At six years old, Rebecca Elliott knew she wanted to write and illustrate books for kids. Today, she is doing exactly that with her hugely popular book series, Owl Diaries and Unicorn Diaries.

This coming January marks the 10th anniversary of the Owl Diaries’ debut, and in today’s episode Rebecca joins guest-host Billy DiMichele to talk about the milestone, the success of her hugely popular books, and the animated Apple TV+ series Eva the Owlet, which recently announced its return for a second season and the release of a very special holiday episode.

→ Resources

About Rebecca Elliot: Learn more about the author and her many books.

About The Owl Diaries: In Rebecca’s widely popular book series, Owl Diaries, readers follow the adventures of Eva Wingdale, a young owl who navigates school life, friendships, and various challenges in her town of Treetopolis.

About Eva the Owlet: The Apple TV+ animated series based on the bestselling Owl Diaries book series, produced by Scholastic Entertainment.

About the Unicorn Diaries: Rebecca’s other entertaining book series follows the adventures of Bo Tinseltail, a young unicorn with the power to grant wishes, as he navigates life in Sparklegrove Forest.

Owl Diaries: Rebecca Elliott on Reading Aloud and Eva the Owlet: Suzanne McCabe speaks with Rebecca Elliott in this 2023 Scholastic Reads episode about the runaway success of Owl Diaries, its Eva the Owlet adaptation, and her participation in World Read Aloud Day 2023.

Growing Readers with Branches and Acorns: In this 2019 episode, Suzanne McCabe interviews Katie Carella, Executive Editor at Scholastic, about the Branches and Acorn books and their impact. She also speaks with authors Troy Cummings (The Notebook of Doom), Rebecca Elliott (Owl Diaries), and Jonathan Fenske (Crabby) about creating these engaging books for kids.

→ Highlights

Rebecca Elliott, author, illustrator Owl Diaries

“[It’s] mind-blowing that [my books] could play the smallest role in a child’s journey into books, which to me is one of the most important of journeys, as it’s not only for entertainment, but it builds your worldview. It shapes your curiosity and knowledge.”

“There’s something about [owls] that’s so elusive and imaginary even though they’re clearly not. We can almost imagine that they have a secret world where they do wear berets and go to owl elementary school. And the fact that they are such great fodder to write about for children. They have big eyes, they can fly, they have super hearing, and super sight. They are incredible creatures and just so wonderful to wrap this story around.”

“I was always drawing. Always, always, from as far back as I can remember. That’s what I did with most of my time. And then I would make up stories about the drawings I [created].”

“I think kids are just as interested in stories now, as they ever were. And that’s never going away. It’s a human need to want stories.”

→ Special Thanks

Producers: Maxine Osa, Anne Sparkman, Allyson Barkan

Sound Engineer: S. Shin

Music Composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

R.L. Stine and actor Jayden Bartels talk all things Goosebumps with Billy DiMichele

For decades Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl has inspired and challenged readers to look for the good in an often-brutal world.

In today’s episode, critically acclaimed author, Alice Hoffman, joins host Suzanne McCabe to talk about her newest young adult novel When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary, which reimagines the life of Anne Frank before she wrote her famous diary. This gripping and lyrical novel, informed by extensive research and extraordinary support from the Anne Frank Center, captures the highs, lows, and unyielding hope of Anne and her family during the harrowing Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. Amid danger, deprivation, and countless indignities, a young Anne Frank discovers who she is and cultivates the writer within her.

In addition to When We Flew Away, Alice Hoffman has written over thirty works of fiction, including The Dovekeepers, The World That We Knew, and Practical Magic to name a few.

→ Resources

About Alice Hoffman: Learn more about the author and her many novels.

When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary: Check out Alice Hoffman’s latest novel about Anne Frank before her writing her famous diary.

Hope From the Holocaust: Suzanne McCabe speaks with authors Neal Shusterman and Sharon Cameron about their latest novels Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust, and Artifice.

The Tower of Life: Suzanne McCabe talks with author Chana Stiefel about The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs.

→ Highlights

Alice Hoffman, author, When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary

“A lot of other people and teenagers wrote diaries, but [Anne Frank’s], I think, kind of transcends just being her personal story. It feels much more universal. And I think also that she was a fantastic writer. So she was a great writer. And so I think her voice reminds us, because it's so innocent and so helpful that, I think it has to come in many ways for us, the Holocaust, because it's a story that she will not let us forget.”

“For one, I would hope that [readers of When We Flew Away] they would want to go read the diary. And for the other part, I hope that they would want to read about somebody who really had hope in the world, despite the cruelty, despite the war, who really felt that people were good at heart and that it was still possible to change the world.”

“I thought there might be lots of young readers who wouldn't know anything about [Anne Frank], wouldn't even know who she was. So, I think as you're reading [When We Flew Away], you're seeing that the world is closing in and you're having a sense that, there's not going to be a positive ending for the Jews in the Netherlands, but you really kind of want to find out what happens to [Anne]. How does she get through it? How does somebody manage to stumble, live that life is worth living.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound Engineer: S. Shin
Music Composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon
Rebecca Elliot with guest host Billy DiMichele

In honor of Hispanic/Latiné Heritage Month, we’ve invited Francisco X. Stork to talk about his latest young adult novel, One Last Chance to Live. Francisco, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico at the age of nine with his mother and adoptive father, is the author of several award-winning novels, including Marcelo in the Real World, Disappeared, and The Memory of Light. Francisco calls One Last Chance to Live “the most personal of all my books.”

→ Resources
About Francisco X. Stork: Learn more about the author and his many novels for young readers.
Celebrating Hispanic and Latiné Heritage Month: Check out these titles for the young readers in your life.

→ Highlights
Francisco X. Stork, author, One Last Chance to Live
“Once you start writing, the characters take over, and it’s their story that becomes important.”
“When I was a little boy in Mexico, I used to tell people . . . ‘I want to be a writer.’”
“This is a month in which we see the contributions of immigrants, who decided to live in this country and who love this country, like me.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: S. Shin
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Alice Hoffman: When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary

In this episode, we’re spotlighting bestselling author Aaron Blabey. Aaron visited our New York City headquarters in late 2023 from his home in Australia.

He talked with host Suzanne McCabe about the genesis of Cat on the Run, his latest series for young readers. In Book 1, Cat on the Run in Cat of Death!, Princess Beautiful, the world’s biggest cat video star, is accused of a crime she didn’t commit. Can the most famous feline on the planet avoid capture and prove her innocence? Readers will find out in Aaron’s hilarious new trilogy about the perils of social media and cancel culture.

You probably know Aaron from The Bad Guys, his mega-bestselling book series. The Bad Guys was made into an animated movie in 2022 by Universal Pictures and DreamWorks. A sequel is on the way next summer.

Aaron is also the author of the popular series Pig the Pug and Thelma the Unicorn. With the 20th and final installment of The Bad Guys due out in November, Aaron says that he’s ready to step away from writing.

“I always wrote my books specifically for my own kids, to make them laugh, but now they’re all grown up,” he told Publishers Weekly. “It was a magical time but it’s over, just like childhood. It’s bittersweet but it’s also beautiful.”

→ Resources
Cat on the Run in Cat of Death!: How do you avoid capture and prove your innocence when you’re the most famous feline on the planet? Princess Beautiful finds out the hard way.
Cat on the Run in Cucumber Madness: Social media star Princess Beautiful has been plunged into a world where danger lurks everywhere, and cucumbers are no laughing matter.
The Bad Guys: In Aaron’s wildly-popular book series, The Bad Guys, a motley collection of wannabe heroes are doing good deeds—whether you like it or not.

→ Highlights
Aaron Blabey, bestselling author and illustrator
On creating the character of Princess Beautiful in Cat on the Run: “She was inspired by the world we currently live in, I have to say. My kids are now 15 and 18, and I’ve been watching them navigating social media…. I’ve been watching with interest how that universe is sort of playing out in the world. I also have a really highly strung cat. Those two things . . . and the old movie The Fugitive, they all kind of clicked together in my head, and Cat on the Run popped out.”
On writing The Bad Guys: “I was only trying to make my son laugh, but it seems that the same stuff that makes him laugh has made lots of other kids laugh.”
On writing graphic novels: “We live in a world where kids are just bombarded with visual information, and they’re so visually literate. What I’ve tried to do with The Bad Guys and also certainly with Cat on the Run is do something that feels relevant for them.”
→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Alice Hoffman: When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary

In this episode, we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Reach Out and Read and an uplifting new book collection. Marty Martinez, the nonprofit’s CEO, and Judy Newman, Chief Impact Officer at Scholastic, talk with host Suzanne McCabe about 35 for 35—a new, curated collection of titles for young children.

A joint venture between Reach Out and Read and Scholastic, with help from several other publishers, the 35 for 35 project will distribute 350,000 free books to children ages five and under during their well-child visits.

The books celebrate the vibrant neighborhoods and diverse cultures of the children who are served by Reach Out and Read. Kids will be introduced to titles by acclaimed and emerging authors and illustrators, including poet Nikki Giovanni, basketball great LeBron James, and writer and educator Joanna Ho.

“Evidence shows that if children are exposed to books and reading through their pediatric well-child visits,” Marty says, “they’re more likely to get read to at home. They’re more likely to spend time with their parents or caregivers connecting over a book.”
As Chief Executive Officer of Reach Out and Read, Marty leads the Boston-based nonprofit’s vast network, which includes more than 6,000 program sites in all 50 states and nearly 30 regional, state, and local affiliates. He has spent decades working on behalf of young people and families in underserved communities across the Boston area. Most recently, as the city’s Chief of Health and Human Services, Marty led Boston through some of the most acute challenges posed by the pandemic.

In her role as Chief Impact Officer at Scholastic, Judy helps to ensure equal access to books and literacy for all children through partnerships with nonprofits and other organizations. She currently serves on several boards, including at Reach Out and Read and the Ruby Bridges Foundation, where she is Board President.

For many years, Judy led the iconic Scholastic Reading Club, aka the Book Clubs. She is known fondly in the office as our Reader-in-Chief. During the pandemic, Judy went back to school, earning a master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

→ Resources
Reach Out and Read: For 35 years, the Boston-based nonprofit has helped millions of young families across the country access literacy through well-child visits.
35 for 35: Learn more about this free, curated book collection, a collaboration between Reach Out and Read and Scholastic.

→ Highlights
Marty Martinez, CEO, Reach Out and Read
“The mission of Reach Out and Read is to provide opportunities and moments for children and their parents to have shared moments of connection and bonding through reading.”
“We’re a very simple model that integrates early literacy and books into well-child visits for our children five and under all across the United States.”
“A child learns to read and then reads to learn.”
“It opens doors not only for a child but for a whole family when you focus on early literacy.”
Judy Newman, Chief Impact Officer, Scholastic
“Programs like these don’t happen unless someone leads the charge.”
“Twelve publishers from across the publishing industry contributed titles to [35 for 35].”

“For American democracy to continue, we have to have literacy.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Bad Guys Author Aaron Blabey Talks About Cat on the Run

When We Flew Away: Author Alice Hoffman Discusses Her New Novel About Anne Frank Before the Diary

In this episode, we’re celebrating Pride Month with author Derek Milman. Derek talks with host Suzanne McCabe about his latest YA novel, A Darker Mischief. The gripping story revolves around Cal, a queer teen from a poor town in Mississippi. At Essex Academy, an elite boarding school in New England, Cal tries to fit in and falls in love along the way.

“I would encourage any teen picking up A Darker Mischief,” Derek says, “to see how Cal can surmount everything that has happened in the past and his sense of unbelonging and intense alienation to find love.”

In addition to A Darker Mischief, Derek is the author of the acclaimed Scream All Night (Balzer + Bray, 2018) and Swipe Right for Murder (Jimmy Patterson, 2021). A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Derek has performed on stages across the country and appeared in several TV shows and films, including The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

→ Resources
A Darker Mischief: Check out Derek Milman’s boarding school thriller about a queer teen named Cal, who finds himself swept up into a world of old money and privilege privilege.
You Are Loved: This curated book list from Scholastic celebrates LGBTQIA+ themes and experiences, with stories centered around identity, acceptance, and love.

→ Highlights
Derek Milman, author, A Darker Mischief
“While the secret society [in A Darker Mischief] is based on this very real secret society that’s still functioning at Yale, it’s fictional at the same time.”
“Cal comes from a poor family from a small town in Mississippi, and he has to contend with a lot and confront moral choices, in terms of how he can survive at Essex.”
“There are going to be things in life that you have to confront and decisions you’re going to have to make in order to get ahead, but you’re going to have to find a way to preserve who you really are and your values.”
“Holden [Caulfield in A Catcher in the Rye] might have been the first time I felt like I really connected with a kid in a book.”

“A lot of young love, especially young, gay love, is not easy.”

“Queer teens need a classic, sweeping, epic romance.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Reach Out and Read: 35 for 35

Kelly Yang Has the Scoop on Top Story

“Children are just suffering more,” says Dr. Linda C. Mayes, director of the Yale Child Study Center. A pediatrician by training, Dr. Mayes specializes in child and adolescent psychiatry. Like other health care professionals, she is sounding the alarm about the rise in anxiety and depression in young people. In this episode, Dr. Mayes talks with host Suzanne McCabe about the reasons for this disturbing trend and explores how we, as a society, can address the challenges our children are facing.

Dr. Mayes is also the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology at the Yale Child Study Center and Special Advisor to the Dean at the Yale School of Medicine. She heads the Child Study Center–Scholastic Collaborative, which arose from a shared commitment to exploring how literacy can be used to foster resilience among children and families.

→ Resources
New Mental Health Resource From Scholastic: Check out our new online hub of books and curated, free resources fostering emotional health with insights from leading child development experts.
Meet Dr. Linda C. Mayes: The director of the Yale Child Study Center, Dr. Mayes is an expert in developmental psychology, pediatrics, and child psychiatry literature.
Kids & Family Reading Report: There’s lots to explore in Scholastic’s biennial national survey of parents’ and children’s reading attitudes and behaviors.
Reach Out and Read: Learn how the nonprofit organization partners with pediatric care providers to help families make reading a part of their routines.

→ The Conversation
What trends are you seeing at the Yale Child Study Center in terms of children’s mental health? What types of emotional and behavioral disorders are kids presenting?
At the Child Study Center here in New Haven, what we’re seeing is no different than what’s being seen across the country and around the world. The increase in mental health needs among children and adolescents often is framed as a post-COVID phenomenon. But over the past few years, there’s been a steady increase in children’s mental health needs—depression, suicidality, anxiety, increased feelings of stress—that speaks to an overall stress among children and families.
COVID and the pandemic added to the mental health crisis. The pandemic also highlighted some of the fragilities in our healthcare system. One might think in the same way, that the pandemic highlighted the mental health needs and vulnerabilities of our youngest citizens, and that we’re seeing an increased volume is important to know. We’re also seeing an increase in severity. Children are just suffering more, and we’re seeing children thinking about suicide at an earlier age. We’re seeing more eating disorders starting at an earlier age.
Our children’s distress is also an expression of the increasing distress and fragmentation of our society. Children, in a sense, are like the canaries in the coal mine. They’re experiencing the distress, the increased lack of civility, the increased fragmentation.

The lack of civility and lack of empathy among adults is striking. Where did that come from?
I think there are multiple causes. We’ve had an economically stressed society. We have the stresses of the pandemic. We have a politically divided society now. Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, to use that metaphor, it’s very hard to cross the aisle. We’ve lost the ability to have a conversation where you see the other person as an individual who may or may not agree with you, but who is still an individual worthy of respect. How to do that is a fundamental skill. It’s the glue that holds society together. When children see and feel and experience that kind of fracturing, it’s not good for their—or anyone’s—mental health.

What signs should parents and educators look for if they think a child needs clinical intervention?
When children are just not themselves, when they’ve changed, when they might have been the outgoing, playful, always-helping child who now is quiet, maybe even a little bit irritable, when there’s a real change in who they are in their presentation. Typically, people talk about when grades start to go down. That’s another indicator. When kids start to lose their enjoyment for the things they dearly loved. If they love to read, for example, but they stop reading. Or they love to play with friends, but now they just want to stay in the house. Those kinds of changes in behavior are important to notice. It’s not always the child who’s sad and withdrawn. It can be the child who suddenly is acting out or the child who is now afraid of a whole number of things. Those kinds of changes, and especially parents who know their children well, when they see that they’re just not themselves, that’s what to pay attention to.

If a child is withdrawn, they may not want to speak. Are there ways to spur conversation without asking repeated questions?
One of the most important ways is to be present. Sometimes, it may be taking a walk, or reading a book together, or just doing something together. Silence can be quite deafening. In our busy lives, families don’t often have those moments, those dinner-together moments, or those quiet walk-after-dinner together moments, or those times just sitting on the steps and talking. Those are the kinds of moments that bring people together. A child may not start talking right then. They may need to have a bit of quiet reassurance that, yes, somebody is going to be there, and they’re going to be listening.

Many areas in the U.S. have a shortage of mental health professionals. What is being done to make treatment more accessible and more effective?
There’s a shortage of healthcare professionals broadly, and there’s a shortage of healthcare professionals around children’s needs broadly. That includes physicians, pediatricians, psychologists, and social workers, because mental health for children is delivered not just by one profession.
Before addressing what is being done and what can be done, we need to ask the question of why. Why is there a shortage of healthcare providers, especially post-COVID, but why is there especially a shortage of mental health providers? There are a few reasons that we, as a society, need to look at very deeply. One of them is how we think about mental health. We often think about it as “the other,” that it’s not a part of overall health, that it’s not a part of physical health. The division between physical and mental health is an artificial one. They go together.
Another why is the stigma about mental health. As much as we’ve tried to work on it, it’s still alive and well in this country. It still impacts policy and decisions that people make about going into the field. It affects how we reimburse and support mental health, especially children’s mental health. Generally, children’s health is reimbursed less. By reimbursement, I mean by commercial payers and the individuals or institutions that pay for care. Then you take children’s mental health care and it’s not on par with other kinds of care. It’s very hard [for a health care professional] to make a wage that would support themselves and their family after years of training. So, we have a reimbursement structure that also perpetuates the bias.
As a country, we need to put that front and center because the other things we can do to improve access or care will be great and are great. During the pandemic, we learned a lot about the delivery of telehealth. We learned how to deliver mental health care across virtual platforms, making it available to children and families across state lines, from rural to urban, extending the capacity of a clinician in an urban area. We still need to increase broadband access in rural areas, and states need to work together so that clinicians can deliver care across state lines.
We’ve also learned that some children need just a few sessions with a mental health care provider. Some even respond to one or two sessions. Thinking more creatively about how we deliver services across telehealth platforms will improve access dramatically. We’re in a revolutionary time for mental health care for kids.

Can you describe the mechanisms by which literacy can lead to improved physical and mental health outcomes?
How does literacy impact health? It opens the world. You learn what a variety of people do. You also learn about your body. You learn how it works, what’s good and not good. Reading—including storytelling—is stress-relieving. Reading has dropped blood pressure to a healthy level in some studies. It’s what we call emotionally organizing.
Reading also brings people together. If you’ve read a good book, you tell a friend about it, and soon the two of you are talking about that book. The same is true if a child brings you a book and wants you to read it. Reading builds interpersonal links between parent and child or teacher and child. It’s a very strong glue for building relationships. And we know from research that relationships and social connectedness have as strong an impact on health as good nutrition and not smoking, for example.
So, it’s through those areas, and then another, what we would call a meta or proxy variable: If you’re more literate, you’re more educated. If you’re more educated, you know how to access health resources better. You make better choices. Yet we have two systems—our healthcare system and our educational system. The two don’t always work together. What’s good for kids in this country is to bring health and education together.

There’s a significant finding in Scholastic’s latest Kids & Family Reading Report that reinforces this notion. Kids who read more reported better mental health overall, with fewer occurrences of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
Yes, and that’s a very important finding. As a researcher, though, I need to warn that it’s associative and not necessarily causal. It may be that children who have better mental health read more and by reading more, they feel better.

The report also found that 41% of students get most of their books at school, which highlights the importance of teacher curation and accessibility. Are you and other experts seeing adverse effects on children due to book banning?
I deeply worry for our society because of book banning. In my world, the medical world, we talk about symptoms that are the danger signs of something more serious. A very high fever, for example, or very high blood pressure, or a very low white blood cell count, indicates that something serious is going on in that individual. I see book banning as one of those indicators of something serious going on in our society, what we talked about earlier, the fractionated society.
I can certainly talk about book banning and children, but I think we also need to think about what it says diagnostically about our social fabric. That said, there are no empirical studies about book banning that I know of, but it’s just common sense. You don’t limit a child’s curiosity. You don’t say to them, “You shouldn’t read this. This book has principles that aren’t good for you.” Let them read it and have an open discussion. Let them watch a television program, watch it with them, and have an open discussion. When you ban a book, you’re saying that certain forms of knowledge and experience are off-limits. That is just fundamentally against learning, building curiosity, building an ability to engage with the world in any way.
I do realize that my stance is from a particularly liberal point of view. I’m very aware of that. At the same time, I know what’s good for children and I know what’s good for children’s learning, and I know that inhibiting or prohibiting pathways to learning in any way is not good for children’s cognitive development.

What measures among key stakeholders are being taken to improve literacy outcomes for children, even starting with preschoolers?
I would say even starting with infancy and prenatally. I think one of the fundamental messages, if you want to go back even further, is that talking, storytelling, building relationships, using words, is a fundamental literacy skill. So, a mom or a couple who are pregnant: Talk to the baby inside the mom’s tummy. Build up a repertoire of stories, and when that baby comes, you’ll have the repertoire of stories. When you have your infant in your arms, talk to them about the world around them. Tell them stories about yourself. Tell them stories about what just happened during the day. Tell them about the sun and the rain outside. You’re building literacy when you do that. Literacy doesn’t have to just be by books, by just using words and creating a narrative.
That said, while we certainly need more pediatricians in this country, and more access to children’s special healthcare, we miss an opportunity in the healthcare world, and this gets back to bringing education and health together. We miss an opportunity to not use pediatricians even more than Reach Out and Read already does. We should use pediatricians as the conduit for literacy and the conduit for books because pediatricians are the individuals or healthcare professionals are the individuals that children see before they are of school age.
But it’s not just putting books in children’s hands, it’s also having adults know how to use those books. It’s not just reading the words, but helping the child think about what else could have happened in a story. The blue bear did this with his friend, the goose, but what else could bear have done? Or what was goose thinking about? Why do you think goose did that? To really help children expand that narrative and to engage with them around building out the story, not just literally reading the story. In doing that, you’re encouraging their imagination. The most fundamental way to build literacy is to build narrative and storytelling.

Many teachers are encountering not just mental and emotional challenges among students, but also behavioral issues to an extent they haven’t seen before. What advice do you have for educators who are feeling overwhelmed and don’t have the resources to address this rise in students’ mental health needs?
There are three things I would say to teachers. One is that, besides parents, you have the hardest and most responsible job in our society. You’re taking care of and launching our next generation. I deeply appreciate not only the work that all teachers do, but also the stress that teachers are under and the burdens they feel.
I also would say is that if you can hold in mind, and it’s incredibly hard to do, when a child is melting down in front of you or angrily yelling or out of control, that all behavior is a communication, and then take just a little space inside yourself to wonder what is this child trying to tell me? What are they trying to say with this behavior? Maybe the child won’t know, but you’ll know that they’re communicating something through their behavior. Maybe they’re trying to say that they’re scared. Maybe they’re trying to say that they’re exhausted. Maybe they’re trying to say that they need you or they need someone more, but they’re trying to say something. It’s a really hard thing to do in the moment, but it’s extraordinarily important.
Behavioral disruptions are happening across the country at all ages. It’s not just kids in classrooms. We’re seeing adults lose it in various settings. When children cause behavioral disruptions, the preschool phrase is often, “Use your words.” Preschool teachers know that if you can get the behavior into words, you can help.
The third thing I would offer to teachers is, if you can, have a peer or someone else you can talk to. You have your own mental health needs that shouldn’t go unheard.

Guns are now the leading cause of death among children and teens. Do we know the psychological and social impact of community violence, mass shootings, and even active shooter drills in schools?
I have many colleagues who think a lot about this and who are much more expert in it than I. For example, here at the Child Study Center, we have our Child Development-Community Policing Program. My colleagues Steven Marans and Carrie Epstein and the rest of their team, Megan Goslin, are often called to consult and help teachers, and they do that in such a clinically skilled and sensitive way.
We have an enormous availability of guns in this country and a history of guns being used to express a range of distress and feelings. The corollary is that it has happened so often, we’re numbed by it. A staggering number of mass shootings have happened in this country, defined as four or more injured. Some of them don’t even make the news at this point.
What’s the effect on children? Broadly, school is no longer as safe a place as it once was. What do active shooter drills do? As a researcher, I would want to know more about that, but I’m guessing it makes children more scared. I’m guessing it raises the anxiety level of teachers, too. Whether they’re effective for that event, may it never happen, is another question. I’ve often heard people compare active shooter drills to back when the threat of nuclear war began. Schools had drills, and kids were asked to get under their desks. If you look back on it, it looks kind of crazy.
My worry about active shooter drills is, not just are they effective, not just do they raise teachers’ anxiety and children’s anxiety, but my worry is that we may be putting our attention in the wrong place. We’re putting our attention on the possibility that this terrible thing might happen. Really, our attention should be on why? Why is it happening more frequently? Why is it that we can’t look at the harsh truth of the availability of guns? Why can we not look at other societies experiencing the same broad global stress that don’t have these kinds of mass shootings? Ask those questions.

Researchers at the Yale Child Study Center-Scholastic Collaborative have identified altruism as a hallmark of resilience. How can altruism play a role in helping children and communities emerge stronger after a traumatic event?
It’s not just us. There’s a large body of work about altruism across several settings, altruism and prisoner of war situations, altruism during natural disasters. Altruism is a fundamentally human capacity. We also see it in some non-human primates, as well. It’s the ability to reach outside of yourself and think about the needs of others, to make some sacrifice of yourself in order to help someone else.
So, for example, in the darkest of situations, like in a prisoner of war situation, when you take your food ration and give it to the person next to you who you know is starving, although you yourself don’t have much. It’s the ability to reach out and make a connection to someone else, thinking outside yourself about someone else’s needs. You see it all the time in this country. When there’s a tragedy, you see people coming together in the most remarkably altruistic ways: firemen risking their own lives to bring a family to safety, families who have almost nothing bringing everything they have to the neighbor down the street whose house was wiped out by a tornado. It’s a basic human. We survive because we are a community.
So, what can we do more of? Talk about altruism. Highlight it. Altruism is good for your health. It’s a very ironic message, that by sacrificing yourself for someone else, you also are doing something good for yourself. You’re improving your own health and your own likelihood of a healthy outcome. But you don’t do it for that reason. You do it because of the basic human need to create community.

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon
Top Story: Author Kelly Yang Talks With a Scholastic Kid Reporter

A Darker Mischief: Celebrate Pride Month With Author Derek Millman

We hear a lot about DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies these days. But the work is often misunderstood, and even disparaged. In this episode, Lindsey Cotter, Chief Inclusion Officer at Scholastic, and Malia C. Lazu, Founder and CEO of the consulting firm Lazu Group, discuss ways to create more inclusive environments. Doing so is not just a moral imperative, they argue. Statistically, it leads to better outcomes for everyone.
Lindsey has been at Scholastic for more than 20 years. Before taking on her current role, she served as Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Employee Services. Malia is a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the author of From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024).
Early in her career, Malia worked with singer Harry Belafonte and other civil rights leaders to help bring more opportunities to young people in marginalized communities. “Instead of just rushing in with solutions and answers,” Malia writes, “we listened and learned before we took action.” Her book is essential reading for anyone serious about implementing DEI policies.

→ Resources

7 reasons why your organization isn’t making DEI progress: Malia C. Lazu discusses common pitfalls in DEI implementation.
From Intention to Impact: Check out Malia’s book on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

→ Highlights
Lindsey Cotter, Chief Inclusion Officer, Scholastic Inc.
“How do we use DEI as a way to strengthen our ability to communicate and interact with one another, to have an awareness of the differences in culture, and be sure that the things that we’re doing from a business perspective as well as an interpersonal perspective are respectful of one another? That’s hard. It’s a journey. It’s not a destination.”
“My mother was a kindergarten teacher, and she colored in the characters in picture books. She did the same thing with cards because there was no representation.”
“This [work] is going to make a difference for girls coming up now, for women who are out there.”
Malia C. Lazu, author, From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
“After [the murder of] George Floyd, so many people were asking us, ‘What can we do?’ What can we do?’ As a woman of color, as a woman of color firm, it was a frustrating question because we had been talking about what you could do for hundreds of years, long before I was born.”
“Being an ally is about deconstructing power and trying to keep doors and windows open [for others].”
“I’ve had clients look at me and say, ‘But we’re good people.’ I wish that were enough. If you set an intention to do something that you haven’t done before, you need to know that you probably don’t have the tools, skills, or understanding to do it, and you need to respect those blind spots in yourself.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Kelly Yang Has the Scoop on Top Story

In honor of Black History Month, Yolanda Renee King talks with host Suzanne McCabe about her new picture book, We Dream A World: Carrying the Light From My Grandparents Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Yolanda is joined in the studio by her editor, Andrea Davis Pinkney, who is vice president and executive editor of Scholastic Trade Publishing.

Yolanda is only 15 years old. Already, she is following in her grandparents’ footsteps as an activist and author. “Leaders are those who ask the questions, who challenge things,” she says.

We Dream a World, which is illustrated by Nicole Tadgell, evokes the legacy of Yolanda’s grandparents and exhorts members of her generation to follow their own dreams for “liberty, justice, and food for all.”

→ Resources
We Dream a World: Learn more about 15-year-old activist and author Yolanda Renee King and her “love letter” to her grandparents.
Share Black Stories: These works of fiction and nonfiction showcase the many facets of Black life in America.

Realize the Dream: Get involved in the movement to rally communities to perform 100 million hours of service by the 100th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth.
Meet Andrea Davis Pinkney: The award-winning author and editor has written and edited dozens of books celebrating the Black experience, including Martin Rising: Requiem for a King.

→ Highlights
Yolanda Renee King, author, We Dream a World: Carrying the Light From My Grandparents Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King

“Learning about [my grandparents’] perseverance and all that they had to endure, that’s what my parents taught me.”

“A lot of people forget that throughout my grandfather’s life, he was one of the most disliked men on Earth and one of the most critiqued.”

“[My grandmother] was perceived . . . as Dr. King’s widow, as the wife who didn’t do anything. Without her efforts, there would be no King legacy, and his message and the dream would have been gone with him.”

Andrea Davis Pinkney, vice president and executive editor, Scholastic Trade Publishing
“No matter your age, your race, where you live, what you believe, the family that you come from, you can make a difference, big or small.”
“[Tadgell’s art] presents this canvas of what dreaming a world can be. The colors are vibrant. They’re imaginative. They’re filled with hope.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Aaron Blabey: Cat on the Run

Kelly Yang Has the Scoop on Top Story

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we spotlight two Scholastic authors who depict everyday acts of heroism in their latest novels about the Holocaust. First, Neal Shusterman talks about Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust, his new graphic novel for young readers. The book is beautifully illustrated by Andrés Vera Martínez.

Then, Sharon Cameron discusses Artifice, her latest work of historical fiction for middle graders.

“I hope [young readers] take away a sense of hope in the face of despair,” Neal says. “Even in these dark times, there were stories of people who did remarkable things, who put themselves at risk to help save others.”

Neal is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including the Skinjacker trilogy, the Unwind dystology, and Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Neal was recently honored by the ALA with the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.

Sharon is the author of the international bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick, The Light in Hidden Places, and the acclaimed thriller, Bluebird. Her debut novel, The Dark Unwinding, was awarded the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Sue Alexander Award for Most Promising New Work and the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award, among other honors.
→ Resources
Storyman: Check out Neal Shusterman’s author bio.
The “Accidental” Author: Learn more about Sharon Cameron and her titles for young readers.
24 Books for Teaching the Holocaust: These powerful works of fiction and nonfiction are for students in Grades 1 – 12.
When We Flew Away: In an upcoming novel for young readers, author Alice Hoffman reimagines the life of Anne Frank before she began keeping a diary.
The Tower of Life: Suzanne McCabe talks with author Chana Stiefel about The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs. The picture book, which is illustrated by Susan Gal, won the 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Award and the Margaret Wise Brown Prize for Children’s Literature, among other honors.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Learn more about the annual commemoration, which takes place on January 27, and read survivors’ accounts collected by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

→ Highlights
Neal Shusterman, author, Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust
“There are a lot of kids who might not pick up a book about the Holocaust. They might not want to delve into such a difficult subject. But here was a way of bringing in readers who might not normally read this kind of story and then get them interested in it and wanting to know what really happened.”
“I hope [young readers] take away a sense of hope in the face of despair. Even in these dark times, there were stories of people who did remarkable things, who put themselves at risk to help save others.”
“This is a book about history. I didn’t want to talk about what was going on today. But since the October 7 attacks, there has been a 400% rise in antisemitic acts in the United States.”
Sharon Cameron, author, Artifice
“Writing is a second career for me. I was a classical pianist for a very long time, about 20 years, and I thought that’s what I would do forever. But one fateful day, with a 45-minute session at my computer, I fell head over heels in love with creating story and the written word.”
“Artifice tells the story of Isa DeSmit, a girl who has grown up in the glittering bohemian world of her parents’ art gallery in Amsterdam. But this is a world that has been utterly destroyed by the Nazi occupation. The art has been confiscated because it is considered degenerate, and the artists are gone. Friends and family are gone because they’re Jewish or communist or gay. So Isa decides to create her own revenge. She decides to learn the art of a master forger so that she can sell a forged painting to Hitler. She’ll take the money from this forged painting and use it to fund a baby smuggling ring, a wing of the Dutch resistance that is smuggling the last Jewish babies and toddlers out of the city.”
“The novel is based on two true stories—of Johan van Hulst, who was an absolutely amazing man who rescued Jewish children during the war, and Han van Meegeren, one of the great art forgers of the 20th century who sold a forged Vermeer to Hermann Göring. The painting hung over Göring’s desk as the jewel of his art collection. Van Meegeren made money hand over fist, and he lived it up during the war while the rest of the country starved. The juxtaposition between these two men [is what] really interested me and made me want to write this book.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon

Yolanda Renee King on the Legacy of Her Grandparents

Kelly Yang Has the Scoop on Top Story

In this episode, we celebrate Hispanic Latine Heritage Month with Dr. Maria Armstrong. A longtime educator, Dr. Armstrong is executive director of the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents {ALAS]. She talks with host Suzanne McCabe about her experiences in education and how we can better serve Latino children and families.

Dr. Armstrong grew up in the Southwest, in an extended family of Latino, Mescalaro Apache, and Yaqui heritage. “My family didn’t cross the border,” she says. “The border crossed us.” A high school dropout, she eventually earned a PhD in organizational leadership. In 2021, she was named one of the Top 20 Female Leaders in the Education Industry.

Having served as a teacher, superintendent, school counselor, and tech expert, among several other roles, Dr. Armstrong is dedicated to helping children thrive, especially children who have been historically marginalized. She is an adviser to Scholastic’s Rising Voices book series elevating Latino stories and a contributor to Equity in the Classroom (Scholastic Teaching Solutions, 2022).

“What I’m most proud of are my own children and grandchildren,” Dr. Armstrong says. “My children saved my life, and public education was my family’s saving grace.”

→ Resources
Hispanic and Latine Heritage Book Picks: Check out these featured titles for young readers from Scholastic.
Equity in the Classroom: 20 educational leaders, including Dr. Armstrong, share their views on what equity in education looks like and how we can achieve it.
Rising Voices Library: Learn more about our K - 5 book collections, which feature stories of the Latin diaspora, as well as print and digital teaching materials.
My Two Border Towns, by David Bowles and Erika Meza. A picture book debut by an award-winning author depicts a boy's life on the United States-Mexico border. (Kokilla, 2021)

→ Highlights
Dr. Maria Armstrong, executive director, the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents [ALAS]
“Being a voice is really one of the greatest gifts that I get to experience [on behalf of our administrators and superintendents], because I spend a lot of time listening to what they’re going through, but [more important] the things that they’re so proud of, that they are working on and doing for students across this nation.”

“Education in our families, the Latino families, is far bigger than the four walls we send our kids to . . . from the morning to the afternoon.”
“There was no white picket fence for sure. But what we had was family, and what we had was the security of knowing that when anybody in that neighborhood needed anything, we were there. Not just as an individual, but as a community.”

“Food is a central part [of celebrations], because it’s something that you compartir, you share. So food is a place to be able to make something with love and be able to show that this is my specialty, and I want to share it with you. So everybody brings something that they are proud of. It makes it all tastier, of course, because you’re eating the best from everyone.”

“Food is very central, but I also think that it’s just the gathering and the sharing of the stories…. The stories are always so, so rich.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa

Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon
Goosebumps Heads Back to Television

Top Story: A Conversation With Kelly Yang and Kid Reporter Zoya Siddiqui

Aaron Blabey Introduces Cat on the Run