Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr, author and illustrator of Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie War (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers), talk about creating a nexus of goodwill and curiosity that draws into conversation people from all over the place.
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About the book: Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie War by Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr. Published by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers.
Two best friends are pushed to the breaking point when a class election gets out of hand! Rivalry and ridiculousness abound in this delicious, zanily-illustrated adventure for readers who love Wimpy Kid and Dog Man.
It's the start of a new school year at Honeycutt Elementary and that means one thing: student council elections! Best friends, Ben and Janet are determined not to let mean girl Amy Lou Bonnerman win for the fourth year in a row, but when they both decide to run against her, they become rivals!
At first, it's all funny posters, free candy, and pie-in-the-sky ideas for how to make the school a better place. But before long, the campaign turns sour--with mean rumors, dirty tricks, hurt feelings, and even sabotage! Ben and Janet's legendary friendship is put to the test. To make things right, they must expose a conspiracy, swallow hard truths, and remember what's most important--their friendship.
From the husband-and-wife, author-and-illustrator duo that brought you Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom comes a tale about keeping your friends close--even when they start to look like enemies.
*NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and may contain errors. I have done my best to clean up as much as I can. This process will improve naturally and with time. Thank you for understanding.
INTRO
Matthew: Welcome back to the Children’s Book Podcast, where we dive deep into the world of creativity, storytelling, and the magic behind the art of creating books for children.
I’m your host, Matthew Winner. Teacher. Librarian. Writer. Fan of kids.
Today, we have the privilege of welcoming back to the show two incredibly talented and dynamic creators (and, kind of, neighbors of mine) whose work is endlessly joyful and resonant. Joining us are Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr, the brilliant duo behind many beloved books, including The Real McCoys, Everywhere, Wonder, and The Cookie Chronicles series. In this episode, we’ll be discussing Cookie Chronicles Book #6, Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie War, as well as their impactful Busload of Books campaign.
Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie War is a delightful and thought-provoking story that explores themes of friendship, competition, and the sweet complexities of life. Two best friends are pushed to the breaking point when a class election gets out of hand! Rivalry and ridiculousness abound in this delicious, zanily-illustrated adventure for readers who love Wimpy Kid and Dog Man.
Meanwhile, the Busload of Books campaign is an inspiring initiative by Matthew and Robbi to bring books and literacy resources directly to Title I schools and communities in need, spreading the love of reading far and wide.
In this episode, we’ll dive into the creative process behind the Cookie Chronicles series, learn more about the Busload of Books campaign, and explore how Matthew and Robbi’s collaborative efforts continue to make a difference in the world of children’s literature.
So, without further ado, let’s welcome Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr to the show!
INTERVIEW
Matthew S: My name is Matthew Swanson. I am mostly an author of children's books these days, picture books, and middle grade novels. I'm working right now on the Cookie Chronicle series, uh, also created the Real McCoy series, and Everywhere Wonder, Sunrise Summer as picture books.
Um, all of that work is done with my lovely co conspirator, Robbi Behr. But before I pass it off to you, I want to say, I am also. a, uh, seasonal, uh, commercial salmon fisherman, uh, a distinction for which I blame you. So please continue with your introduction and try to defend making me wear rubber pants and thrash about in the Bering Sea five weeks every year.
Robbi: I have no defense. But I will introduce myself. I'm Robbi Behr. I am, uh, an illustrator. I really only illustrate Matthew's writing. He keeps me very busy. It's not
Matthew S: a rule that I set.
Robbi: I feel like it's a trade off. I make you do commercial salmon fishing. Yeah. And you get me to illustrate all of your books. I don't have time for anything else.
Matthew S: This is, this is hopeless loyalty? Is that what you are claiming? Uh, all right. So far, I don't know that other writers have come clamoring for your services. Although maybe, maybe I should not tempt fate. Uh, in any case, we have worked together on all the books that we've made. Yes. Yes. Indeed. I thought it was because we liked doing it together.
Robbi: We do. All right. I'm
Matthew: sure, I'm sure there's a little bit of that at least. I don't know. You know, your, your picture book about salmon fishing is, is beautiful as well. I think that was, Maybe, uh, maybe that was in, like you had finished it, but it hadn't come out yet when we last talked. I thought that was a beautiful picture.
That's right. Thank you
Matthew S: very much. It's the only sort of autobiographical work we've ever done. It's the story of our daughter, Alden, who's now 16, but started fishing with the adult fishing crew when she was about nine years old. Yeah. So it was the story of her first summer leaving the sort of kid life up on the Tundra and coming to work.
Robbi: Some responsibilities and. You know, do some hard work.
Matthew S: And it was, it was our chance to capture a place we love that people have so many questions about because we spend a month up there every summer and we can never quite entirely describe especially what it looks like. So I had to twist Robbi's arm.
She's been fishing since she was 18 months old every summer, so she doesn't think it's interesting. And I had to say, no, it really is interesting.
Matthew: It is. It's probably interesting because it's not what we all do. Right. The same way that we're interested in what everybody else does that we don't do.
Robbi: Yes.
Matthew: But you know this.
Robbi: I suppose. I, um.
Matthew: Very grudgingly. We just don't all have partners to make us do books about it. That's right.
Robbi: We did not mention that we're married. Oh. We, yes. Yes. We are married. We have, uh. We also have four children. Yes. Um, who also come up. fishing. That's right. So, um, that's, yeah, that's a, I think that's the nutshell.
We own very large nutshell.
Matthew S: We own a 23-foot school bus.
Robbi: Oh yeah. We'll
Matthew S: talk about that. We'll talk about
Matthew: that.
Matthew S: Yeah.
Matthew: Your, your newest Cookie Chronicles is book number six. It's six. Yes. What number books together does that bring us up to? I know you both have made books that you've like, uh, published yourself as well as books that are more traditionally published.
Do you, do you have a count on around where we are? It's gotta be at least over 20, right?
Matthew S: In terms of the self published books, we self publish about 60 books together over a decade of running two small presses. And those were, you
Robbi: know, hand, like, hand bound, like we made them on our, our, Kids Dining Room Table, right?
It was a labor
Matthew S: of much love. We love those works. But in terms of commercial books, we have 10 illustrated middle grade novels, and we have 3 picture books, and then a couple of other books. We did a book for adult with Chronicles, and we did The Superhero Squad Flips Out! With, uh, with Little Brown. That was our first, that was our big break, Matthew.
It's a book about, uh, Wolverine and Spider Man.
Robbi: It's the Superhero Squad, which is the like little kid version. I know the
Matthew: Superhero Squad. Yeah, it's
Robbi: the little kid version of the Marvel. I don't think I
Matthew: realized that you all did one of those. Yes. We did. That's awesome. It's a
Robbi: rarity.
Matthew: Our names are printed
Matthew S: in four point fonts on the back.
So tiny,
Robbi: you would not even know. Got it.
Matthew S: They tried not to admit that we had anything to do with it on the creative stamp, but, but it really was, it's how we made our break into, uh, publishing. We met our editor, Erin Stein, who was at Little Brown then, and then we followed her to Macmillan and she published the, the Real McCoys and our three picture books.
And it was doing that project and really putting our all into this book about benevolent superheroes. Um,
Robbi: all superheroes are benevolent. No, no,
Matthew S: even like benevolent bad guys. Like the only bad thing that Dr. Doom did in that book is like, try to ruin someone's birthday party. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, I'm sure the kid felt bad, but in any case, uh, it was really doing that project and like putting it, giving it our all, I think that led to our opportunity to start making books with our own characters and such.
So it was a big part of our story.
Matthew: That's terrific. Well, like I said, you're on book six of Cookie Chronicles. Why don't you, for those readers, writers, listeners, anyone who, who's here with us, introduce the series. And then I'd love to, to, to hear a little bit more deeply about this latest installment, the cookie war.
Okay.
Matthew S: So the cookie Chronicles is what's your like
Matthew: book talk? I guess you, yeah, you book talk.
Matthew S: I don't know. I don't know. Not very well. No,
Robbi: we should do it better than we do at this point. Hold on.
Matthew S: I'll try. It's a series. It's actually a series about Robbi and me, but thinly veiled. It's about Ben Yokoyama, who is a very literal minded third grader in the beginning of the series.
He's in fourth grade now, as we've moved into book six. Um, who, in every book he has a problem, and then he gets a fortune cookie fortune that actually contains the wisdom he needs to solve the problem. But because Ben is, you know, hopelessly literal minded and easily confused. He misunderstands what the fortune is trying to tell him, gets even into more trouble, and has to partner with his best friend Janet to figure out what the fortune actually means and get himself out of trouble.
So other
Robbi: characters in the book usually have their own take on whatever this fortune is.
Matthew S: So that, that's the, the hook for the series, I suppose. Uh, you know, in book one, it's, uh, live each day as if it were your last. Ben thinks it's his last day, so it's sort of a, Make your bucket list carpe diem kind of book.
Book three is practice makes perfect, so Ben thinks he has to do everything perfectly and stops doing the things that he loves when he finds out he can't do them perfectly. And in book six, The Cookie War, there's actually a couple of fortunes. So the, the fortune that kicks everything off is, Actions speak louder than words.
In Ben's school, there's an awful classmate named Amy Lou Bonnerman, who has been the class council representative three years running, she makes all sorts of hollow promises, she hands out lollipops to get people to vote for her, she is very mean. Most
Robbi: outrageously, she chooses themes for the
Matthew S: school carnival
Robbi: that are terrible.
That are not as fun as Ben would like them to be.
Matthew S: No, Ben and his best friend Janet, we should really talk about Janet. We should talk about Janet. Because Janet is very practical, she is very, uh, fiery and spicy and stubborn. She is in fact modeled after my friend Robbi Behr, which is why I like her so much and why I understand.
Robbi: It's why I like her so much. It's why. Friend
Matthew S: and wife. It's why I like her. It's why sparks often fly between Ben and Janet, because I, poor, confused, hapless, literal minded Matthew Swanson, kind, a product of the Midwest, uh, have, you know, married abrasive salmon fishing Robbi Behr, so we have a lot of material to work with.
But in this book, Ben and Janet both decide to go up against Amy Lou Bonerman.
Robbi: Well, they're both outraged. They just don't want, they don't want her to win. Not because they're being spiteful to her, but because they think that they can do better. Right. Right. They both choose to run, not realizing that the other one is going to run.
But then once they're into it, they kind of really, they feel like that they can do a better job.
Matthew S: Yes. And, and what, when things really go off the rails, is they each get, uh, taken under the wing of an older student who fancies themselves a political mastermind.
Robbi: A bit more jaded approach.
Matthew S: They both, they both get campaign managers who drag them into mud slinging, backstabbing, name calling ways And things quickly go off the rails.
Ben and Janet's friendship is compromised by bad behavior influenced by these older students. So things get pretty bleak, Matthew. We wonder if their friendship is going to survive.
Matthew: Won't give any spoilers.
Robbi: We won't give any spoilers.
AD BREAK
Matthew: I would love actually to ask you a, uh, a craft question of sorts that is coming up as you're describing this.
Do with this series in particular, with Cookie Chronicles in particular, do, do you find that you both ideate. the story, the beats together. Um, are you sort of off separate doing it? And then I want to ask you a question about your characters and knowing them, but first that these stories, because Robbi here, as we're talking about it, you're very fluid coming in and out of it.
I know that the book is done though. So you, you, you, you also have, have, have. influence the storytelling a great deal just through your art alone. But what is, what is the, the, the ideation, the, the, the crafting of the stories, at least in this series, how has that looked between the both of you?
Robbi: Yeah.Matthew always writes a full manuscript first and I'm the first reader. So I will give some notes usually about things that are not feeling right or things that need a little bit more attention, I think. So I'm kind of like a first editor. Um, and usually those critiques are pretty broad there. I don't like say, Oh, we should like, I don't like get into the weeds with the stuff.
Matthew S: However, your feedback is incredibly important and really spot on. Because Robbi and I spent a year working, a year, a decade working together to make this body of work, we just have been speaking each other's language for a long time. She has many strong opinions about the story, about the language, and I have many strong opinions about the, the art.
And she really is the editor, and was the editor for a decade, and I was the art director for a decade, so.
Robbi: You're talking about our self publishing.
Matthew S: Our self publishing stuff. And so now that we have professionals to take on those roles, we both have stepped back a bit, but we are, are each other's first line of defense and support here in house.
So I think. You often shape the stories quite a bit.
Robbi: Interestingly enough, Matthew will write a story and have no idea what it's about. Ah, that's true. And so I will read it and I'll be like, No kidding. Well, it seems that you're trying to talk about this issue. Yeah, he's like, he'll write about plot and like things happening, but like the understanding what the deeper theme is.
often escapes him until I say, I think that this is what you're trying to write about. Maybe, like,
Matthew S: On the spectrum of strategic to intuitive writers, I'm very much on the intuitive end. I really, it's true. I'm charging blind through the night. And then at the end, I sort of look back and see what I've made.
So Robbi gives me really important feedback. And then I've got to just give a real, um, thanks and hats off, Katherine Harrison, our editor at Knopf, because she is the Matthew Whisperer. She asks the right questions to really help me unlock. That next layer of what the book is about. She will be able to put her finger on the thing that I'm trying to say and then bring it along.
The final drafts of my books are always so much better than the first draft and wouldn't be without the editor. I always want to have the editor's name on the front of the book. I know. I agree. That should be just a rule. There's no way of thinking about these books being created by the two of us without Catherine.
Yeah. Who we lose
Matthew: that as I don't mean to interrupt your train of thought. No, not at all. I'm you're you're hitting on something a lot that the the art director and the editor names are pretty small or hidden. Yeah. In some cases. And I think that we, the public, we just don't know. There's no, why would I know?
It's only ever this name on the cover of whatever. Why would I ever know that? Other than being in this writing space. So I hear that first drafts and now I have the experience of it, but first drafts are awful. You just have to get through it though. And then have, I have, I have an experience similar to you of in writing myself, of pushing through it, getting it done.
I can really powerhouse and get to the end and then often need someone else to help me reflect back on what I've done. Ask me the why or tell me what they're noticing for me to go, oh, I wasn't at all trying to say that, or, that is interesting. I'd like to polish that more. Or, oops, that's not at all what I'm trying to say.
I need to steer away from that. I wanna ask you both. Another writing thing though, because I'm, it's occurring to me that because these characters are, are, are, are I guess proxies, I suppose for you both. IW. Maybe any of us writers can't help but write ourselves into stories, but I've for years now worked on a project where I've co authored a series with a friend.
And I wonder if similarly happening to you, when we write, there's definitely a character in that book that is that is her. It's definitely a character that is me. Yeah. And we've had this experience over the couple of years of working on different books where she'll go, I can't quite get what this character's trying to say, right?
How would you say it? Or something similar to that. Almost, this doesn't feel true to this character. What would you do? Or maybe vice versa. I feel like I'm writing this way.
Is that really who I am? It's
Matthew S: like,
Matthew: think what I'm trying to say. Do you find, it doesn't need to be this, but do you find that in writing Cookie Chronicles that, that Janet and Ben have I don't know. Helped you understand yourselves better or the way that your partner sees you better? Is
Robbi: it fair to say that?
I think, well, I think what's interesting is that we did not see this in the first, probably, the first Cookie Chronicles. Um, we didn't identify ourselves as being that person. But then, as it went on, We're like, oh, this is obviously a book about how we relate to each other. Like,
Matthew S: it's kind of like season one of a sitcom where you don't know that Janet is going to become one of the principal characters.
She's a little bit adjunct. It's really more about his family in the first book, but then we're like, oh, there's some gold here. The real dynamic of this book is these two characters. And I think it, I came to understand that there's so much energy there because it's the dynamic that fuels our work, that fuels our marriage, that fuels All aspects of our partnership, and it's a fun exchange of humor and different personalities wrestling to try to get through a day or solve problems together that we find really appealing.
Robbi: Also, it's super fun to push, like, there are ways in which Janet is just, like, me times a thousand, right, and Ben is Matthew times a thousand, so it's, it's kind of fun to push, like, push the limits of what, uh, but like your regular person would be like, and to just like, so amplify the ridiculousness of the extremities, right?
Matthew S: So to Matthew's question though, in the differences, you're talking about working with a fellow writer, right? And I am, the person who's in charge of the language, and Robbi's in charge, not of the illustrations, but the visual language, right? So I tell these characters stories through the things that they say, and Robbi tells their stories through their facial expressions and the metaphors that she chooses to illustrate.
So one thing about this, uh, series is that because Ben is so puzzled by figurative language, I use a lot of figurative language, and I try to use really fun and unexpected metaphors to help kids understand how figurative language works. It's not didactic, but that is the sort of my justification for, for using it.
And so Robbi, how do you, yeah,
Robbi: well, it's much more fun to illustrate. a metaphor than it is to illustrate a kid sitting in a desk. So I, you know, I love the way that Matthew writes. It leaves a lot of space for me to get really creative with the illustrations. And to like, to be a lot more expressive, I can, there's a lot of humor in the illustrations that, um, sometimes isn't, that I'm not drawing like directly parallel from the writing.
Um, and there's a lot of emotion. Matthew's not like a super emotional writer. But
Matthew S: like,
Robbi: but yeah, there are moments in the illustrations where I can really like hone in on the heart side of things.
Matthew: And you're also not writing a book or the way that you two make books together. Again, I'm trying to think of like, for listeners that haven't seen these books, that don't know your other books, you write heavily, heavily illustrated novels and ones that to a degree almost feel like picture books in the way that that art is telling the story hand in hand with the words. The art's deliberate. It's not just there. Well, I think I would have been a reader that really needed some of those spot illustrations before to help break up all of that text on the page.
Um, and this is doing something that is not that. It's more rounding out the story. It's telling the other half of the story, not necessarily the other half. It's not as if Matthew, you're leaving out things. from your manuscript that we can only see in the illustration, but to a degree. But not by design.
Matthew S: Right. It's just that I write. There you go. I'm not interested in description. I'm not interested in.
Robbi: He will never, he will never, you'll never find a passage that's like the curtains, the light blue curtains float in the breeze. And like, he'll never say that. And so I get to make up whatever anything looks like, you know, he'll say they walked into a room and then did this, and I get to decide what the room looks like, I get to decide sort of how they responded.
And
Matthew S: just, I'll just put a little sort of plug out there, because this wasn't by design, we get no credit for trying to do this, but we've heard from a lot of librarians, teachers, parents, etc, that their so called reluctant readers are drawn to our books because Oh, sure. They get the opportunity to read a fat book with lots of words that has also lots of visual guardrails that allows them to feel confident going through a story without getting lost in a sea of type.
And so, to us, it's really exciting when a kid comes up to us so full of pride because they've gotten, you know, deep into our fat book. Look at this
Matthew: book I read. Yeah.
Matthew S: Yeah.
Matthew: I was talking to, do you know Bookie Vivat? Have you met Bookie yet? Sure. Yeah. Bookie's a lovely person that I feel having very recently spoken to her.
I think a lot of my conversation with her is just coming out here. Having this conversation with you is, is bringing back a lot of those same thoughts that I had with her, and I'm realizing I'm making a connection between you two, that I just hadn't made before, of just, in her case, she puts in all this art because it's what she loves, and it's how she tells stories, and it's the way her stories express themselves, she's a singular person doing both halves, whereas you both are working in tandem, but it's accomplishing the same thing, that it's not Oh, I'm just adding art so that reluctant readers can help.
That ends up being a wonderful byproduct that, as you're saying, I mean, it was, it was the same effect that I, so many of us in the library noticed, witnessed when the invention of Hugo Cabret was released. And here was this, like, here's a book that was, by the, by the, by the width of it, by the way it stood on the shelf, it was competing with Harry Potter, which was also massive at the time.
But to leaf through that book, you realized, Oh, this, I could have the same. I get so many kids that would check out Harry Potter because they wanted to have a big book, but then they wouldn't read it. That's okay. I want you to have the pride of, You can check out anything you want in the library, but to have a book that they could check out, get through it, was a really beautiful thing.
And your series, series, multiple series do that. I said the same thing to you with Real McCoys, but, but you have that with Cookie Chronicles as well. Robbi, it's a beautiful craft that you've honed to be able to I'm telling you, you, to take his manuscript and to know, to know how to, I'm going to talk as a writer because I don't know how to do what you're doing, but to know how to break up that text to go, okay, here I'm going to do, I can picture we're going to have like a full bleed illustration, uh, beneath the text, but here we're going to have a couple of spots that are going to highlight a couple of different moments, or here's one moment I want to highlight, or here's what I, you, you, you're helping us, the readers also to notice, to notice the thing you just read.
It's kind of a big deal. Let's look at it in the art as well. And the other stuff, it's okay. Let's, let's keep going for sake of getting through the story, but you really help us with pace with which we read the stories. And that, that's a huge task that you accomplish, Robbi, and not one that a lot of people get in books.
You, you do that and you do it really, really well.
Robbi: Man, you are saying all the right things. I wish the readers
Matthew S: could see. Robbi is glowing like one of those bulbs that you put in the basement to make plants happy. But Robbi,
Matthew: that's why I ask if you come up with the stories together. It's because that's the part of my brain that's going that's, that's puzzling over the art in front of me, the art of the book itself, the, the book as a piece of art going, how does this work?
That's why I'm saying, do you make it together? Because that's what I'm trying to express there is you, you really are showing your craft by, by what you, by what comes out in these books.
Robbi: Well, it's so interesting because I think that craft comes from, um, I actually. I feel it's a deficiency that I am not very good at coming up with drawings, just whole cloth, like out of nowhere.
I, I respond, I like responding. And I was first a reader. Like I was an English major. I loved, I love reading and like, it just kind of happened that Matthew's writing leaves so much space for me to, to play. Um, so he, he gives me something to play off of, and then I get to. but then also leaves me plenty of room to express my own take on things.
Um, so it's really kind of, I think it's very specific to the way that Matthew writes.
Matthew S: Yeah.
Robbi: And it allows me to, to really, um, bloom in a way, I think that I, that if I were strictly doing, um, traditional illustration, I would feel limited by it.
Matthew: Yeah, I can understand that. I want to jump off of our conversation about Cookie Chronicles to talk about the busload of books and to talk about what it was for the people that there will be people listening that haven't heard of it.
For those of us that don't. that we're following you. I can't wait to really hear about it from you. But, um, why don't we start, Matthew, just by coming back to you having this bus. Can I just ask?
Matthew S: Sure. Yes. It is a 23 foot Thomas school bus with a Freightliner chassis and a Caterpillar engine. That's about all I can tell you about the bus.
He
Robbi: doesn't know anything else about the mechanics of the bus.
Matthew S: Um, so Rob, so we live in the town of Chestertown, Maryland, where Robbi grew up. It's a beautiful little colonial town with brick sidewalks. It's very nice seeming. And it is a nice town.
Robbi: But
Matthew S: three blocks from where we live, in the historic district, is Garnett Elementary School, and it's a Title I school.
And 88 percent of the students at that school are eligible for free or reduced lunch, which is a really good indicator of students coming from challenging economic situations. So they come to school with lots of problems that make teaching them more challenging, um, the budgets for the schools are limited, the classrooms are pretty crowded.
It's It is not a culture where kids have hundreds of books in the home, or they read and have access to reading to the extent that people in more fluid environments are accustomed to, so I guess what we experienced, because our kids go to this school, Robbi went to this school, is recognizing the stark difference between the opportunities at Garnett Elementary and the opportunities at the private or really well resourced public schools where we get invited to come be authors and do author visits.
We saw the incredible benefit of author visits. The way kids light up, the way they get excited about reading. And we saw that the kids at our own kids school were never going to have that opportunity, because there's never going to be that kind of budget.
Robbi: There's just, it's not just that there's not going to be that kind of budget.
They have priorities that are much more urgent and pressing, sort of like more immediate fires to put out, right? So spending the money to get an author, uh, an illustrator to come in, when you have that versus, you know Your teachers
Matthew S: are paying for supplies out of their own pocket. So it just doesn't, it doesn't make sense
Matthew: being able to, to, to buy books for the library.
Something as simple as that is something that as a title one teacher, I, I can say we, we, we look at regularly often also when we talk about budgets within the school, like this is nothing new for you to hear, but I, for other people listening, we are often looking at, can we use that budget to hire somebody else?
So that we can have. smaller groups to support with reading instruction so that we can do reading recovery so that we can support in ways that we are, we're working to try to close that gap and help catch some of these kids up.
Matthew S: So something we saw that we could do was donate our time, do a pre author visit to Garnett Elementary.
We didn't just want to talk about books the kids wouldn't get to read, so we did a community fundraiser and raised money to buy a hardcover book for every student and teacher in the school. And we had this fabulous day. We saw kids who had never been readers before pick up the books, be excited about reading them.
Robbi: Because we know the kids in this community, we know, you know, we've been in the school, and just hearing the level of excitement the kids had about reading and about having their own book, and that it was a hardcover book was a really big deal to them. Um, they're used to getting, um, books given to them, um, but they're usually used books.
They're a little tattered and worn and they know the difference. And they might
Matthew S: not be the books they're in. They might be old books. They might. So anyway, fast, fast forward. Yeah. Robbi and I spent about five years developing a plan to take what we did that day at Garnett and try to apply it to a bigger stage.
There are 47,000 Title I schools in this country.
Robbi: Yeah. Well, after, after we did that, day at Garnett. We were like, this was fantastic. We, we got to figure out how we can find more schools that could use this. And hilariously, we're surrounded by them. They're everywhere. Um, and we were like, well, if this is a problem here.
It's a problem everywhere, and when you start to look at it, yes, Matthew's out there. And
Matthew S: it's a problem that people don't know. People, uh, not a lot of people know, but the people who should know, uh, don't know that this is a, a nationwide problem. 51 percent of our nation's students, uh, come from low income backgrounds.
Um, the, the ratio of Our nation's public schools. Sorry, excuse me. The public schools.
Matthew: The
Matthew S: ratio of children to books in this country's low income neighborhoods is 300 to 1. So, you know, the ratio in other neighborhoods is probably 1 to 300. And so there's, and the, the ways to which literacy and reading are tied to outcomes in terms of your life prospects are so compelling, so well studied and understood.
So anyway, we wanted to do what we could. to impact communities across the country, but also to provide some awareness as we traveled. So we said, and we dreamed this up over a long period of time, let's get a vehicle, let's put the kids in the vehicle, let's visit one Title I school in every state, give books to all the students and teachers in the school, We'll call it the busload of bookstore.
We'll do as much social media as we can about it. And it'll be a year of awareness building and outreach and books and fun for our family, for lots of kids. So that, that was the germ of the idea. Took us about three years of planning to raise the funds. figure out the logistics, build the partnerships. We partnered with FirstBook, which is a literacy organization in DC.
They handle all the logistics. We partnered with Build A Bear Foundation, which provided another 125,000 free books. We gave away 25,000 books that we raised money for. They gave away another 125 to educators across the country, Title I educators.
Robbi: Through the, through FirstBook.
Matthew S: And, and they, they gave away 25,000.
reading buddies. So full sized, uh, Build A Bear, that we got to give to all of the kids that we met on the tour. 25,000 kids at the end of the year. So it was, you know, a lot of these kids, first time they'd ever owned a hardcover book, first time they'd ever
Robbi: owned a stuffed animal.
Matthew S: So, and in any case, it was an adventure many years in the dreaming, many years in the planning.
And then one frantic, fabulous year in the execution. Best year of our lives.
Robbi: It was amazing. We really, you know, we really met the best of people. Um, you work in a Title I school, so, you know, these are teachers who are against. The toughest odds, they're, they're doing it because they love these kids.
They're doing it because somebody has to be there for these kids. And, um, yeah.
Matthew S: Kids who are challenged in so many ways. Kids who come to school hungry. Kids who come to school tired because they are the primary caregiver for their little siblings while their mom works three jobs.
Matthew: We speak regularly.
We're about to have, uh, teachers go back to school. As of when we're recording this. And we will. At some point in our first week back as, as the staff is back, we'll talk about, we'll be reminded of the hierarchy of needs that first we need to be fed, we need shelter, we need love. All of these things before teaching and you really feel that come out when you work at a Title I school, but also, I love that your kids came with you.
Of course they did, but I love that your kids came with you. And they got to see that this school that they were going to, Jenny Sue Kostecki Shaw wrote a, wrote a wonderful picture book that I always say the name of when referring to this concept, but that everywhere around the country, it's all same, same, but different.
They got to see that school that they went to their same kinds of kids with the same kinds of backgrounds and the same kinds of needs and wants and joys and, and, and relationships, um, everywhere you go. And that, uh, we all love. The connection to reading, and to feeling loved, and to feeling seen, feeling important, you showing up, um, also communicated, I'm sure there were a million schools you wanted to go to as well, but to those you were able to go to, communicated, we value you, we're showing up because we value you, um, because just by existing, we're affirming your inherent value of just being here.
Matthew S: Okay. So this was the great insight for us, Matthew, and it makes sense that you already being in this environment every day, but
Matthew: you got to see that
Matthew S: we thought we were on a mission to bring books and programming, but the, the refrain that we would hear after every school visit was not, thanks for the books.
It was thank you for loving our kids. Yes. Thank you for making them feel seen. Right. It was about the recognition that these, and I'm putting this in quotes for the people listening at home, that the famous authors. Came in their colorful bus. We are not famous authors, but to them, we were famous people coming to their school and choosing
Robbi: their school to come to because for other schools that could have paid us or whatever, you know, like, um, yeah, and, and it wasn't just the kids.
It was the teachers and the communities, the families. Um, the, we went to a lot of places where Uh, these communities feel left behind and not cared about, you know, by the greater, by the greater world. So, um, just being able to, I mean, we weren't doing any, we were, we weren't doing anything special. We were showing up.
Right. We were just
Matthew: But, but you were showing up. Showing up, but showing up.
Robbi: That was the,
Matthew: the big piece. Yeah. And I would tell you, and I think many. Educators would tell you that that's, that's what Title I schools are. They are communities. That's what that's, we know that that's, that's how we do it. We do it together.
Matthew S: Let me tell you about our bus. Most school buses are 36 feet long.
Robbi would not allow us to acquire that because she didn't want us, wisely, to have to drive it or park it. Robbi is more forward looking than I am. So we got a 23 foot school bus, which did not allow room for A, a bedroom for our children, or B, a bathroom. So we did not have either of those things. We solved the children bedroom problem by Yeah,
Robbi: we put a pop up tent on the roof of the bus.
So that was that. Their, their bedroom was quite fancy. So
Matthew S: the children climbed to the emergency exit onto the roof. It's so cool. All four of them, including our 15 year old at the time daughter, slept on a single queen size mattress. So if there's a hero of the tour. Yes,
Robbi: it's, it's our daughter. It
Matthew S: is Alden.
Robbi: Yeah.
Matthew S: And then we got a, we, we, we got around the bathroom problem by just holding it for a year. It was, uh, no, we, we used, we used. 917 bathrooms, I counted them, because why not, and the bathrooms of America, I mean, you, you have gas stations, They're
Robbi: everywhere. You have
Matthew S: campgrounds, yes, I mean You can
Robbi: find free bathrooms everywhere, and I gotta say,
Matthew S: Yes.
Robbi: Across the board, I would say that the bathrooms of America get a B
Matthew S: Solid B Yeah. Yeah, it's not bad. The showers, the showers of America, however The showers No.
Robbi: Not as much. No. Please. Maybe D minus even. Oh,
Matthew S: bummer. In any case, yes, we can speak to these things. Maybe we can have a special podcast just about our nation's bathrooms another time.
Matthew: Another time. Um, talk to me before we wrap about how, how you as parents witnessed your kids throughout this time. And from what you've heard from them since. ending your tour, what their reflection or reaction was like to all, to all of it. Take whichever order you want, but I, I know that, that we were always watching.
My parents are always watching and feeling experiences through their eyes. So I'd love to hear how that was for them.
Robbi: So while we were traveling, our daughter was 15. Then we have three boys, 13, 11. Right. Okay.
Matthew S: I mean, they all had a birthday on the road, but that's how they
Robbi: started. So, so, um, so it was actually really fun to see such a range of responses.
So our, our five year old went to kindergarten. He went to kindergarten for the day in every school that we visited. So he would go in a little bit shy and awkward, and then he'd come out like the mayor of the classroom. So he just had, I mean, he made friends everywhere. He had such wonderful interactions with these wonderful teachers that he got to.
Matthew S: These teachers still follow us on Instagram. They fell in love with him and they are, they are out there. That's so
Matthew: sweet.
Matthew S: Um,
Robbi: and then our daughter, um, sort of, it's interesting because she's old enough to like, understand the value of the experience while often not. enjoying the day to day of the experience.
Um, but, uh, I, I called this the awesome women tour because we met so many incredible, smart, talented, um, thoughtful, engaged women, um, who were just such an incredible example for her. So that made me really happy. Um, and the boys, it's interesting, the two middle boys, I think we're at an age where They sort of are just like, you know, people would ask them, uh, what did you think when your parents said that you were going to be living on a bus?
And they were like, what do you mean? What do I think? Like, I figured that's what we were doing next. Like they don't, they don't have any interest in processing or thinking deeply about it. They were like, I guess this is what we're doing. They've
Matthew S: grown up spending every summer living off grid in a rustic.
Cabin in Alaska. We were talking about this trip basically their entire lives. Okay, because we've been planning it for so long. They had a sense of learned helplessness about it. It was nowhere to point it. And so, and so they put up with it. But I think. First of all, the pandemic kind of prepared us for living as a little pod.
We all had spent the previous two years really closely together. And that kind of continued in a way. I think our kids got a little bit of a delayed adolescence, the older one, because they were out of this intense social environment. Our daughter missed her ninth grade year of high school. And she had some definite sense that she was missing key milestones, but at other times she would say, I'm so glad that I'm not there stuck in that drama.
So it's a little, yeah. So I think there's going to be a moment in each of their lives where they are sort of struck walking down the street one day and say, what did my parents make me do? And either deeply resent us, or feel a sense of gratitude, or maybe a mingling of both, because it's in there, it's in their system somehow.
Robbi: I'm told though, they were really good. They, um, they did, they could have made this the most miserable trip ever. They really could have made it miserable. And they rolled with the punches, they, you know, In, in, was it North Dakota? We were in a campground that didn't have any electricity. Like they had shut down the campground and the guy was just like, sure, go ahead, just stay there.
It's okay. And so we pull up, we have, there's no facilities, it's 20 degrees out and they just bundle up in their sleeping bag, and our bus
Matthew S: heater was
Robbi: broken, and they, They just did it. And I mean, they were champs. They really were champs. And I think,
Matthew S: and gosh, they added so much to the tour, not just for us, but for the kids in the schools they were visiting.
I think that's another thing that makes it different from a regular author visit is that the whole family was there.
Matthew: Um,
Matthew S: Alden and Kato would come into the school and lead origami demonstrations or do Q and A's. So they didn't just feel like it was us coming and embracing their community, but they got to meet our kids.
They got to sort of get a glimpse into our strange. They got to
Robbi: meet our dogs. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Matthew: It wasn't like an author visit. It was like an author family visit in that way that you included all all of them. And they got to not just have a we're going to follow mom and dad to work. But they were they were part of it.
That there's meaning there.
Matthew S: And just the kids in the individual schools had a very intense consciousness that they were a part of a series of events that lasted a whole year. So they didn't just think of an author visit, they felt of themselves as a stop on the tour. So at the schools, there would be a bulletin board that had our route all mapped out.
And as we went along, the teachers would track our progress. So they would have a sense of, and Matthew, one of the things that we do for every school visit, And I, I encourage other authors to consider this because we think it makes such a difference. It's about a month ahead of time we send a video of ourselves acting kind of ridiculous and talking about the books that we're going to present.
Acting
Robbi: ridiculous? Ridiculous. We're speaking to children. The
Matthew S: point is.
Robbi: One does. The point is
Matthew S: we want them to know that we are not Fussy detached people at a podium. We are regular people who are going to come and Give them high fives and bring our dogs and act silly with them And the the thing that happens every single time we walk into the school and the kids say It's them.
Matthew: Oh, I saw you on TV. I saw you on TV. That's cool. They recognize you. There's this, there's this sense. So it's an
Robbi: immediate, we've already broken the ice before we've gotten there. So there's already, they're already excited to see us and they feel like they know us. Um, because they've seen us sort of talk, talking to them.
Um, and they, you know. On the bus tour, we would make these videos from wherever we were on the road. So they would see the inside of the bus or they would see, Oh, we're in the Badlands or whatever. Um, when we do it, we do it for regular school visits too, where they see kind of, you know, in the background of the video, they see what the inside of our house looks like, that's always sort of exciting.
So there's something about it that really, um, breaks that first barrier of feeling like you're separate from us. We get, I mean, we'll show up at school and they'll be ready to give us hugs and high fives, like right off the bat. Which is really nice, which is
Matthew S: also makes it super fun. We love that. So anyway, it was a whole year of that We got to spend a whole year every single day Feeling like we were out there meeting incredible people interacting with kids who were so grateful that we were there Getting lots of hugs talking about books.
I mean
Robbi: it can't be anything better. There's nothing better We're
Matthew S: going to do this again. Yeah, I think in six years with just Jasper when he's in eighth grade. That's our,
Robbi: no, no, we're
Matthew S: warning him now.
Robbi: We
Matthew S: should get him to sign a contract now. Anyway, so there's more to come.
Matthew: Well, I was going to ask about what, having gone through the experience and now have, having been out of it for, for a couple of weeks, just what, what you thought about what the future would look like to incite other authors to try something similar, to try smaller things, to try whatever. I don't know. I think that there's really so many different ways that any of us could take inspiration from what you did and look to replicate in your work. in, in a way that makes sense in our spaces, in a way that, that we can replicate the feeling, we can replicate, replicate the, the intention behind it, the meaning behind it, the access behind it.
So, um, no, I'll look forward to, to, as you continue to process all of this, what, what the next, you know, iteration of this looks like?
Robbi: Well, one of the things that we did not mention was that as part of this, we actually partnered, one of our partners was Washington College. The, um, Department of Education heard about what we were doing and they were like, Oh my gosh, uh, This is a tremendous data set.
Uh, so we actually ran studies in many of the schools.
Matthew S: We collected 11,000 surveys from 5,000, 6,000 students and teachers in 26 schools. So a national sample, a huge data set.
Matthew: Wow.
Matthew S: Posing the question of how do author visits impact literacy attitudes among elementary school students. And the, the, the data is still under peer review.
There's a paper out for review, but what we can share is that across all elementary age groups in the reading, writing, and drawing categories, there were noticeable and meaningful bumps in engagement in all three categories among all age groups. So just, you know this, Matthew, you know that author visits move the dial there hasn't been data at this scale with this sort of national sample before that, that demonstrates it. So we're really excited for what the data might mean for people writing grants or people trying to persuade their superintendents to invest in literacy program or, or, or publishers. How can we get publishers to use this data in meaningful ways to get more authors into schools?
Um, I, we're really excited about how that might be the most enduring and important legacy of our tour.
Matthew: Terrific. Um, I can't wait to, to hear, to read those results and to both, I think in part, to have affirmed things that we already know, but also I'll, I've got 15 more years in my career. I look forward to.
In that time, that's plenty of time to see impact with this data set. What do we do now with it? We have data. What do we do with it? That'll be exciting to be able to be living that. Thank you both for joining me today. This is great. I loved connecting with you. I would love to ask you each. I wonder actually how your time on the road has affected this.
Normally when I ask this question, it's often just because we've been reflecting on the book that we've been talking about, but you've lived. You have, you're coming to this, with a different set of experiences. Uh, nevertheless, I'd love to ask you, um, I'll see a library full of children soon.
Matthew S: Well, if your parents tell you that you're going to be living in a bus for a year, quickly seek another family. Um, Unless they give you plenty of notice, uh, there is a legal framework for you to seek other options. Uh, you know, Matthew, I'm going to tell you, uh, I think right now, especially at this moment in, in time, uh, the, the fortune from the Cookie Chronicles book six is really important for me, for all of us, which is actions speak louder than words.
I feel like there's a lot of talking going on these days, a lot of expressing of opinion and complaint and argument, and not as much doing as there could be. And I think maybe the way in which Robbi and I implemented actions speak louder than words is going in the busload of bookstore. We found a way to do something that we loved, that we hope addressed a problem that we saw.
But there are so many ways that each of us can look out in the world and see things that we don't like that might be otherwise, and then take action to, to, to make changes for ourselves, for others. I think it's a pretty important lesson for me. Um, and maybe for your students as well.
Matthew: I appreciate that.
Robbi, is there a message that I can bring to them from you?
Robbi: Um, I mean, it's interesting that there's another fortune in this. In the cookie war, that is, um, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and I don't mean it in the way it, in, in the context of our trip, one of the things that we realized is that we actually have much more in common than we think, that every, like when you said, same, same, different, right, every place that we went, um, people wanted People wanted the best for their kids.
People wanted the best for each other. And sure, we had different approaches, but being able to, recognizing that if you go into a situation with negativity, you're going to get negativity out of it. If you go into it with generosity and an open heart, you'll get generosity back. And what was it that somebody said?
He said, the most generous thing.
Matthew S: No, the most selfish thing you
Robbi: can do is be generous. And it's true because you get back so much.
Matthew S: No, he said, the most selfish thing you can do is be generous. Cause generosity, cause generosity feels so good. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
He sort of laughed when he said it. Um, It's
Robbi: a hundred percent true.
Matthew S: It's a hundred
Robbi: percent true.
Matthew S: No, if there was a, if there was a tag tagline for the year is that generosity creates generosity everywhere we went. When we pulled into a gas station or a parking lot, people would come up and talk to us and a lot of the time it's the people who would not have come up to talk to us, either if we'd been driving an RV instead of a ridiculous school bus, or just driving a car.
We don't necessarily seek each other out in public spaces, but the bus created this nexus of goodwill curiosity that drew us into conversation with people from all over the place. And my greatest surprise for the whole year, Matthew, is that we never encountered Snark, we never, uh, had a troll, we never met anybody who thought it was a bad idea to give books to kids.
And
Robbi: It completely restored my faith in humanity, and the people of this country. It was a
Matthew S: gift. It was a gift to both of us. Um, to our family, I hope, as well. Um, really, just the best thing that ever, uh, that ever happened to us. And, uh, can't wait to do something like it again.
OUTRO
Matthew: Thank you to Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr for joining me on The Children’s Book Podcast.
You can pick up your own copy of Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie War (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers) wherever books are found. Consider supporting independent bookstores by shopping through Bookshop.org. You can also use my affiliate link by clicking on the book’s name in our show notes. I highly recommend checking out the audiobooks! Both are available through Libro.fm and you can support independent bookstores in the process!
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And on that note…
Be well. And read on.
End Of Episode
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