Episode #67: What is your favorite animal? -with Mika Song
Welcome back to another episode of Kids Ask Authors! Grace Lin and Mika Song answer this great kid question: “What is your favorite animal?”
TRANSCRIPTS:
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 A Big Mooncake For Little Star. Today, I'm here with Mika Song, the author illustrator of, Donut Feed The Squirrels and Picnic With Oliver, as well as the illustrator of Love Sophia On The Moon written by Anica Mrose Rissi. Hi, Mika.
Mika Song: Hi, Grace. Thanks for having me.
Grace Lin: Thanks for coming on. Are you ready for today's question?
Mika Song: Yes, I am.
Grace Lin: All right. Today's question is from a person named Skye, and she asks, "What is your favorite animal?"
Mika Song: Well, I would have to say since I've been missing mine a lot lately, it's cats, and I will stop and look at cats whenever I see them in the windows of people's houses and in the stores. But I think I also like rodents, because my first book that I ever wrote was, Tea with Oliver, and that's about a cat and a mouse that become best friends, and then Donut Feed The Squirrels is about squirrels, which are also rodents. And I also like bats and I believe bats are also rodents. I've been trying to write a bat story for a while, but there's a lot of really good bat stories out there. So I think they are rodents of some kind or the other.
Grace Lin: Is there a reason why you like rodents so much?
Mika Song: I think it's because, well, there's a lot of famous rodents and picture books. There's Amos & Boris and I used to really like the Beatrix Potter story about the two little mice that sneak into the doll house.
Grace Lin: Uh-huh (affirmative). Hunca Munca.
Mika Song: Yeah. And my mom used to tell me that we had a pet mouse behind her desk and I would leave letters to the pet mouse.
Grace Lin: Aw.
Mika Song: I never actually saw the mouse, but I would see letters the mouse had written that were indecipherable scribbles, of course, because it's my mice writing.
Grace Lin: Did the mouse have a name?
Mika Song: No, I don't recall giving the mouse a name. I was scared of the mouse and also intrigued by it.
Grace Lin: What kind of letters did you leave the mouse? What did they say?
Mika Song: I don't remember. I just remember making them really tiny and also because it was before I could write, actually write letters. They were just also probably scribbles.
Grace Lin: Oh my gosh, that's so funny.
Mika Song: Yeah. I wish I had one of those.
Grace Lin: Oh gosh. That seems like it could be a book in itself.
Mika Song: Yeah, that was the inspiration for Tea With Oliver, actually. But I think rodents are really cool, because they live in our world. Because I don't live in the countryside, I live in the city, and so they're always around us. Squirrels are always around too and they have adapted. They're animals but they've adapted to eating the kinds of foods we eat, because that's what's around and living in man-made structures on the sides of houses and inside the subway and things like that. So they're relatable to me.
Grace Lin: It's so funny, because I love books with mice in them as well. I actually wrote a couple of books with mice in them. I wrote this book called Robert Snow a while ago that featured a mouse.
Mika Song: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Grace Lin: But the truth is, and I love the book The Mouse and The Motorcycle, the truth is, as much as I love books with mice in them, I don't really like mice in real life.
Mika Song: Right, right.
Grace Lin: We caught a mouse in our house I think last year sometime, and I was so grossed out we had one of those, have a heart traps and it was in one of those plastic boxes. And I was like, "Oh! Get it away!" and my daughter was like, "But you love mice." And I was like, "I change my mind. I don't love mice anymore."
Mika Song: Yeah, there's like a fantasy mouse and then a real life mouse I guess.
Grace Lin: Yes, exactly.
Mika Song: Because my mice always talk too.
Grace Lin: I think the mice are going to be so sweet, but when I saw the mouse in the box, it seems so mean and there's poop everywhere, and when I saw it, I was like, "Ah! get it away!" It's so funny how there's mice that you like in books and then there was the mice in real life. So now when I talk to my daughter about liking mice, I tell her, "I like pretend mice. I don't like real mice," which is similar with many animals for me, actually. Picture books, at least.
Mika Song: Right. Even with squirrels, there's so many squirrels in the parks in Brooklyn and Queens and they're so cute looking and fuzzy from about 10 feet away. And they're usually doing very cute and interesting things like eating with their little hands, opening a wrapper of a granola bar or something. But then when you get close to them, you see their big teeth and they're not scared of you. They'll just run towards you, and so it's a little scary.
Grace Lin: You're like, "Ah!"
Mika Song: Yeah.
Grace Lin: I feel similar. I feel like that about monkeys too. There's all these cute monkey books, and then when I went to Taiwan a couple of years ago and they had real life monkeys in the trees and you're like, "Oh! The real life monkeys are really scary!"
Mika Song: Yeah. They bite and they steal stuff.
Grace Lin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mika Song: They're pests, yeah.
Grace Lin: Yeah, they're pests, and you're like, "Wait a minute. You're supposed to be these cute little monkeys."
Mika Song: And those are the cute little ones. The big monkeys, they're very territorial and they are loud and they cause fights amongst each other.
Grace Lin: So I think there's a disconnect about what my favorite books are in animals and what my favorite books are in real life.
Mika Song: Yeah.
Grace Lin: But thank you very much, Skye, for your really good question. We really enjoyed answering it.
Mika Song: Yeah. Thanks, Skye.
Grace Lin: Bye.
Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Milo. Milo is reviewing, “Follow Chester” by Gloria Respress-Churchwell.
The book I would like to talk about is Follow Chester! By Gloria Respress-Churchwell. This book teaches you about the first African-American college football player to play in a game in the South against a white team. It’s about my favorite sport and the main character is an African-American man named Chester Pierce. Chester got into Harvard, rescued his brother in a well, and is caring and loving. He was talented at football, lacrosse, and basketball, and played three instruments. Chester is a good role model. I enjoyed reading about him.
Thank you Milo!
More about today’s authors:
Mika Song is a children's author/illustrator who makes stories about sweetly funny outsiders. Fresh into picture books after working in animation for several years, she received t Portfolio Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then she's had the opportunity to illustrate her own books as well as other authors'. A Friend for Henry by Jenn Bailey and illustrated by Song received the Schneider Family Honor from the American Library Association in 2020. She is the author of a graphic novel, a young chapter for emerging readers called "Donut Feed the Squirrels". Before children's books, Mika studied animation at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and worked as an animator on children's educational movies for several years. She grew up in Manila, Philippines and Honolulu, Hawaii. See what she's drawing these days on instagram @mikasongdraws
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.
Special thanks to the High Five Books & Art Always Bookstore, Ms. Carleton’s 2nd grade class at Jackson Street School for their help with our kid questions and reviews.
