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 non-free ocean books featured on c-span's book tv. joining us now on booktv, it's meg medina, the national ambassador for young people's literature at the library of congress, meg medina. what does the national ambassador for young people's literature do? well, i would say basically it is being the nation's book

friend, book friend to the children in the u.s. that's how i explain it. when i go to schools and i meet them. it's to promote reading. it's to help kids sort of discover their reading lives, find book joy and just be a cheerleader for their literary lives. how long is your term as ambassador? it's two years. and at the beginning you think that's going to be a very long time and it goes in the blink of an eye. so it's two years of traveling the country and, you know, creating different programs and platforms that will invite kids into, you know, the world of reading and books. so your ambassadorship ends in early 2025. what measure will you use to determine whether it was a successful ambassador ship? oh, my gosh. i don't know it for me. when i took the job on, you have to go into it with this idea

that for two years you're not going to be thinking so much about your own work, your own work moves into second place and what has to be at the forefront. are our kids right? what are kids reading? how do we help them fall in love with reading? how do we keep our eye on creating lifelong readers? right. especially and beginning in childhood. so when i think about that, what did i contribute to make that happen? so what i wanted to do was connect kids with book joy, especially post pandemic. when it felt like so many kids have sort of detached from school, from the habits of reading and so on. i wanted to reintegrate reading into their lives. i wanted to dimmest ify libraries and make them the center of community again. so whether it's like this

beautiful library, the library of congress or the library, that is your little local one, you know, it at home. i want families to use it as a resource and so on. and i just wanted kids to connect with new readers, new authors who are making books for them now. a lot of times, you know, kids will know or are guided to the authors that their parents read right, or that their teachers read. but there are so many incredible authors making work now. so when i think about success for the ambassadorship, i'm thinking, did i introduce kids to new authors for them to explore? did i invite them and remind them of all the incredible things that libraries do and did i talk with them about books in a way that did not involve a book report, a vocabulary test of, you know, an end of year

exam? any of those things book, joy. you mentioned book joy in when you first became ambassador was a ceremony here at the library of congress. you you said this that kids should read books that feel like cotton candy on your tongue and books that sometimes feel like a punch to the gut. yeah, that's true. i think we need to read all kinds of things. i think we need to read books about people that feel familiar and people who feel completely unfamiliar to us. i think it's okay to read a book that is a simple beach read that you'll forget the moment you finish that last page and the book that stays with you for a long time because it named something really hard and important about growing up. all of it, i think all it's like. it's like how we eat food, right? you need broccoli. you also need tootsie rolls in your life. i mean, you need all the things. so i like for kids to be allowed

to read across all kinds of things that might interest them moment to moment. how many students, how many kids have you met with so far in your ambassadorship? oh, my gosh. ballpark, i'm sure that there are thousands. there are, because i when i visit schools in the ambassadorship, i schools apply and i asked to go to communities where the public library and the school library can demonstrate that they were doing something dynamic together. i don't think that kids just need books during the school year and i think libraries, both public and school libraries can team up to really create some dynamic stuff for their communities. so i'm visiting the school, so that's several hundred students there. then the library event in the evening with the parents and family and community members. so i, i do maybe four, four or

five targeted visits, visits like that every year. so it's several hundred students there. and then the national book festival and all of the other sorts of travels that i normally do as an author. you know, there's no way to divide it really cleanly. they always asked me to talk a little bit about being ambassador, and so on. it is a lot of traveling. is this a paid position being the ambassador? it is a paid position and it is a lot of traveling. i would say. that's the hard part. i think, because it is very exciting to see this country and places you wouldn't normally go. right. communities that you wouldn't say, oh, yes, i'm going to go to, you know, kent washington or i'm going to go here or there. so that feels exciting to be able to travel. but by the same token, you have to pack your bag all the time. you have to be away from your own family. you have to be your public self.

and sometimes you want to be sitting at your kitchen island and making your peanut butter sandwich and you know you want to be home when you're meeting with these kids right now. do you have a go to book that you recommend? say, for an elementary school kid? oh, my gosh. i read it. so i book talk. i have about. 12 to 20 titles that i can pull from. and when i'm going to a school, i ask myself, how old are the kids? what's this community? what might they want to hear about? so one book that i have talked a lot is nonfiction because i feel like we don't do a lot a great job of using nonfiction in schools, but it's called whale fall. and it's by melissa stewart. and i start the book talk by saying a whale is roughly the size of three city busses and and it can weigh more than 65 cars put together what happens when something that size dies in the ocean? the kids are like, snap.

i hadn't thought of that. and we start to talk about that because melissa stewart tells us what happened. a whale fall for 70 years as a whale to send us through all the sections of the ocean and comes to rest at the bottom for 70 years, that carcass will feed an entire ecosystem in the ocean. and it it has wonderful and notes. it's just an incredible book. so that's one of those books that i can book talk whether i'm talking to kindergarten kids who suddenly are really afraid. right. there's something that big in the ocean and with older kids as well. but really, when i select books to book talk, i select them a way. i think teachers and parents should be thinking about how we select books like who's the child? who are the children you're talking to? what are they interested in? what might pique their interest like? be thoughtful about what you're selecting to share with them

because the thing about book talking is this when you book talk a book with kids, you're telling them about the book. you're also telling them about what excites you about who you are as a person and a reader. and when the kids book talk back to me, which they always do at every school, there's always three dentists who talk books. to me, they're telling me about themselves as well, not only about the books. they're telling me about the things that matter to them, what their longings are with the things they fear, the things that bug them, the things they find funny, and invariably, what happens inside the first, you know, a few exchanges, we're suddenly finding common ground like, oh, yes, my mother used to say that about my hair, too. and yes. and and we start making these connections and any teacher will tell you that the recipe for

success in a classroom. sure, it has to do with the subject matter, but what is essential is relationship. the relationship between the teacher and the kid and the relationship that you can help those students build with each other. as a community of learners. and in my case, of course, in community of readers. so i think book talking works that way where were you, a kid? where did you grow up and what did you read growing up? i grew up in flushing, queens, you know, the land of i always when people look at me blankly, i say, you know, like the nanny. yeah, flushing, queens. there was something in the water in flushing, queens. i think because my my best friend who lived two blocks away was rj palacio, who wrote wonder. right. that, you know, international sensation. and i think there was a for a while a woman named maria russo who used to be the editor of the

book review of four children at the new york times, also was from flushing, queens. so i don't know, something good was happening in flushing. what did i read? what did we read? i read a lot of nancy drew. i read a lot of judy blume. i read a lot of those books of of the seventies when we were kids. a lot of greek mythology. thanks to raquel, we used to act these things out all the time. i didn't have in those pages a lot of latino characters and it didn't stop me from reading. but i will say that later in high school and in college, when i did tap into sandra cisneros house on mango street and start to discover latino writers, it was like a revelation. that people that ate the food that was on my kitchen table and

sounded like the and usually espagnole and all these things that that was worthy of being in a book. and i'm sad that it took that long for me to have that experience. and so i'm very glad that now we don't have nearly enough books by people from variety of of backgrounds, but we have more. and every year more so. so that feels like a really good movement. one latino character that's out there right now is mercy suarez. who is mercy suarez? mercy suarez is 12 years old. she's mercy. this suarez. she is a a girl who lives in south florida with her family, her extended family. she lives with her mommy and papi and her genius science brother, rolly. next door, her grandparents, lola and abuela, and on the

other side is dia, inez and single mom with two twins, tomas and axel, who are a handful in kindergarten already. this, you know, a rap sheet on those two. but it's an intergenerational family story. it's about how bananas, middle school is from fifth grade to eighth grade. but it's also an exploration of a relationship between mercy and her grandfather, lalo, at really key points in both their lives. and you wrote this book in 2018? i did. i did write it a newbery medal winner in 2019. yeah. and how many mercy suarez books have you written now? now there's three. because when i finished the sixth grade year, i said, well, i have to know what happens in the seventh grade and is she going? and what's going to go on with this girl? edna, in her life and what's she going to do about like all these

feelings of love that start to come up when you're 13 and then when i finished the seventh grade with mercy suarez can't dance, i said, well, wait, she's got to finish middle school. so i did the eighth grade year. mrs. suarez plays it cool and that one was hard hardest to write for me because i had to bring all of the, you know, all the threads, the narrative threads together and knit it all together at the and especially the issue of her grandfather's illness. so, you know, when i write books for kids, i'm writing the truth. i'm writing those moments that punch them in the gut and that feels hard sometimes because you're bringing two children moments that are really sad and some of them are living through moments like this. some of them are going to use this moment in your book as preparation from when for when

they do have to face a moment on their own and so i don't know, unlike writing for adults, when you write for kids, you have this extra duty to them to also respect their growing up and their maturity. and you know what they have. i want to come back to when you were named the ambassador for young people's literature, when you received the medal around your neck. yes. look at this. the day that you received, what does it say on the medal? it says, national ambassador for young people's literature. and it has my name and 2023 and 2024 and a lot of comments that day in that ceremony about how heavy that medal is. it is heavy metal. well, you mentioned in that ceremony that when you talk to authors and you interview authors, you ask them to read me the best minute of your book. so mercy suarez changes gears is your newbery award winning book.

what is your your best minute of this book? gosh, this makes me regret asking authors to do this because it is hard. i was going through this book on the train up here saying, well, what is my best minute? and so i decided that i would read you a little bit of the moment when just a slice of her relationship with her grandfather, they go to the bakery every sunday to pick up bread for the family dinner and so on, and they ride their bikes out and something is off about lolo. so here it is. chapter six. i don't know how it happens. one minute lolo and i are pedaling home from al-khateeb on the shady side of the street and the next minute he's gone. at first i don't even notice that he's disappeared because i'm caught up in my latest story and then edna said, okay, mercy can bring her dumb buttons like she was a queen and doing me a

favor. can you believe it? lolo she said i was a pain as usual. we have taken the long way home so we can catch up without anybody listening to our conversation or telling us what chore we have on our list. that day. but when he doesn't say anything, i look over my shoulder and that's when i see him sprawled on the street. lolo i tossed down my bike and raced back to him. what happened? are you all right? he looks just too stunned as i am as he tries to untangle himself from his bike. in all the years that we've been riding, he's never fallen. in fact, lolo is the one who taught us all to ride, including papi and dennis. when they were little, he showed me how to balance with no hands, fix a slip chain and lube gears to keep things smooth with a trickle of blood drips down from his eyebrow. where's new glasses of doug? in there. crooked now. and the lenses are scraped,

pebbles are stuck against his bloody palm to. it's nothing, nothing. he winces and gets to his knees. i hit a sandy patch that all the tires are old on this thing but i look around for this kid and there's none. would it ruin the book to say what the disease is that lolo is dealing with? no, not really. he has alzheimer's and he has had alzheimer's for a number of years. but the family has not at his request, the family has not shared this with mercy. but now as she is entering the sixth grade and she's trying to understand all of these massive changes in her own life with friends, with her body, with boys, all the things she now has to notice and and come to terms

with the fact that lolo is is, in fact, declining. he has alzheimer's and now the symptoms aren't so little. they can't be ignored. are there topics that you don't think kids are equipped to handle in children's books. really a way to address any topic? no, i, i, i actually i think we could address anything with tact and with respect for children's developed mental readiness for things. but i, i don't feel that anything that's human ought to be talked about. if it's something that, that a child can experience or see in their family, in their home or whatever, in their community, i think there's a way to talk about it, to give them tools in this debate that's happening in this country right now about what books that should and shouldn't be in in school

libraries. what would you say to the parents in those debates who who think there might be a topic that's too old for their children in a school library? how should they approach that? yeah, well, you know, i think shelving books is is a smart thing. and i trust librarians to know where to shelve books and meaning, where to physically put them in the library, where to put them and what to how to decide. this is a book for an elementary school. this is a book for a high school, right there. there are differences. but here in general, what i say to appearances this the the position you most want to be in with your child is one of open communication, and that's hard to maintain as they move, as they get older, as they're moving through their teen years and so on. being in converse sation with kids about what they're reading, even if that conversation is i don't really love that book. here's what i don't like about

that book. here's what makes me uncomfortable about that book followed with the question what do you think? that's a powerful place. that's a place of learning. that's a place of sharing information. when we start creating obstacles, you may not i don't allow this is not allowed. i think you create an obstacle to reading, but more you create an obstacle, a between the in the trust that you have with your child around reading. you have three adult children. i do what did you read to them growing up and how did you deal with some of these issues that you're talking about in your own family? yeah, i had three very different readers. i have one daughter who is intellect, fully disabled. she's 33 now and she was reading, you know, henry in much books still when she was 14. for those of you don't know, henry mentioned they're like first grade sort of readers. i had to get out of the way of

judge what she was reading. she she developed an interest in reading all of them. disney channel, you know, those programs had books and she really wanted to read them. and how were you judging them? oh, because i used to go to the bookstore and buy them like this. you know, i was thinking i meant i'm so embarrassed. i want her to buy. i want her to be reading a book with these shiny little labels on it or good literature, good children's literature, not something, you know, from iraq. but guess what happened? she knew those characters. she knew she knew what the plot was going to be. and then she started to predict the story and suddenly print unlocked for her. and she is a reader today she reads about middle grade reading level and she's in the next chapter books book club, which is a book club for young adults with intellectual disabilities.

my other two children were i never i never stopped them from from reading anything, whatever they read was okay. and we talked about it. we read a lot of things. you and i were talking earlier about reading with our children. we we read the harry potter series before it was a movie. so that was really fun doing all the voices you said you liked the greek mythology books. did you read the percy jackson books based on the greek mythologies to them? i didn't, because my kids are older than them, that they predate that. but we read so many things and it's interesting because my son now is a he was he was a nonfiction reader for a while. then he stopped reading for a long time and i was heartbroken. i thought it was going to be a permanent condition. and he's returned to reading. he's in a book club with his fiancee now and my middle daughter is often trading books

with me and talking with me book talking to me like i think when she comes to visit, i think you might like this one and she'll toss it my way and i do the same thing for her. i think that's really key in families with readers, like talking about what we read, whether it's a magazine article, a newspaper article, a new book, a book you hated, a book you loved. like those covers, stations, key how many books have you written? written? oh, my gosh. i think it's ten right now. but i have a new picture book coming out in in the fall called no more senora me, which is about a little girl who fires her babysitter, which i did myself in life. and then i am doing i've written a fantasy and middle grade fantasy very new for me, which comes out next summer. what age group is your favorite group to write for?

each one of the groups has an a law for me. there's something about the open heartedness of picture books that is really attractive to me. i love the comedy potential of writing middle grade like those 8 to 12 year olds have great sense of humor and they also have like they're opening up to like deeper things inside themselves. so you can really have this chance to mix it, mix things up in there and y oh, my goodness. just like when you're, when you're annoyed and you're taking names right away, a novel like you can leave it all there. it's it's fun. so all of it i think, calls to me. but if i had to pick one, like, you're never going to write anything else, i would say middle grade. do you know which book that you've written in your career is your kids favorite? each one of your kids? have they told you, oh my gosh,

juarez? no, i don't. i it probably isn't. mercy suarez i would say i, you know, i have never asked them this question. you've given me homework. they've, they read my work, but mostly for them. i've been mom and i like it that way. i'm not meg. the meg medina the author to them. i'm the person who, you know, nags and and ed spends time with them and all the other things. as we come to a close, i want to come back to meg medina, the national ambassador for young people's literature and what you said at that ceremony when you became the national ambassador. you said, we are at a time when we need to help our young people find their way back to joy. we are at a time when we need to reset and find a path back to understanding and respecting one another. and i believe a reading life can be part of that solution. i stand by it still.

i believe that the first day of my ambassadorship and i'm leaving my ambassadorship with that same commitment to it, we have as a nation had such, you know, this four year span that has been so difficult. and we continue to struggle with each other. i feel like reading and sharing the deep things that we can find in a book, the light moments we can find in the knowledge. that's the way that we can stay connected with one another. yeah. meg medina is ambassador to 74 million children in this country under the age of 18. the national ambassador for young people's literature. thanks for the time with booktv. thanks so much.

most of in our lives have had one of those. i'll never forget where i was or what i was doing when. i heard the news moments for some us, vague memories of our parents glued to the