gary Paulsen even. They don’t dumb it down. They just write well.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:00.611
Well, I thought it was interesting. On your list, you have Sharon Creech as great for part of a poetry unit with her book called Love That Dog, and this is a book I was not familiar with.

Jan Saczawa: 00:28:09.649
It is a book of poetry. And they’re doing a poetry unit in school. They’re learning about William Carlos Williams, who was a poet who wrote about a red wheelbarrow, and the poems are about them learning about poetry.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:30.189
Oh, that’s wonderful.

Jan Saczawa: 00:28:31.499
The sequel is Hate That Cat. So Love That Dog and Hate That Cat. They’re both really, really lovely books. You need to do Love That Dog first. But I used it with my students when we were talking about poetry. My first question to them, “How many of y’all like poetry?” and I don’t get any hands. And,” How many of y’all like rap?” That’s poetry. It’s words and rhythm. So as long as you’ve got words and you’ve got rhythm, you’ve got poetry. It doesn’t have to be boring, and so take it from there. Pick a subject you like, a motorcycle. How can you put words into rhythm when you’re talking about a motorcycle? So then you talk about vocabulary, you talk about parts of a motorcycle, what it feels like to be on it, if you’ve ever been on one, and then make it into a poem. But it’s words with rhythm. It doesn’t have to rhyme. It just has to have a rhythm to it. And so once they get that, it’s like, “Oh, I do like poetry.” And then you kind of have to figure out, what kind of poetry do you like? Marilyn Singer is a wonderful picture book author who does poetry. She has one and I think it’s called Mirror Mirror, but don’t quote me on that. If you read it from front to back, it’s one way. If you read it from back to front, it’s an entirely different piece.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:06.315
Wait, you can read it both directions?

Jan Saczawa: 00:30:08.426
Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:09.272
Fascinating.

Jan Saczawa: 00:30:10.130
It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:12.973
So who’s the author that’s amazing?

Jan Saczawa: 00:30:14.924
Marilyn Singer.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:16.159
Marilyn Singer. Okay.

Jan Saczawa: 00:30:18.830
And I’ll have to look it up. We’ll add it to the list when we get a chance. I just thought about it, so I thought I’d say something to you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:24.776
Well, I have to tell you all, just as an aside, when Jan sent me this list yesterday, it’s two pages long. And I know her well enough to know she pulled all of this stuff straight out of her head. I know no one who loves books as much as Jan loves books. So this was really such a fun thing to read through this book because I could see through this book list because I could see the book world through Jan’s eyes. And she’s always been such an amazing teacher. How amazing would it be to have an art teacher who read to you as you did art, just so, so cool. So let’s talk a little bit about early readers. You had Mr. Putter and Tabby on here and I’d never even heard of that series. I went to the library Friday.

Jan Saczawa: 00:31:09.772
Aren’t they wonderful?

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:10.855
Okay, you gave me 30 million books. I’m wandering around the library looking for these books so I can learn a little bit about them. So tell me about Mr. Putter and Tabby.

Jan Saczawa: 00:31:20.277
Cynthia Rylant is the author. Arthur Howard is the illustrator. They’re both fabulous. I read a lot of books and I read even more when I was teaching and I would go, “I can write better than that.” And then I’d hit one of hers and go, “But I can’t do it better than her.” She’s just so super.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:40.931
Is she also the author of Henry and Mudge–

Jan Saczawa: 00:31:43.039
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:43.039
–which I was well familiar with.

Jan Saczawa: 00:31:44.836
I love Henry and Mudge. And she wrote books for older kids too. She wrote Missing May, which my third through fifth-grade elementary girls would ask for a sad book. And that would be one of the sad books I would give them, and beautiful.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:00.492
Why do you think they would ask for a sad book?

Jan Saczawa: 00:32:03.408
I think it’s the catharsis thing. It’s just like teenagers wanting horror or–

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:10.695
Dystopia.

Jan Saczawa: 00:32:11.417
–dystopia. There’s this group of girls in upper elementary who want sad books, and Walk Two Moons, Missing May. I had a little list that I kept by my desk so that, have you tried this one? Have you tried this one? And you get to know your patrons so you know who’s looking for what next.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:34.663
I want to talk a little bit about graphic novels because you gave me a different perspective on graphic novels than I have had heretofore in our conversation last week. Can you tell me what your thoughts are on that.

Jan Saczawa: 00:32:46.285
I am a fan of graphic novels. I’m a fan of almost anything that gets kids reading. I’m the kid who read the cereal box every morning. They’re still reading. They’re still making that connection of words, story, that link, but it adds the visuals, and I think for some kids they are visual learners. And so those extra drawings help them. They make it more interesting. I recently read a graphic novel version, I guess, of To Kill a Mockingbird. And we had the illustrated classics as kids, basically the same thing. So yeah, I think graphic novels are really interesting. They have graphic novel versions of a lot of popular books. The entire Rick Riordan stuff, Percy Jackson, where if you want your kids to learn Greek mythology, there you go, gets them a start. But they’ve got those in graphic novels as well as the books that are just prose. And if a child is really interested, they’ll read one and then read the other. So in some cases, they’re a stepping stone. And so whatever gets a child reading is a big thing in my book.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:20.117
Absolutely. I love the fact that you don’t exclude books; rather, you include books because just as you said, “Whatever gets them reading.” Now we were talking about early readers and we were talking about Mr. Putter and Tabby. And you have Chloe’s Nature Journal. And that’s a book that we had [crosstalk]–

Jan Saczawa: 00:34:44.993
That’s a relatively new book. I am a big fan of Betsy Bird, who used to be a children’s library, at the New York Public Library. She is now in Illinois, or no Indiana, Evanston, I think. But she works with School Library Journal and has a column she does. And I have always been pretty pleased with books that she liked. She was one of those people who, if she recommended a book, I’d find it and read it and consider it from my collection. Because I don’t know if people realize this, but most librarians read the books before they put them in the collection. My husband looked at me when I got my library science degree and said, “I thought now you’d stop buying books now that you work in a library.” And it’s like, “Oh, you poor man. No. Now I have to read them before I can buy them for the for the library.” But Chloe’s Nature Journal is a really interesting one because it’s a great intro to a science unit, a nature unit because she’s finding things in her backyard. And it’s a really neat way to kind of a budding biologist. Or want somebody who’s not too sure about creepy crawlies to to take a closer look and maybe find something interesting about them. And we all want our kids to be outside as much as possible. It’s a neat, neat book. Dragon Rex Forever Friends is another one on that list. These are Betsy Bird recommendations that I’ve gone through and agreed with. You got to love a book where the two friends are a dragon and a T-Rex and the dragon has a stuffed princess doll, and the T-Rex has a stuffed triceratops doll. One of them’s wild child, one of them’s the calm one, opposites attract, but they’re best friends.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:59.290
That sounds like it would be a terrific book for siblings who might be different.

Jan Saczawa: 00:37:04.101
Yes, or cousins, same age, but different. There’s another one. Let me think if I can remember what it was. Warm and Caterpillar are friends. And that is a ready to read comic series. So even at that young age, they’ve got some graphic novels going. Worm and Caterpillar are best friends. Worm thinks that you need to be exactly the same to be best friends. Caterpillar starts changing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:37:36.133
Oh dear, yes.

Jan Saczawa: 00:37:37.247
What happens when Caterpillar is no longer a caterpillar? And so we do change. We do grow. We can still be friends. And so–

Gretchen Roe: 00:37:48.663
You’re giving me a whole list of books here for my grandkids for Christmas. Tell me about Henry Like always. This sounds really fascinating. We have a lot of families whose children learn differently. And so I was really excited to hear about this one.

Jan Saczawa: 00:38:06.553
And Henry is a young man on the autism spectrum. He likes things ordered as many kids on that spectrum do. He likes schedule. He likes things to be the same every day. And most kids who are autistic don’t handle change well. And so you prime them. My daughter, when she was in undergrad school studying neuroscience, worked for a child psychologist, and her job was working with autistic kids. And I had a lot of autistic kids in my school, so we’ve talked a lot. But in this book, Henry’s classroom is going to do something different tomorrow, or today, than normal. The schedule is going to be interrupted. And it’s part how does Henry handle it, and part how do the people around him handle it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:09.532
Interesting. Okay.

Jan Saczawa: 00:39:10.807
And so it’s a good book for a child who needs to understand that, yes, there will be changes to my schedule. I need to learn how to handle that and I know it’s going to be hard. But also how do I help my child when there’s going to be a change to the schedule.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:28.758
Well, that’s a terrific book as a reference. I sat on a special needs panel at the last conference that I attended and we were talking about what do you do when a child doesn’t handle change well? So to be able to have a book that you can sit down and discuss abrupt change with, I mean, my kids were the gods and goddesses of abrupt change because I was forever the, “Oh, we’re going to do this today” parent. And I look back on that and I think in some ways I didn’t prepare them well. We laughed that I would say that flexibility is a sign of intelligence to my kids all the time, which is a true statement, except that if you are not inherently flexible yourself, I might have inadvertently put them into panic and not even realize.

Jan Saczawa: 00:40:17.948
Exactly.

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:20.168
That gives us a great place. I want to go back a little bit to some of your informational fiction, because this was something that I hadn’t even thought about. But there are some great books on here. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

Jan Saczawa: 00:40:33.788
Think about how much history you have learned from reading historical fiction.

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:40.664
Yes.

Jan Saczawa: 00:40:42.294
This is sort of the same idea. The information in the books is accurate, but it’s a fictional representation. So Bert, the beetle. It’s it’s a cute little beetle. But the infer it and he’s just going along with his life. But Ashley Spires, the author, gives you information about Beatles as you go through it. Magic Treehouse or Magic School Bus technically is informational fiction because Mrs. Frizzle’s not real. The school bus doesn’t really fly. But where they go, what they do, what happens, that’s factual based. The deep end is a really neat one. It’s about the deep sea. But it also adds a little bit of extra stuff. It has manatee with some clamshells as the top and talking about how sailors thought they were mermaids. There’s a little bit of funny stuff in there, but the basic information is accurate. Sailors did think manatees were mermaids. So there’s a lot of informational fiction out there that kind of thread the line.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:05.795
Now you provided us with a great list of picture books too.

Jan Saczawa: 00:42:10.387
And there are truly nonfiction picture books. Steve Jenkins passed away in 2022, I think. Fabulous illustrations using handmade paper. And you have got to look at his work because it’s fabulous. But my favorite book of his is called Actual Size and he made a gorilla hand. And then he made, I think it was a possum’s paw and you could compare the size and he had all these juxtapositions. Each page was another set of large and small, just beautifully done. Illustrations were wonderful. Anything by Sneed Collard III is going to be good. As a I am a birder, he is a birder. His bird stuff is wonderful and his son is now in college, and I follow his blog when he explores with his dad. Finding Winnie is actually the true story of the bear who inspired Winnie the Pooh.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:19.163
Really? That’s really interesting. And that’s Lindsey Maddock, so.

Jan Saczawa: 00:43:23.466
Yes. as I remember and it’s been a while, he was adopted by a British fighting force during World War I, I believe, and then brought back and lived in the zoo in London.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:39.966
Wow.

Jan Saczawa: 00:43:41.124
And so A.A. Milton, when he was writing the stories for his son, Christopher Robin, used Winnie the Pooh as his inspiration.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:52.067
Now, I’m going to go back to talking about older kids. And this may not be older kids, but you had mentioned Chris von Als berg’s mysteries of Harrison

Jan Saczawa: 00:44:05.116
Oh, yes [crosstalk]. And I would do it from maybe third grade up. It is a book of– and I had a copy and I may have donated it to my friends when I left my school because I had a large copy. I had two feet by three feet maybe, but it’s a regular picture book and they are– it’s a wordless book. Well, not wordless. It’s a book. You have an image and one line. It’s a wonderful book for writing prompts. I have some famous authors did this, actually. So I have a publisher’s thing. This image, and I don’t know if you can see it, but it says it all started when someone left the window open. But if you look here, this bird is actually starting to come off the wallpaper.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:07.065
Oh, how fascinating.

Jan Saczawa: 00:45:09.421
So then you take that line and you use it in your story. And in this case, Kate DiCamillo, who wrote, “Because of Winn-Dixie, Edward Tulane,” so many fabulous books, “Tiger Rising,” which nobody knows of, and it’s lovely.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:32.422
Sorry, say that book again.

Jan Saczawa: 00:45:33.728
Tiger Rising.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:34.981
Tiger Rising.

Jan Saczawa: 00:45:36.305
Yeah. Lovely book. One of my students came to me. This is the best book I’ve ever read in my life. And she was a reader. Very short book. Third, fourth, fifth grade, lovely book. She actually wrote a piece called The Third Floor Bedroom, but it’s a pistol area. It’s a series of letters. And it has to do with what went on. So you can do some really fun things with that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:09.606
One of the things you mentioned when we talked, I’m looking at my list here, is we were talking about using younger books with older students to get them to have conversations. And I actually looked up one of those books and it was– goodness gracious, Gretchen. Where’s my notes? We were talking about using– it’s the little guy who thinks he’s falling apart.

Jan Saczawa: 00:46:42.021
Oh, Parts by Tedd Arnold.

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:44.028
That’s it, by Tedd Arnold.

Jan Saczawa: 00:46:46.302
Yes, of course.

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:48.040
So tell me about– because this was an interesting idea that I have really thought about a great deal since our conversation last week about using what appears to be a younger book, but with an older audience to engage them.

Jan Saczawa: 00:47:04.572
I read this. This is a book about a little kid who thinks he’s falling apart. He’s maybe three and he realizes that there’s stuff coming out of his belly button. “Oh my gosh, all the stuff inside me is coming out and I’m going to be flat. My tooth fell out. Oh my gosh, I’m not going to have any teeth. There’s hair in my comb. I’m not going to have any hair left.” And by the time he’s done, he wraps himself up in masking tape, trying to hold himself together because, “The glue that holds our bodies together isn’t holding me.” And his parents sat down and explained to him it’s normal as part of being a person for your skin to slough off and for you to lose your baby teeth and get new teeth and for hair to regrow and not to worry. Well, I read this to a group of kindergartners and they did not find it funny. It was a little too close to home. But I read it to a group of sixth graders and they were rolling on the floor laughing. So you have to pick your audience, but it’s a lot of fun to take a picture book and read it with an older child. My favorite to do that with is Martina the Beautiful Cockroach by Carmen Deedy. She wrote The Library Lion or Dragon, if you know that book. Carmen has become a friend. Our kids went to college together and she’s a fabulous storyteller, lives in the Atlanta area. But Martina Josefina Catalina Cucaracha has turned 21 days old and she is now ready to give her leg in marriage. And it intersperses Spanish with English, but it always gives you the definition of the Spanish word. Now, I will tell you, I speak a little German. I speak even less Italian. I don’t speak Spanish. But I can read it, basically, and it’s going to be bad. But it talks about her tia, her aunt, giving her una mantilla, a lace shawl. And her Abuela, her grandmother gives her some, and I’m not going to try to do it in Spanish, but some incredible shocking advice. And she says, “When you meet your suitor, spill coffee on his shoes. Because how he reacts when you do that will tell you how he’s going to react when you’re married and he’s angry with you.” And so she meets all these. Papa sent el perico, the parrot–

Gretchen Roe: 00:49:49.552
The artwork is beautiful. Hold it up a little bit, Jan, so we can see]. The artwork is gorgeous.

Jan Saczawa: 00:49:53.303
Illustration by Michael Austin are just lovely. And actually, I’m going to tilt this down a little bit. So there’s el perico, the parrot, and he sends the words out to everybody to let her know that that Martina’s ready. And so she lives up in Old Havana in a light fixture. That’s where her family lives. And so she sits and crosses her legs and crosses her legs and crosses her legs because she has six pairs. She’s an insect. And Don Gallo comes. And Don Gallo is, “Martina Josefina Catalina Cucaracha. Beautiful muchacha. Won’t you be my wife?” And she goes in, said, “Coffee, senor?” And she kind of trips and goes, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Well, he loses it and he is not happy with her. “Clumsy cockroach. I’ll teach you better manners when you’re my wife.” And it’s like, “Ah, no, thank you. I cannot accept it. You are too cocky for me, sir.” He is a rooster. And then Don Cerdo, the pig and he smells horrible. Oh my goodness, he’s awful. And she says, “Is that some new pig cologne?” “Oh, no, senorita. It’s the sweet aroma of my pig sty. Rotten eggs, turnip peels, stinky cheese.” And so they go through all this. Every single one of them is horrible to her and she realizes, “I’m done. I’m good. I don’t need to get married.” And then there’s this little mouse in the flower basket underneath the light hanging there. He’s the gardener and she looks at him and he’s so cute and her heart goes, ti-ki-tin, ti-ki-tan. And she says hello to him and he says, “Hello, beautiful cockroach.” And she says, “You think I’m beautiful?” And he goes, “Well, I don’t see very well, but you have a lovely voice.” And she just loves him and her abuela goes, “Martina, don’t forget the coffee.” “Oh, I don’t want to spill coffee on him. I like him.” “Don’t forget the coffee.” “Okay, Abuela.” So she goes and gets the coffee and takes it to him. And before she can spill it on him, he spills some on her. And it’s like, oh my goodness. And then they both laugh and she finally says, “How did you know about the coffee test?” And he said, “I too have a Cuban grandmother.” And so it’s it’s basically a story of you’re not going to change the person that you’re dating when you get married. Look at how they treat you. Look at how you treat them. Marriage is not going to make a difference in your relationship, so pick carefully.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:12.540
That’s a wonderful. That also has to do with picking friends.

Jan Saczawa: 00:53:16.673
Exactly. Exactly. And so it works on so many levels and it’s a lovely book. I love Carmen. She’s a sweet person and she does some fabulous books.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:31.133
So tell me now, let’s talk a little bit. I’m a parent who is struggling to get my child to read. They’re just not interested at all. And in this digital age, it’s really easy for us to get caught up in our phones. It’s easy for us as parents to get caught up in our phones. So how do I, as a parent, create that love of reading in my child?

Jan Saczawa: 00:53:59.814
It’s easiest when they’re young. But let’s say they’re not young. They’re middle schoolers. I hate to read. It may be that they’re not good at it. They’re not comfortable with it. They have books called High-Low Books. They’re at a lower reading level, but a higher interest level. Some of them are horror books, some of them are nonfiction books that are– yeah, if you’ve got a kid who likes cars, hates to read, but loves working on cars, find him a car manual for his car. He will read it, okay? If you have a girl who’s into makeup or into– and I don’t want to stereotype because my daughter was into all sorts of weird things. My son was too. So find their interest. Find something. And it does not have to be a novel. It can be a manual. It can be whatever they’re interested in. Find something that they can relate to. But the most important thing is let them see you reading. You need to model it. That’s so, so very important. We were all at Universal Studios with all eight of my parents’ grandchildren. They had a thing at that time you could get your picture taken and they would put you into the Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas feast at the very end where they’re eating the fottd. And Cindy Lou Who would be there and the Grinch and then all the kids and they took your picture and then they inserted you. Well, when they went to take my son’s picture – and he was in seventh or eighth grade – he’s got a book in his hand. And the person, the photographer said, “Oh, you can’t do that.” And every one of the kids went. Oh, yes, he would have it. [laughter] Even at the Thanksgiving table or Christmas table, he’s going to have it, so. But model it is is the most important important thing, I think.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:07.454
So in your experience, in the number of years– because you’ve done a variety of different things. I mean, you’re a high school math teacher. You’re a wonderful art teacher. But as a librarian, what is the greatest obstacle for a child as far as keeping them reading, as far as encouraging them to continue–?

Jan Saczawa: 00:56:31.050

That’s hard because when my daughter got to high school, she stopped reading because everything on that reading list was by old, dead, white guys. There was nothing interesting. And there are so many good books out there. I talked about Out of My Mind, the Sharon Draper book about a girl who’s nonverbal with cerebral palsy. She also wrote a series. The first book is Tears of the Tiger. Sharon is a former US teacher of the year, former English teacher. Writes beautifully. I bought a class set of that book for my daughter’s class. Her teacher never used it. Kids need to see themselves in the books. There were no people of color, except Raisin in the Sun was the only book they were reading that had anything to do with people of color. And even that’s pretty old. Great Gatsby. I have a friend whose 10th-grade son had to read Wuthering Heights. Why? I’m sorry. Yes, it’s a classic. No boy wants to read that. I wouldn’t have wanted to read it in 10th grade, and I read Dante’s Inferno. You have to meet them where they are, and we don’t always do that. So find something of interest to them. Tears of the Tiger is about a group of kids who go out in a car joyriding. They’ve been drinking a little bit. They have an accident, and one of their friends dies. And they have to live with that, the results, what happened. It’s another one of those living vicariously, not having to actually go through the pain.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:18.681
But to be able to have that conversation, to be able to parse that with a parent or another adult.

Jan Saczawa: 00:58:25.939
And that’s where, I think, it’s really important to read what your kids are reading so that you are where they are and you can converse with them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:35.274
When my two youngest daughters were in high school, both of them were pool managers, old enough to drive, take themselves to work, those kinds of things. But they would go to the library every Sunday afternoon and come out with a stack of books like this. And I was just– I couldn’t read what they would read. [crosstalk]–

Jan Saczawa: 00:58:55.128
No, you can’t, especially when they’re reading different things.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:58.046
–12 books in a week. And then they would find an author that they liked. And so they would read all the way through that author’s titles. And what was interesting was to hear the two of them trade books, talk about those books, what they liked, what they didn’t like. There’s several books that I’ve read that I never would have read on my own, except for the fact that I wanted to understand their world and what fascinated them. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference. We did have some really interesting questions. And so somebody had asked the question how to foster a love for reading. And I think you’ve explained that. If they catch you at the process of reading, they’re more likely to be reading. As an adult, what are the kinds of things that you enjoyed reading that you still remember? Because you have a phenomenal memory. As an aside to our audience, Jan does not forget anything, so. and I don’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. But what are some of the books that you think would be fabulous for adults to be reading to maybe encourage your young adults to read?

Jan Saczawa: 01:00:20.529
I would say the Chris Kester books. I love young adult books because they are very tightly written. John Green writes some beautiful books, The Fault in Our Stars. I love Paper Towns, but that’s because it was set in my hometown. But it’s interesting, it’s the premise is there were– when mapmakers made maps, they would add towns that didn’t exist to the map so that if anybody copied it, even though it was copyrighted, they had proof. Because that town didn’t really exist. It only was on their maps. So they were called paper towns. But it’s a coming-of-age story. Abundance of Catherine’s is another favorite John Green book. This guy has dated 18 girls named Catherine. It’s one of those weird things. He just writes really well and writes for his audience. There’s one book, the turtle book, and I can’t remember the title completely, Turtles All Around or something. I did not get through it yet. It’s about mental illness and it hit a little too close to home because I have a child with bipolar disease. And so I haven’t gotten all the way through it and I think it’s timing. But I really enjoy young adult literature. They write well. And–

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:04.644
In your years as a librarian, do you see the necessity of reading some of the classics?

Jan Saczawa: 01:02:13.290
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:15.082
What are the classics that you think are important to have a well-rounded, literate teenager?

Jan Saczawa: 01:02:22.380
I think they should have some Shakespeare. Hamlet, Macbeth, [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:29.419
Much to do about nothing?

Jan Saczawa: 01:02:31.961
Yeah, even Midsummer Night’s Dream. There’s–

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:37.404
That was my daughter’s favorite. All three of them. [crosstalk].

Jan Saczawa: 01:02:39.935
Yeah, it’s fun. Yeah. There’s some lovely stuff in Shakespeare. There’s also some not-so-lovely stuff, but–

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:50.040
And if you were looking to do a unit study to figure out how many things are in our current vernacular that actually had their roots [crosstalk]–

Jan Saczawa: 01:02:58.446
It’s amazing.

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:59.700
Fascinating.

Jan Saczawa: 01:03:00.640
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 01:03:01.412
Absolutely fascinating.

Jan Saczawa: 01:03:03.366
Well, and you know why we have all those starlings floating around the United States? It was because back in the 1800s, somebody decided to put – I think it was six, but I may be wrong – of every bird mentioned in Shakespeare in Central Park.

Gretchen Roe: 01:03:20.421
And tell me about how do you get it all done and keep it fun? So as a parent [crosstalk] children, you won’t get it all done, will you?

Jan Saczawa: 01:03:32.960
You won’t get it all done. And that’s okay. We’re human. Your children will survive without it being perfect. We survived. They will survive. All we can do is our best. Love them, read to them, encourage them. If something’s not working, stop. Don’t keep pushing it if it’s not working.

Gretchen Roe: 01:03:58.997
So you’ve given us good advice here. You don’t have to read a book if it’s not working for you and your children, so.

Jan Saczawa: 01:04:05.905
So let’s see…the other classics, To Kill a Mockingbird, I think is an important book, because life is not always fair, and we need to understand that. And we need to understand that we can be empathetic and still realize that sometimes we just can’t do anything about it. Let’s see. What else? Old Man in the Sea is a really interesting book, and it’s short. But it just gives you somebody else’s viewpoint. Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I think I’ve met the man, and I can’t say his name. Read books from other lands. Get other perspectives. The more we know about people who believe differently from us, who live differently from us, the more we’re going to realize that we are more alike than we are different.

Gretchen Roe: 01:05:05.652
So let’s talk a little bit about reference lists. Where could I go to find–? I’m a parent who wants to find good books to read, but I don’t know how to do this. So besides the list you’ve given us, which is expensive and marvelous.

Jan Saczawa: 01:05:19.904
The Caldecott Award list and honor books. So the American Library Association gives out numerous awards each year and the American Association of School Librarians, which is a part of that. They’re both part of the same entity. And the awards are a good starting place. You’re not going to like everything on that list. That’s Okay. The people who made the list don’t like everything on that list. It is done by committee, and you vote, but they are the best of the best. And so it’s a good place to start. The Para Bell Prey Awards by the– and I think it’s ALA, are Hispanic literature, and Puribel Play was a leader in getting children’s Hispanic literature recognized. So if you are interested in introducing some multicultural stuff, there are– but there are lots of lists. If you just go to the American Library Association’s website, you can find their awards lists. They that’s a good starting place. Also, talk to your librarian at your public library, your youth librarian. They know what’s going on. They keep up with it. They go to conferences, and they know what’s going on. Also, the state awards books. I’m not sure what they’re called in North Carolina. I know in Alabama they were Camellia awards. In Mississippi, they’re the Magnolia Awards. In Florida, here, they’re the Sunshine State Awards, but they are chosen.

Gretchen Roe: 01:07:15.003
If I googled state award books, then I could find for my state.

Jan Saczawa: 01:07:22.159
Correct. And they do it each year. And what they do, at least how we did it in Alabama, we a group of librarians would get together. We read a bazillion books. We would narrow it down to 10 per age group, and then the kids would read them through the year. By March, they would be finished, and they would vote on them. And it’s like Kids Choice Awards for books.

Gretchen Roe: 01:07:46.584
Oh, how cool is that.

Jan Saczawa: 01:07:47.398
So it’s it’s a wonderful program. I know our public library has all of the Sunshine State Award books labeled so you can find them in the kids section. We have displays for them. So that’s always a good option.

Gretchen Roe: 01:08:04.831
You said something when we were talking the other day that I think is important to emphasize. And you said what they hear is more important than what we said. And so can you elaborate a little bit on that? Because I think it’s important for parents to have that point of view.

Jan Saczawa: 01:08:23.060
A lot of times we hear what we want to hear, or we hear what we expect to hear. And your children are the same way. So when you’re talking to them, make sure they understood what you said. In a roundabout way, have them repeat it. Don’t just say, “Now, what did I just say?” But you know, like, “What do you think about what I just said?” Something like that. We want them to listen to us, but sometimes we’re Charlie Brown’s teacher, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they assume they know what we’re saying, so they’re going to tune us out. So what they hear is more important than what we say.

Gretchen Roe: 01:09:10.676
Interesting.

Jan Saczawa: 01:09:11.175
[crosstalk] just keep that in mind.

Gretchen Roe: 01:09:13.060
Interesting. I think that’s an important perspective for us to have as parents to recognize that they sometimes will interpret things that– it’s, “That’s not what I said at all.”

Jan Saczawa: 01:09:27.779
Exactly.

Gretchen Roe: 01:09:28.798
And I wish I had– I wish I’d had the wit to recognize that more frequently when my children were younger. I–

Jan Saczawa: 01:09:35.672
Me too.

Gretchen Roe: 01:09:35.938
–think I didn’t recognize that until they were older. Jan, I know as a librarian, you dealt often with kids who had a diagnosis of dyslexia. And we had several parents – I’m looking at the questions that were asked – who mentioned that. So as a librarian, how would you help a student who is dyslexic still have a love of reading?

Jan Saczawa: 01:10:01.233
There are a lot of things happening right now with dyslexia treatments. And a lot of it is learning what works for your child. But I’ve had friends who have had success with colored acetate laid over the words. You got to figure out which color works great for your child. Also, certain fonts work better than others, so. And that’s when an e-reader is really handy because you can change the font, you can change the size, and you can make it more readable for your child. And so I’m a big fan of e-readers in terms of– it means I can take lots of books with me. It also meant, when I visited you when your youngest was little, he borrowed mine and I had books on there he could read and we shared. So yeah. But yeah, changing fonts is a big thing. I’m not well enough versed in it to know what fonts are good, but there are lots of folks out there who could tell you that.

Gretchen Roe: 01:11:17.428
You also mentioned having the audiobook as well as the book to read [crosstalk].

Jan Saczawa: 01:11:22.785
My daughter would do that a lot. She would listen to it while she followed along in the book. That way you’re getting two sensory inputs. And you remember better. She’s more an auditory learner. I’m more a visual learner. But you need to be able to do both. So it’s good to train both. And so it was very helpful for her to listen to a book and follow along, especially if you find yourself skimming when you shouldn’t be or just kind of wandering off into, “I’ve read the same page three times. I don’t remember what it said.”

Gretchen Roe: 01:11:58.876
I find when I’m working on content to prepare for either webinars or perhaps a presentation I’ll do it at a conference, I’ll get both the audiobook and the book itself because I need that information to be able to process it.

Jan Saczawa: 01:12:14.620
Yes. Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 01:12:15.611
So it’s a good investment.
Jan Saczawa: 01:12:17.370
And our children are no different. Yeah. And you can get audiobooks from the public library. One library here has Libby, the other has Hoopla. Same basic idea. It is actually tied to the library’s collection. So you only can check out what the library has and only so many copies. But I don’t have to go to the library. I can download it on my phone or my e-reader.

Gretchen Roe: 01:12:53.569
When Jan and I were going through this list last week, I’ll punt a little bit here. As you can see, her internet has completely cut out on her. So we’ll wait for her to come back. I’m going to share some things that she had recommended. She recommended some young American biographies, and one of the things that she has on the list is the Dear America series. My three daughters loved every one of those books. They were absolutely fantastic. And they were absolutely amazing in the fact that they helped my daughter see the world from a different time period. And they gave them the opportunity to be able to step into those time periods and have a successful experience. So that made all the difference in the world for my daughters as they began to step forward into young adulthood and look at the things they wanted to do post-high school. One of my daughters actually looked at a couple of colleges based on some of the material that she had read in the Dear America series. I didn’t even remember that material. The fact that she recalled those books that she had read as a 10 and 11-year-old when she was 17 and 18 and looking for a college experience was inspiring to me, but also a little bit surprising to recognize that she could step into that hemisphere and remember those experiences and then say, “I want to visit this school because.” Let me tell you another story that I think is important. As homeschool parents, we have a lot of control and liberty over the books that our children read. And when I began my homeschooling journey, I began as a sunlight parent. I loved the books that Sunlight outlined for my kids.

Gretchen Roe: 01:14:49.904
And oh my goodness, all of those books remained on my shelves for years. And I love the fact that other people curated content for me, but it was important for me as a parent to curate content for my children based on their preferences for themselves. And that made all the difference in the world. When my middle daughter was 11 years old, she was she wasn’t yet 11. She was coming up to her 11th birthday. I said, “What do you want for your birthday?” And she said, “I want a rat.” And I have to say I’m not the most forward-thinking of parents I said, “Over my dead body.” And she said, “No, no, I’ve read about them and I really want a pet rat.” So I gave her the task of going to the library. And this was long enough ago that she had to go to a card catalog and write down all the books on pocket pets in the library. And I said, “Here’s the deal. If you’ll read all the books on pocket pets, then you and I will get together and we will make a decision as far as a pocket pet for you.” And I thought this was a brilliant win. She’s never going to get through all those books. Her interest is going to wane. Six weeks later, she came back to me and said, “I’ve read all the books in the library and I still want a pet rat.” Man, now I was on the hook. So we went to the pet shop and we had a conversation with the lady who was the regional director for small animal care for this large pet store chain that we were visiting, and she said, “Oh, no, you really do want a rat. They’re very intelligent. They’re very social and they’re very– they don’t bite.” She said, “Hamsters will bite you. Gerbils will bite you. Rats unless you hurt them won’t bite you.” And I thought, “Oh, okay.” And my biggest preclusion was I couldn’t get over the tail. But once I got over that, we had our first pet rat. Her name was Amber. Amber lived with us for two and a half years, and for 14 years succeeding that we had pet rats at my household.

Gretchen Roe: 01:17:08.786
Now let me tell you what that little experiment in six weeks of reading all the books in the library wrought. Today, that daughter is a research biologist and she sent me pictures this morning of slides that she had created of mouse hearts. And she has worked with small animals for years. And who knew that me trying to get her out of wanting one pet was going to create a lifelong love for her that would keep her heading forward into the future, into her adulthood and into her career. Well, also, I think it’s important for parents to know if you have a child who has a diagnosis, you have access to something called Learning Ally. Learning Ally, once upon a time, was books for the blind, but like so many of us, they reinvented themselves. And you can go to learningally.org, and what you can find there– and I want to make an affirmative qualifier here, Learning Ally books are not audible books, so they don’t have trained readers, they have volunteer readers.

Jan Saczawa: 01:18:17.894
Gotcha.

Gretchen Roe: 01:18:17.894
But that was invaluable for me, particularly for my dyslexic son. When he had high school, being able to have somebody read his biology book who was not yours truly was enormously invaluable. So if you have a child with a diagnosis and you want to find out more about Learning Ally, you can also access their content through homeschool-buyers-co-op.org. And that is a wonderful resource for you to be able to have an annual subscription to that. We would not have made it through all of Duncan’s high school classes, were it not for Learning Ally. So I don’t have enough good words to say about that. Jan, we’ve reached almost 2:30 and it has been a wonderful conversation. There’s so many more things for us to talk about.

Jan Saczawa: 01:19:07.870
I want to put a plug in for one book. Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook.

Gretchen Roe: 01:19:14.605
That’s what I was heading towards.

Jan Saczawa: 01:19:15.517
It’s the very first book on the top of my list. Jim Trelease was– and I I don’t even know if he’s still around, but he put out a Read-Aloud Handbook every few years and it was books from in-the-womb all the way through high school that are great to read aloud to your students or your children or your family. Every book in there he had read and could talk about and tell you about. And I’m a big, big fan.

Gretchen Roe: 01:19:49.734
Great. And there, again, is another resource for us to be able to–

Jan Saczawa: 01:19:54.045
Exactly.

Gretchen Roe: 01:19:54.594
–find– to be able– you had also mentioned the Book Girls’ Guide to me.

Jan Saczawa: 01:20:00.144
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 01:20:00.672
Do you remember mentioning this? Because that was for books for me as an adult.

Jan Saczawa: 01:20:04.877
Yes. Very much so.

Gretchen Roe: 01:20:05.954
So let’s talk about that, because I think, particularly as a homeschool parent, you need to fill your own cup before you can pour out into your children. So let’s talk about that before we’re finished today. I

Jan Saczawa: 01:20:18.347
It’s two young women – they’re younger than me – who love books, and they have basically put together this website where they have reading challenges. They have reading through the decades. So you read a book from the 1920s, the 1930s, 1940s. They have read around the world, read a book from each of the continents, and they give you suggestions. They have reading through the ages. So your protagonists or your characters are certain ages. They have read across the US, so you can read in different read books in different areas of the country or each state, and they give you suggestions. And so you can join a challenge and then enter what you read. They’ll give you January. You’re supposed to read books set in the Arctic. Or books set in the 1920s or whatever, depending on the group you’re in. And then they give you a form to talk about what you read. And so, “What do you like about? What you didn’t like about it?”

Jan Saczawa: 01:21:30.611
And if a book that you– if you read a book that’s set somewhere that’s not on their recommended list, add it in there and talk about it. Let them know what you read. And it’s not hard and fast rules, but it’s a way to find some cool stuff. I’m working on a challenge that is, “in case you missed it.” And it’s the best books of certain years. January, I think, was 2012. Well, I had read about half the books on the list, but I hadn’t read the other half, so I picked one and read it and it was really cool. So just, I’m reading things I wouldn’t necessarily read because these are things I missed.

Gretchen Roe: 01:22:12.380
So you said being a parent who reads in front of your children.

Jan Saczawa: 01:22:16.517
Pardon?

Gretchen Roe: 01:22:17.127
Your children, but who reads in front of your children.

Jan Saczawa: 01:22:19.553
Yes. Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 01:22:20.634
Yeah. It’s all [crosstalk].

Jan Saczawa: 01:22:20.634
And it also has recommendations for young adult books and children’s books and stuff like that. So some of them, we listen to them in the car together. So there are some recommendations you can use for your family as well. So but it’s a neat site. A friend of mine who’s also a former librarian introduced me to it when I was up visiting last January. And I think it’s really kind of a cool thing.

Gretchen Roe: 01:22:47.297
I think it’s kind of a cool resource. I pulled it up on my computer when you were here visiting a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been in and out of it several times. Of course, I need to get through this giant stack on my desk.

Jan Saczawa: 01:22:59.636
The nice thing is they don’t email you and tell you you messed up and didn’t finish it. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 01:23:06.503
I did want to share before we finish, these three books, because these are books that were recommended to me by a lady who will be a guest on the podcast in two weeks. And what we’re going to talk about is how to get your child to emerge as a reader. And Dr. Karen Halinga is a reading specialist. She holds a PhD in reading and getting children to read. And these were three books that she had recommended. And what I love about these three books, they’re entitled First Steps, Days Go By, and More Days Go By. And what I love about these three books, it’s they give you a very rich story to read to your child that is rich in language and alliteration and a story so your child can really set themselves into the story. But then they provide a very simple story for your child to read back to you. They provide prompts is for your child to read so that they will help them with words. And it’s a wonderful way to help a student emerge as a reader. So I wanted to make sure that we didn’t forget to talk about these. They’re in this giant stack here on my desk. And if you’re looking for them, you can find these from Rainbow Resources. They are called Little Pathway Readers. And with Dr. Halinga’s recommendation and encouragement, she said they do come with workbooks. She doesn’t recommend the workbooks because really the goal is to read to your children. And, Jan, you mentioned this earlier. A student needs to read 20,000 words at a level of reading before they’re ready to progress on to the next level of reading. So I think it’s really important for us as parents not to try and get the cart before the horse and expect too much of our children too soon.

Jan Saczawa: 01:25:00.066
That’s how we end up with kids who don’t like to read.

Gretchen Roe: 01:25:02.837
Yes, that’s–

Jan Saczawa: 01:25:03.987
Because it’s not fun anymore. [laughter] I had a child who read Hardy Boys and Tom Clancy at the same time, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Gretchen Roe: 01:25:12.004
Oh, that’s absolutely amazing. So yes.

Jan Saczawa: 01:25:14.381
The average Mary Higgins Clark book is a fifth grade reading level. We don’t want to read classics that are difficult for us all the time. Your children shouldn’t have to struggle all the time either.

Gretchen Roe: 01:25:26.583
That’s true. So in closing today, what kind of– what would be the advice that you would offer to our families?

Jan Saczawa: 01:25:34.634
Find something you enjoyed reading that your children enjoy listening to and do it together.

Gretchen Roe: 01:25:43.133
Just it has to be fun. And if we can teach our children that reading is a pursuit where they can escape to another world and find a fascinating experience in the things that they read, then we’ve really done a very good thing indeed.

Jan Saczawa: 01:25:58.002
Exactly.

Gretchen Roe: 01:25:58.670
Thank you so much for joining me today, for spending this time, for spending the extra time that we’ll have with our bonus episode. I am going to close very reluctantly today and say thank you so much for being with me today. This is Gretchen Roe for the Demme Learning Show. Thank you all so much for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this. And we’ll look forward to your allowing us into your living room in the next few weeks. Thank you so much. And, Jan, we’ll do this again sometime. Take care.

Jan Saczawa: 01:26:40.408
I would love to.

Gretchen Roe: 01:26:41.067
All righty, bye-bye.

Jan Saczawa: 01:26:42.773
Bye.

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