on about books. we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews, and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span bookdiary entry in the book and now an interview with author brad meltzer about his bestselling children's book series, ordinary people change the world. mr. meltzer started the series ten years ago and is celebrating the milestone with a new book in the series. booktv recently sat down with him to talk about the project. so author brad meltzer is it fair to say you got your start

as a as a thriller writer? yeah, no, it wasn't. that's a for 27 years now, i've been murdering people all day long, writing thrillers, researching the white house, figuring out how the government keeps its secrets. and more important, the people they are, how they keep their secrets. and i think you've just also figured out the single best way to. it makes logical sense why someone would suddenly want to write books for children is murder and then children. so, of course, it's a beautiful transition. well, before we leave the thrillers, how many of you written and how much research goes into this? so i've written 13 thrillers that are that are fictional and the research takes me at least a year, six months to a year for each one. each book takes about two years to do. and, you know, i know i can make up anything but if i say to you, there are secret tunnels below the white house and they run from the white house all the way down to florida and disney world, we'd all laugh.

we know that that's not really true. but if i tell you when you're in the ground floor corridor of the white house and you see that big red carpet in front of you, you're going to see two statues that are on your left go through those statues is a door there. there's going to be lots of chairs that are stacked up. that's the entrance. and where they hold all the chairs for the state dinners, that's a storage room. but on the back of that room, there's another door go through that one, you'll see and smell flowers on your left hand side. that's where the white house flower shop is. and now the ceiling will start to lower and you'll see back equipment above your head. and as you get to that dead end, you're going to see on your right hand side a steel metal door. that is the real entrance to the secret tunnel below the white house. it's a bomb shelter. if you read one of my thrillers, the first council, you'll also see where that bomb shelter leads out. but now what i've started as fiction seems very real to you. so all that research to me is the best part. it's how it makes it real. and then we've done additionally three nonfiction adult books.

also the first conspiracy linking conspiracy and nazi conspiracies. so i do nonfiction and fiction, but both of them are thrillers to me. well, we invited you to be on booktv again to talk about the ten year anniversary, three of your series ordinary people changed the world. what is this series and how did you get started with it? the truth was, peter, i had kids and i was tired of my kids looking at reality tv show stars and people who were famous for being famous and thinking that that's a hero, you know, overpaid millionaire athletes. i was like, i can give them better heroes than that. and so i wanted to write children's books, and i said to my daughter, you know, here's a real hero. you can look up to. i want to teach her about perseverance, a kindness, about being daring and being, you know, a good person. and i said, here's amelia earhart. she flew across the atlantic ocean. and at that point, my eight year old daughter said to me, big deal, dad. everyone flies across the atlantic ocean and she was not impressed at all. but then i told her this true story that when amelia earhart

was seven years old, she built a homemade roller coaster in her backyard. she took a wooden crate with roller skating wheels in the bottom of the crate, shoved it all the way to the roof for a tool shed, put two by fours down the side, came flying down the side to show, flew through the air crashes. she later said that that was the first time her stomach bottomed out from under her and she wanted that feeling back again and when my daughter heard that story, she was like, tell me that again. and that's where the series started. it's basically called the iron series the ordinary people chge world series. and i'm amelia earhart. i am abraham lincoln. i am rosa parks for my son who love sports. i was like, forget tse overpaid as. here's i am jackie robinson or my daughter who loves our dog. i said, you want to see what animals and your love of science can do? here's i am jane goodall and my youngest, who loves being creative and lego aning. we did. i am jim henson. i am walt disney and gave him the creative hero. so we've now done over 30 heroes in the series. it's it's been a gift. i never realized i was giving to

myself. but it's been our way to kind of fight back against the i'll just say, the way we're treating each other as people today, i think we can do better and give our kids better heroes to look up to. so, brad meltzer, what's the difference between writing thrillers and writing children's books? less murder? you know the truth is, peter, i don't see much of a difference. i really don't. to me, a good story is a good story. obviously, one has adult themes and one has maybe metaphors you can't use in a kid's book. but at the end of the day, i'll give you an example. there's a story about george washington. there's a line, you know, some lines in the book. and i put in i am george washington is a kid's book that i also used in the thriller that i wrote when i mentioned george washington. and i use that same line in the first conspiracy about a secret plot to kill george washington really happens. there's a fictional book, a nonfiction adult book and a kid's book. i am george washington. they all had the same story in them.

and, you know, maybe i'll use a little bit simpler language, but we all just want a good story, whether we're a little kid or whether we're a 50 year old person. we just want to be have something that makes us go like that. that's not just a good story. that tells me something about myself. that's what the best stories do. did you have to go through special training or did you retrain yourself to write for children? i went through the hardest training of all, which is i gave the books to my kids and now i'm not even joking. it it sounds like it's a flip answer. it's not. i, i gave the books to my kids and they would just in my first drafts, they were bored. my daughter, there wasn't just a story. and that's how i figured out how to write these books. she didn't care about amelia earhart when she was famous. my sons didn't care about abraham lincoln when he was the president. you know what? we do a huge disservice today to our kids. we build these great statues of our heroes. we build monuments of them, and we make them like they're lowercase gods, like they're bigger and better than all of us. but we have to remind our kids,

remind ourselves that anyone you look up to, whether it's amelia earhart or rosa parks or dr. king or anyone else, they had moments where they were scared and they were terrified. they were moments when they were kids and they didn't know who they wanted to be and you would see them fail. so every book we write, all the you know, whether it's i'm amelia earhart or anything else, you see them fail, you see them crash, you see abraham lincoln lose multiple elections and suddenly when we show them when they're kids, that's where my kids lit up. that was my on, you know, a little like really on the job training was just being a dad and realizing all the things i thought were cool were never as cool to my kids. but when i finally figured out what was cool to them, i had an entire book series add so brad meltzer how do you address four children? amelia earhart's disappearance in the pacific or martin luther king's assassination? yeah, it's, you know, we struggle with that a long time and tried to figure it out and we're still figuring out. i mean, none of these stories, many of them have unhappy endings. now, we certainly don't show her

crashing, but we put a little timeline in the back with real photos. might show that detail there, but we've dealt with we had to figure forget even about those, you know, untimely deaths. let's talk about how we deal with slavery. when we did i am harriet tubman, how we dealt with the holocaust, when we did i am anne frank. and i remember, you know, i went to my publisher, i said, you know, i see the rise of anti-semitism. i want to do a kid's book now, these are these books are ages four to probably 12 years old, kids books that are illustrated for the holocaust. and my editor should have laughed me out of the office saying, we're not going to kids book about the holocaust, but we work with the holocaust museum. we work with experts. we talk to kids about the holocaust. and we said, how do we portray this in a way that is sensitive to these age groups, but also makes the point because the one thing that our ordinary people have changed the world books, i promise you, we don't do is we don't shy away from the hard stuff. you see, harriet tubman and you see slavery. you know, we don't make it like, oh, things were great back then. they weren't. they were a disaster for anyone going through it.

and we need to tell kids these stories. and i think, you know, one of the things we're doing right now is we're in this debate over how to teach our kids about history. but i promise you, the answer is not hide it from them kids are far smarter and far stronger than you think they are. and everyone i am. anne frank came out, my sister bought one of the first copies. she called me the night came out and she read it to me. then it was my five year old niece. i think she was five or six years old and she said, i can't believe it. the book worked amazingly. we finished i am anne frank and i had a half hour conversation with my with my daughter about the holocaust and not in a scary way, but in asking the right questions, giving her answers. and she and she said, i can't believe a word. and i said, why are you so surprised, my own sister? but i'm proud of the fact that the reason we can get there is it's not me, it's that we find the best experts out there. we find the experts that can talk about slavery. when we did i am martin luther king jr, it was congressman john lewis was our advisor on that book and helped me get those details right. how to talk about them, how to

work them into the book. so we did. i am billie jean king. billie jean king helped us. jane goodall helped us. dolly parton, when we did her, our whole team, they helped us out. and so we always rely on those people and they know their stories better than we ever will. what's the difference between writing about past events or deceased people as opposed to people who are still alive? people who are still alive? i know they can still screw things up and and i mean that seriously. you know, i did a book years ago that had a i won't name who it is, but it was a well-known athlete and i had him as a hero in one of the books. in fact, it was printed is listed as one of our heroes and just as the book went to print, if you look at the early copies that we sent to reviewers, he's one of the heroes listed in the book. and right before i went to press, i said, you know, this guy's still alive. he's still young. he could still mess it up. and he wound up getting into this completely horrible doping fiasco that wrecked his career,

wrecked his legacy. and i realized in that moment, the only people that we write about when we write about people who are living is people who we think are not going to screw it up, which is why we did. i am dolly parton, which is why we did i am jane goodall. i think that, you know, in a strange, odd way, they're at that point in their lives where, you know, i'm less worried than if i wrote something that was about some young athlete or some 16 year old phenom, anything goes. and what i missed, i'm none of these people are perfect. no one we write about is perfect. but what we want to do is make sure we we work really hard to make sure we're picking not someone who's famous. you know, but someone who's an actual hero, someone to help someone else. i think the culture right now, we've confused fame and being famous and being a hero. we use those words interchangeably and they are two very different things. brad meltzer do some of the 30 plus i am books include superheroes? so we did well, you know, we did an offshoot. we had a so the ordinary people

change. world series has all real people. we also did a stories change the world series that was an offshoot of that where we did i am superman, i am batman. i am wonder woman. and why do we do that right? those are imaginary characters, but we want to show kids the power of their own creativity. and to me, you know, superman, what we told is not just a story of superman, but why we got superman. so at the back of the book, you see the story of jerry siegel and joe shuster, 217 year old kids from cleveland, ohio, invented superman, two teenagers. they weren't popular. they weren't good looking, but they gave the world something to believe in. and i wanted kids to know that story. and i can tell you myself that superman and batman and wonder woman had just as much an impact when i was growing up as a little kid as abraham lincoln, as amelia earhart, as anyone else. we ride on. so we have done the story. you know, to show the power of stories. we have done the stories change the world series. but obviously they're not real people. but it's amazing to watch kids who take that.

and for kids, they don't know most of these heroes. they know superman, they know batman, but they don't know who jane goodall is. and then when they read our book and they do, but i love the fact that there are kids who are reading them and being inspired by fictional and by non-fictional stories and and it came because of this. peter, i read this statistic that said that more people are affected by fictional characters in terms of their how we act in life. we're more affected by fictional characters than we are by real people, especially politicians, which means people like atticus finch in to kill a mockingbird, or scout or superman or even harry potter. tell us how we should behave. and we follow their lessons more then a senator or congressman or anyone out there. and i don't argue with that. i think that's that's entirely right. and not even founded to new books in that series came out this year for the 10th anniversary. what are they so we have two

that we're selling with i am mr. rogers and i am ruth bader ginsburg. and it's so funny because we choose these heroes probably six months to a year ago, we have no idea where the world's going to be when the books come out. but it's amazing how it's worked for us, and i don't think it's a coincide. and i think, you know, sometimes you can almost feel what the world needs. i know that when we pick out the heroes, chris telling helpless and i, and with our editors, we always say, well, what do we want for our own kids? and let's just start with mr. rogers right? look at where the world is right now. look, you know, our kids are on instagram and they're scrolling and they're on tiktok and they're scrolling and we're all on our phones and we're scrolling. and, you know, news is coming fast. it's like a firehose. and mr. rogers stands for that idea. and sometimes it just got to slow down. and i love the fact that we get to tell that story of mr. rogers. you mentioned the name chris lee, who is a chris farley opposite. is that our secret weapon? and i'll show you right here, just for a moment. he's our illustrator.

i can write all the books i want about mr. rogers. he's terrific. we love mr. rogers, but it's chris elliott willis who draws this and this is what kids fall in love with. there are you know, many books have been written about all the heroes we're talking about. but when i found chris, you know, his art style is like a mix between it's almost like charlie brown meets calvin and hobbes and any cartoonist can do cute, really good cartoonist can do funny, but only the best cartoonist can do. hart and i knew if we were going to launch a series like this, we're going to do i am ruth bader ginsburg. if we were going to do i am mr. rogers, we needed kids to realize how much heart these people had. and that's chris's. as i said, he's our secret weapon. it's why kids love these books. it's why they say, buy me another, buy another. my parents are building libraries of real heroes for their kids and their grandkids or nieces and nephews. it's chris's art. they're really sells the story to these kids and make them realize, wait a minute, these aren't the stories of famous people. they're drawn just like kids.

they're drawn just like us. these are the famous stories of people that are just like me. brad meltzer open that book up. let's see what it looks like on the inside. yeah. so we always ask group, are you shooting for here. yeah. so in i am mr. rogers again we go to about four years old to about 12 years old. and what i love about the books is, you know, here he is. here'roge. when he hires a black policeman because he reads storiut younow what, we're we're not letting blacks swimming. swimming pools are white people are swimming. and so mr. rogers ayers is black policeman. and, you know, and francois, the guy who plays him on tv, he's surprised. he says, why did you hire me? i'm a black man. why did you hire me to play a policeman? mr. rogers says to him, well, i think kids need good role models and i want them to see you. mr. rogers. fighting for race relations right on his tv show. it's one of the first recurring black characters on a mainstream tv show at the time. and i love the fact i get to tell that story.

but what i really love is when you get to see mr. rogers as a little boy and you get to see him learn his love of playing the piano, you get to see him with his grandpa. and the most important story of all is his mother. and this is him with his mother, houston knit him a red sweater every single year for christmas. he always loved the red one with the zippers up from. but this is the story that i found that my kids responded to that we put in the book is when mr. rogers was a little boy, his you know, he was always sick a lot. he would pretend play at home with his puppets and with his toys in his world of make-believe. but what i love is his mother would find out about kids who couldn't afford sneakers, couldn't afford clothes, and she would buy them for them. she would send that item to the school nurse. the school nurse would give them to that kid. and the kid would say, oh, who gave me this present? and she would just say, oh, you know, just a caring neighbor. and his mother never took credit for buying all those shoes, buying all those clothes, even

buying furniture for strangers. and in her neighborhood. and what did mr. rogers learn in that moment? he learned how to be a good neighbor. and when the news this is the most important page in the whole book. when mr. rogers, with his mother and used to get scared of what he saw on the news, his mother told him this advice that he gave to all of us and that we all need to this very day look for the helpers. you can always find someone who's helping. and i said to chris, i said, the most important page of the book draw something inspires us and lifts us up and think of where we are today when our kids are looking at the news, think of all your grandkids, your nieces and nephews are in there looking at the news. and i wanted to remind him, you got to look for the helpers. so i am mr. rogers, a book that's all about being a helper, being a good neighbor and free ourselves from the cynicism that we're all suffering from today and again, it's chris's art. it makes us fall in love with it. all right, brad meltzer, what's your conspiracy? serious? yeah.

conspiracy series is it's a little different than i am ruth bader ginsburg. and i'll show you her. just so you can see her. this is. this is ruth bader ginsburg. this is the newest one, of course, but it's no less vital our conspiracy theories deals with real stories that took place that you don't know about. so the newest one is the nazi conspiracy. it's about a secret plot to kill fdr, stalin and churchill. at the height of world war two. a story i never knew about, never heard about. so it's the first moment where churchill, stalin, and fdr get together. fdr flies to tehran, iran, of all places, because to have this meeting, the first meeting ever of the big three and everyone's waving in tehran for the motorcade that's coming down the center of the city, they're all waving. they want to see the president of the united states presence in the car waving back. but none of them know is that is not the real president in the car. that's not fdr. it's a secret service decoy. the real fdr is actually ducked down and hiding in the back of a beat up sedan that's racing

through the side streets of tehran because they're worried there's a nazi assassin who's about to murder him. and i just ruined chapter one of the nazi conspiracy scene. but that's chapter one. and what i love is we get to tell these stories about abraham lincoln of a secret plot. you've never heard about him at the start of his presidency. and even books that i've been able to to read to u.s. presidents like the first conspiracies about the secret plot to kill george washington. so what's your process for writing a children's book, nonfiction book and a thriller all at the same time? yeah, it takes some juggling, but it frees my brain, you know, the thrillers take me and even the nonfiction books. i do what josh means. they take me two years to do and, you know, sometimes you just need to recharge. so i can tell you that, you know, one, one, i'll get to a point in the in the thrillers where i'm just like, i got to do some research. i need a break. and that's why i go and say, okay, ruth bader ginsburg, i want to do a book about her. i want to a book about how do you create change in the world. and i say to my own kids, i watch my kids are dealing with and watching my daughters

dealing with what's my son's ordeal. and that's where ruth bader ginsburg as a hero came from. i was like, i'm going to give them a book that teach them how to deal with change. and then i just start going down the rabbit hole, start researching that book, start writing that book. it obviously had only 40 pages and with a lot of illustration ins on every page, i didn't have to write as much as i do for a thriller. and then when i'm done, i'm charged up. you know, i find these stories of of ruth bader ginsburg when she's a little girl that her parents used to on her birthday, on her own birthday. when she's a little girl, you don't go to an orphanage and give out ice cream so she can see what it's like to be kind, to other people. and then she learned that, you know, boys and girls, everything back then were expected very differently from me. she liked to climb trees and climb ladders and jump around. girls weren't expected to do that. and i tell my daughter that story. my is like i like that story. i start writing about her and then i go back to the thriller complete the recharge, that little break of reality, just really recharged me. and now i'm working on the second half of this thriller. i'm working on. so it's a really odd process

when i think about it and say it out loud, but it's just the one that's been working for me. brad meltzer we appreciate your time today on