Episode #139: What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done to get your books read? with Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr
Welcome back to Kids Ask Authors! We have a special episode today with Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr joining us! They will answer an amazing kid question with Grace.
TRANSCRIPT:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and the picture book, A Big Moon Cake for Little Star. Today, I'm here with author Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr, the author and illustrator team of the illustrated and middle grade series, The Cookie Chronicles, as well as the picture book, Everywhere Wonder and Sunrise Summer. Welcome, Matthew and Robbi.
Matthew Swanson: Thank you, Grace.
Robbi Behr: Thank you for having us, Grace.
Matthew Swanson: So nice to talk to you.
Grace Lin: Yes. Thanks so much for being here. This is one of my very rare in person interviews, so I'm so glad to be able to meet you in person. All right. But, are you ready for today's kid question?
Robbi Behr: I can't wait.
Matthew Swanson: I'm a little nervous, but let's do it.
Grace Lin: All right. Today's kid question is from a person named Francis and they ask, "What is the wildest thing you have ever done to get your books read?"
Matthew Swanson: Oh my goodness.
Robbi Behr: Well, that is a loaded question right now, I believe.
Matthew Swanson: Think our answer would've been very different until about 10 days ago, Francis. But 10 days ago, our family of six and a half, Robbi and I and our four kids and our one very nervous dog-
Robbi Behr: I feel like the dog doesn't count as a half. He counts as about 12.
Matthew Swanson: A quarter?
Robbi Behr: Yeah.
Matthew Swanson: Oh, all right. Our family of six and a dog climbed into a 24 foot school bus that's also our house and set off for a year long adventure where we're going to be visiting schools in all 50 states, schools that have students and teachers who don't have as much access to books as some people do. So our goal in traveling around is to provide books and to talk about books and creativity to kids who might not otherwise have that opportunity. So we're going to visit all 50 states over the next 10 and a half months.
Robbi Behr: School year, basically the next school year we're spending visiting all these schools. So we're driving our bus around. Matthew's driving for the most part. I do the navigating.
Matthew Swanson: Yes, we have different skills.
Robbi Behr: Different skill sets.
Matthew Swanson: In the same way that I'm a writer and Robbi's an illustrator.
Robbi Behr: Exactly.
Matthew Swanson: And it takes both of us to get our books made.
Robbi Behr: Yes.
Matthew Swanson: It takes both of us to thrive and survive on the year ahead.
Robbi Behr: On this bus tour. So on the bus tour, we're going to be giving presentations about our two books, Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom, which is our middle grade book, and Everywhere Wonder, which is our picture book, and we'll be giving books to all of the kids and all the teachers. Everyone who's in the school gets a book. So in that sense, there's going to be 25,000 more people reading our books than there were before this tour. So I don't know. I feel like that's a pretty wild way to get books into people's hands.
Matthew Swanson: But the point isn't to get our books read.
Robbi Behr: It's not to get our books read.
Matthew Swanson: The point is to get books into the hands of people-
Robbi Behr: Exactly.
Matthew Swanson: ... who might not otherwise have them.
Robbi Behr: Exactly.
Matthew Swanson: We would be happy for any books to be in the hands of these people. The reason we're giving them our books is because we've found that when we show up and we talk about our books and how we made our books and introduce them to ourselves as just regular people, the students that we're presenting to have the opportunity to say, "Wait a second, those regular-"
Robbi Behr: We met that person.
Matthew Swanson: “Those regular goofy people made these books."
Robbi Behr: We're not goofy. We're totally, totally not goofy. We're very serious.
Matthew Swanson: Francis, we are utterly ridiculous, and yet we still make books and illustrate books, and our point when we talk to these students is, "Hey, each of you out there, if you want to be a writer, you can be a writer. You can be an illustrator. You could start now. All you have to do to become good at either thing is to keep doing it and never stop."
Robbi Behr: Keep trying. Keep working on it.
Grace Lin: Ah, but can they grow up and do the bus? That is the question.
Robbi Behr: So far, that is yet to be determined. We're not even sure if we can grow up and do the bus. Well, we're only on week one. So far, it's been going all right.
Matthew Swanson: Let me tell you a secret about marrying Robbi, Francis.
Robbi Behr: Oh, boy. Don't do it.
Matthew Swanson: It's the best thing I ever did and the scariest thing I ever did, because Robbi grew up going to Alaska every summer because her family has a commercial salmon fishing operation, and I tell you this in part because so many of the things that happen in Alaska are helpful for our family on the bus tour. So in Alaska, we don't have any electricity or plumbing in our cabin. We have to go outside to use the restroom and our bus doesn't have a bathroom. So that's part of what-
Robbi Behr: There are thousands of bathrooms in the great United States.
Matthew Swanson: May I say millions of bathrooms.
Robbi Behr: And Matthew, he's clicking away, keeping track of how many he uses.
Matthew Swanson: We left 10 days ago and I've used 23 and a half bathrooms so far. All right? So anyway.
Robbi Behr: So yes.
Grace Lin: I want to back up a little bit-
Matthew Swanson: Sure.
Grace Lin: ... because this is such a wild idea. How did you come up with this wild idea?
Robbi Behr: Boy, we've been stewing on this for probably 10 years.
Matthew Swanson: Even longer.
Robbi Behr: Or even longer.
Matthew Swanson: About that.
Robbi Behr: The very first kernel of the idea was that I have traveled in other countries, but I have not traveled very much in the United States. I've gone across the United States, but I haven't actually visited very many of the states myself. So I was like, "Gosh, here I am going to other countries all over the world, and I haven't actually visited or examined my country very closely myself." So I always wanted to do a comprehensive tour of the United States, and at first, when Matthew and I first got together, probably 20 years ago-
Matthew Swanson: 19 years ago.
Robbi Behr: 19 years ago. I said, "Matthew, I'm going to cross this country on a horse."
Matthew Swanson: Oh my gosh. I should have turned around and walk in the other direction right then. Then I should have known.
Robbi Behr: Never having ridden a horse before in my life.
Grace Lin: But a bus is a good-
Robbi Behr: Well, I feel like it's an upgrade. I started with a horse.
Matthew Swanson: Horses don't have bathrooms either.
Robbi Behr: Matthew got me a horseback riding lesson as a birthday present or something. I rode that horse for about-
Matthew Swanson: An hour.
Robbi Behr: ... an hour, and I could not move for the next two weeks. I couldn't go up and down stairs. I was like, "Okay, horse is not going to be the way that it's going to be."
Matthew Swanson: But this idea evolved into the current version. Robbi and I both grew up going to elementary schools in neighborhoods that didn't have a lot of resources. Our kids go to an elementary school that doesn't have a lot of resources. So we decided one day we would do an author illustrator visit at our kids' elementary school and we would raise money to buy books for all the students because a lot of the students simply didn't have them.
Robbi Behr: Yeah, we didn't want to go in and have a book sale and then not have half of the kids be able to buy a book because it wasn't in the budget.
Matthew Swanson: So we raised money from people who are not just our friends, but people who saw our funding campaign and thought it was something that they'd like to support, and we did that and the results were so immediate and so exciting. The principal told us about a young man who got sent to her office almost every day for the wrong reasons asking if he could come to her office the day after our presentation, instead of going to recess, with his book because he wanted time to read it.
Robbi Behr: He said, "I need some quiet to read this book. Can I come to your office and please read the book with you?"
Matthew Swanson: So little examples like that.
Robbi Behr: And she said, "I haven't seen a book in this kid's hand ever," so it was super exciting. Little stories like that, we hear lots of anecdotes about what an impact an author illustrator visit has, or just an author visit or just an illustrator visit on kids getting excited about reading. So that was really the start of it, and we said, "We have our school here in our town that could use a visit like this, but surely there are schools all over the United States," so we're visiting Title 1 schools, which is a special designation, and so we-
Matthew Swanson: The designation being a high percentage of the students that go to that school come from backgrounds where they don't have a lot of resources.
Robbi Behr: A lot of access to books. So we decided to choose schools in every state, and there's tens of thousands of Title 1-
Matthew Swanson: 50,000.
Robbi Behr: ... 50,000 Title 1 schools in the whole United States. We wish we could visit them all. We're doing one per state except for Texas, which gets two because it's so big, and we have to crisscross Texas a couple times, so we figured we make a couple stops and Washington, D.C. is getting, so we're doing 52 schools.
Matthew Swanson: Two. 52 visits.
Grace Lin: Wow. That's so awesome.
Matthew Swanson: Well, we've done two so far, Grace.
Robbi Behr: Two so far.
Matthew Swanson: 50 to go. Let's check in in a couple months and see how awesome it is.
Matthew Swanson: But we're really excited about the adventure. We want to invite anyone who wants to come along with us for the ultimate virtual road trip to go to our website, busloadofbooks.com, and there's ways to follow along on various social media, on our blog.
Robbi Behr: Instagram, we're doing Instagram stories every day. So you'll get to see where we are, all do the cool things that we're seeing.
Matthew Swanson: Yeah. Do you want to see a little bit of every state in the country? We're going to hopefully be able to share that with our friends.
Grace Lin: That's exciting.
Matthew Swanson: Thank you.
Grace Lin: And I think the wild part for our listeners is the fact that you're traveling on a bus with no bathroom.
Robbi Behr: There's pretty wild, I guess.
Matthew Swanson: Yeah.
Grace Lin: And did you see no electricity as well?
Robbi Behr: No. We have lots of electricity. We have a solar panel on top that charges some super duper batteries that we got. So we have a toaster oven. We have more stuff than we do in Alaska. We have a toaster oven. We have a microwave. We have a refrigerator, so it's quite luxurious on our bus.
Matthew Swanson: No, it's pretty comfortable.
Robbi Behr: Yeah.
Matthew Swanson: I'm actually surprised how comfortable-
Grace Lin: Is there a nice bed there too?
Robbi Behr: There is a nice bed. We have a booth table set up and then the table flips down and the bed flips open-
Matthew Swanson: Two couches.
Robbi Behr: The sofa cushions. The sofa cushions flip down into a bed. So that's where Matthew and I sleep. That's some of the downstairs. There's sort of an upstairs. We have a popup tent on top of the bus. It shrinks down. It's 14 inches tall when it's collapsed, so that's how we drive. We don't drive with it popped up, but then when we stop at a campground or wherever we're stopping, we can pop it up. There's a little porthole in the roof. The kids climb up through the porthole. How big is the popped up-
Matthew Swanson: It's a six by 10.
Robbi Behr: Six by 10.
Matthew Swanson: And their bedroom at home is only eight by eight, so it's basically the size of their bedroom at home.
Robbi Behr: All four of them sleep in the same bedroom at home. So they get their own room up there whenever we stop. We also have an emergency tent that if somebody gets particularly annoyed with their siblings, we can set up the tent and they can sleep in the tent.
Matthew Swanson: What if Matthew gets annoyed?
Robbi Behr: That's true.
Matthew Swanson: Can Matthew go live in the tent?
Robbi Behr: Maybe we should just have Dumbles go in the tent. Dumbles is our dog.
Matthew Swanson: Dumbles is the dog.
Robbi Behr: Yes.
Matthew Swanson: Oh boy.
Grace Lin: And then one last question, because you mentioned it as we met, "How is the bus in the rain?"
Matthew Swanson: Oh.
Robbi Behr: Currently we're having some leaking issues.
Matthew Swanson: Oh, friends.
Robbi Behr: We just had two solid days of rain, which revealed a little bit of a problem with our porthole in the top. It leaks somewhere and we're not quite sure where, so a very important stop a couple days ago was at the hardware store where we bought very many different sticky putty-like things that we're supposed to put on the roof.
Matthew Swanson: Friends, we don't know anything about how buses work or anything we are doing. We are relying on the kindness of so many people to help us with the things that we don't know how to do. So in the same way, I couldn't illustrate my books without Robbi, I can't run this bus without-
Robbi Behr: We could not make this bus without the help of many people.
Matthew Swanson: Oh my gosh.
Robbi Behr: Yes. So we'll let you know. Hopefully, the problem with water leaks is they can be super tiny and you can just... I know this from Alaska because our roof leaks in Alaska. This is my least favorite thing to deal with, and here it is on the bus. I think it's one of these trials.
Matthew Swanson: But 98% of things have gone well so far.
Robbi Behr: Yes, yes, yes. I don't want to complain about the leaks when otherwise it's, except for my shoe being wet right now... I have one wet shoe on because it must have leaked into our shoe bin.
Matthew Swanson: Both of my shoes are dry. All right?
Robbi Behr: Of course.
Grace Lin: Well, a wet shoe and a leak are some wild things to go through to get books read. I was going to say that I was thinking about getting a big dumpling costume and handing out books that way, but comparatively, I think that's really small.
Matthew Swanson: Would you like to come on the bus-
Robbi Behr: In your dumpling costume.
Matthew Swanson: ... and whenever we stop, you can pop out.
Robbi Behr: Yes.
Grace Lin: Yeah.
Matthew Swanson: We can collaborate on this, Grace. I think we could make that work.
Grace Lin: That would be my wild idea, but I think you take the prize.
Robbi Behr: I don't know. I don't know. I feel like a dumpling costume would be a delightful thing to see.
Matthew Swanson: Also a great risk because if I saw a giant dumpling, I might try to eat it.
Robbi Behr: That's true.
Matthew Swanson: I think we both have come up with plans that suit ourselves perfectly.
Grace Lin: All right. Well thank you, Matthew and Robbi, and thank you, Francis, for asking this really fun question.
Robbi Behr: Great fun question.
Matthew Swanson: Thank you, Francis.
Grace Lin: And I hope all of our listeners go and see the bus. There'll be a link in the show notes. So thanks so much. Bye.
Matthew Swanson: Bye.
Robbi Behr: Bye.
Thank you Francis! Wonderful question!
Kids Ask Authors KID BOOK REVIEW: Today’s book review comes from Miranda! Miranda will be reviewing, “Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom” written by Matthew Swanson and illustrated by Robbi Behr.
My name is Miranda. The book I'd like to be talking about is Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom, written by Matthew Swanson and illustrated by Robbi Behr. This book is about everything Ben does in one day after he got, live each day as if it were your last, as a fortune and his cookie. Ben made a list of all the things he needed to do on his last day and his day was amazingly funny to read. His parents and best friends and even the neighbors, all the important things they wouldn't have done if Ben hadn't inspired them. I like this book because it was filled with hilarious characters and I couldn't believe how many sweets Ben had in one day. I laughed so much reading this book that my older brother and mom read it too.
Thank you Miranda!
More about today’s authors:
Meet author/illustrator duo Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr. Just your average, everyday couple, who decided to pack their children and irrational dog into a bus full o’ books and engage in the The Busload of Books Tour. Described as a yearlong project built, “to promote literacy, celebrate America’s educators, and raise awareness of the challenges facing our nation’s public schools.” Author/illustrator, husband/wife duo spend all day, every day, making stuff together, including their debut trade picture book Babies Ruin Everything, picture book Everywhere, Wonder (February 2017), and middle grades series The Real McCoys (fall 2017). In addition to speaking and teaching on collaboration and creative entrepreneurship, raising three small children, and fishing commercially for sockeye salmon on the Alaskan tundra each summer, Matthew and Robbi run Bobbledy Books (an indie press offering picture books and music for kids) from the hayloft of their home/barn/studio on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
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