It's the Book Club for Kids.
The Book Club for Kids.
It's the Book Club for Kids podcast.
Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
There are so many things that divide us.
Zip codes, money in the bank, whether we like chess or football, even divisions within a family.
We talk about those divisions in Edward Blur's novel, Tangerine.
The book is also about the wonderful fruit itself.
I like how it smells out here.
I held up my tangerine.
I guess I like how these taste, too.
That's our celebrity reader, actress Jovita Molina.
Our readers from the Lawrence School in Los Angeles learn a bit about tangerine farming.
A lot of work goes into it, like with the freeze and everything.
They had to miss a week of school, and they had to put all their effort into this.
Our readers also interview our writer, Edward Bloor.
Was it hard to write from a kid's perspective?
No.
I think I'm kind of frozen in time back there in seventh grade.
This is the Book Club for Kids, the show where kids talk about books.
We'll tell you how you can be on the show a little later on, even if you live halfway around the world.
But first, let's meet our readers.
Hi, my name's Antony.
I'm Simone.
And my name is Maya.
We are all sixth graders at Lawrence School in Valley Glen, California.
And the book is Tangerine by Edward Blewer.
Simone, what's the book about?
This book is about a boy who moves from Houston, Texas to Tangerine, Florida.
And he has bad eyes.
He's almost blind.
So he has really thick glasses.
And his brother is just a really mean kid.
And he goes to different schools and moves around.
And it's mostly about how he's trying to find about how he got his eyesight damaged.
Well, let's describe Florida for those of us who've never lived there.
It's not exactly California, is it?
Well, yeah.
Paul thinks it's going to be beaches and big condos, but really in the area that he is living in it's just farmland, orchards and the place where he's living.
It's completely new.
There's no history.
They're just new developments with these really nice houses, but The houses have problems because they weren't built completely properly.
They were just trying to build them quickly and so that people can move in as soon as possible.
Also, you would think that it's maybe warm year-round and hot all the time, but where he lives it's also really cold in the winter and it snows and they have to protect all the groves from the cold.
Now we won't give the plot away.
But something happens and Paul ends up going to a different middle school.
Talk about the difference between not just the school but the whole of the kids who go there, how different part of the city it's in.
So the school he begins at is called Lake Windsor Down Middle School.
And it's kind of for the people who live in the fancier, richer areas.
And so a lot of the spaces are nice and the teachers are good.
All the students are good kids.
And then when something tragic happens, he has to go to a different school called Tangerine Middle School, and that's where people who are like poor and can't afford as much live, and so it's like kind of a rougher school where there's a lot of like maybe fights and suspensions.
I feel like he kind of belongs there more because he has some friends at Lake Windsor Downs.
But also he's like, not afraid to get his hands in the dirt and like and, as we see later on in the book, he actually helps his friends during the freeze and he's not scared to help out when he's needed.
He's not like the other richer kids at Lake Windsor Downs.
Talk to me about the part of the book that has to do with the farming and the people who are growing tangerines.
Paul befriends somebody whose parents or parent owns a citrus farm, and his other friend just helps out with them.
But Tino, his friend's brother, is Luis and he Luis, created a new type of tangerine, which I didn't know was possible because he just like spliced the seeds together and they created like a new type of tangerine.
But a lot of work goes into it, like with the freeze and everything.
Like they missed, they had to miss a week of school and they had to put all their effort into this.
And Luis like spent his whole life doing this and trying to be able to help his family.
And when Paul helps out with the freeze he was like they're probably thinking why aren't you there complaining about the muck fires and the mosquitoes, but curled up in front of a fireplace with hot cocoa?
Most people are like that, but I want to actually help because they're my friends.
And so he thinks friendship is more important.
Well, let's go out to the tangerine groves on that freezing cold night.
Our celebrity reader is actress Jovita Molina.
I walked up to the door of the Quonset hut and knocked.
There was no answer.
Then from behind me I heard, Fisherman, what are you doing here?
It wasn't a friendly greeting.
I turned and saw Tino and Luis coming out of the house with coils of thin black hose wrapped around their shoulders like bandolera ammo belts.
Tino and I get along okay on the soccer team, as long as I know my place and stay in it.
But he has little use for me away from the team, and he has no use for me at all in science class.
I swallowed and said, I wanted to find out more about the nursery.
Luis said I could come back sometime, so I did.
What?
You don't have phones in Lake Windsor Downs?
Luis said, it's all right, Tino.
I invited him to come back, and he's come.
He pointed to a pile of black hoes on the ground.
You can grab some of those and work with us.
I wrapped a bandoleta of hoes around my shoulder and followed them.
We walked around the Quonset hut, through the rows of adult trees and out to the baby trees.
The golden dawn, tangerines.
We laid out all of Luis's hoes, then all of Tino's, then all of mine, up and down the rows of little trees.
Then we went back and loaded up again from the piles.
We continued to haul and lay out hoes for three hours until every row had a black rubber stripe running down it.
We walked back again through the adult grove, but this time Tino sat down on a crate between two large trees.
Luis pointed to two more crates, which I hauled between the trees for us to sit on.
He reached up, pulled off a tangerine and tossed it to Tino.
Then he tossed one to me.
We all sucked them down hungrily and Luis pulled down three more.
I hadn't said a word for hours until Luis asked me, so how do you like the tangerine business?
I like it a lot.
Tino snorted.
Is that right?
What do you like about it?
I knew the answer to that right away.
The way it smells.
I like how it smells out here.
I held up my tangerine.
I guess I like how these taste too.
Luis smiled.
I asked him, what's the best thing about it for you?
Luis stood up to get us three more.
When he sat down, he answered, just like you said, the way it smells out here.
That scent, it's like nothing else in the world.
Let's talk a little bit about Paul and his brother and his parents.
How is his family working out?
So his family's really disconnected.
They don't talk about anything.
It's from Paul's perspective.
And his brother Eric is really mean.
He's like six years older than him.
But he doesn't treat Paul like a brother.
He treats Paul like an enemy almost.
He's like super mean to him.
And his mom and dad, they aren't that close.
And the family's just not close in general.
The dad is also really busy with work and he's only focused on Eric and his football only focuses on Eric, not Paul.
Like he never comes to any of Paul's soccer games.
And the mom just isn't really that nice to Paul.
Like she's just kind of, like Maya said, disconnected from the family.
And Eric also bullies everyone at school.
Like he's not nice to anyone except his friend Arthur, who's like his little minion.
He just does all his dirty work for him.
Yeah, and Paul really has like no one to talk to and especially since he's moving, he has no friends and obviously he's not able to talk to his brother and his parents really don't listen to him because they only care about Eric and not him at all.
His mom could be a little overprotective, or was that just my opinion?
Well, his mom is protective, but not overprotective.
I mean, she's a little bit too much.
So if he's going to a sleepover, she always wants to know where he is, the address, the exact location.
She always calls him 24-7.
She wants to know where he is and just trying to keep him safe.
Why doesn't Paul ever tell his parents about Eric?
In the story, Paul says that If he told his parents about what Eric did, then they would just rush him down to a doctor and say he's not okay because they don't believe him.
Also because Eric's like the famous football player and he's just like the most popular at his school, even though not a lot of people like him.
But anyways since like, he's getting all the attention from the media and the newspapers, his parents won't believe Paul, because they just don't want to ruin Eric's reputation some of the time.
And also they just don't see what happens.
And also, especially with the dad, he is obsessed with Eric and he like basically lives through him.
Like if, If the dad tells Eric what Paul said, then Eric would not be happy and nothing good would come to Paul after Eric finds out.
Is there a culture of athletics being not worshipped but sort of at the top of the pecking order here at school for you guys?
I feel like if you do something good in sports, it's more your team that gets celebrated, not the individual.
But I feel like at least most people worship sports over chess and those types of after-school activities that you can do.
At assemblies, like once a month.
Sometimes the chess club will come up and say we won this tournament and that
So we all congratulate them and it's a really big deal because we're just happy for them.
And same with the math club.
So I feel like it's pretty equal.
So do you guys have some questions for our writer, Edward Blewer?
At the end of the book, we never figured out what happened to Eric and Arthur.
So did they like just go to trial and then were like finished or did they go to jail?
Maybe, but I don't think so.
A police officer did explain to me, though if you pull up to a 7-Eleven and you send your friend in to rob the place, you're just as culpable as the person who went in.
So Eric and Arthur would be equally guilty of something, depending really on the quality of their lawyers.
They might have gotten away with a slap on the wrist with probation or something like that.
So I wish I could offer true vengeance, but realistically, I can't.
Why is Eric so cruel?
Is there something that made him so cruel, or was he just born that way?
He was born that way.
I think some people are just hardwired to not have empathy.
I've read that one in ten people are sociopathic and they do their best to act like the other nine out of ten, but they're really not feeling it.
They're just kind of faking having empathy and sympathy for people.
Why is the Fisher family like so like distant from each other?
Is that just the way they are or something happened?
I don't think that's that unusual in that the father has, you know, the Eric Fisher football dream.
He's kind of living through his son.
The mother comes from the military background and is just ready to do whatever she has to do to keep the family going.
Paul has been somewhat alienated by this thing that happened to him that we don't find out until the end.
Does Paul ever go back to tangerine like he wants to?
I would hope so and play soccer some more.
I mean, that's the place where he really bloomed.
There's a section in the book that talks how to make a tangerine.
And you take the rough lemon tree that has no value in the supermarket and you graft something more delicate and more valuable onto it.
So Paul is kind of this delicate scion at first, and then he meets these tough kids and plays on their tough team and becomes a different person, a far more confident person.
So I'm sure he'll be lobbying hard to get back there.
Was it hard to write from a kid's perspective?
No.
I think I'm kind of frozen in time back there in seventh grade.
That was Just a successful time in my life, a time I can relate to really well.
And I taught in a middle school in Florida in that wooden portable that's featured in Tangerine.
Well, talk to me about Tangerine itself.
Well, Tangerine was where a lot of the citrus tree growers lived back in the old times.
So they would grow their citrus trees in the farmland and they would send their kids to Tangerine Middle School.
So there's a lot of kids of color and they don't fit in with the richer kids.
And also tangerine has actually history.
Lake Windsor Downs does not have any history.
But tangerine, like Simone said, it's all the citrus growers.
But then at some point, they burned all those trees down and built buildings on top of it.
And that became Lake Windsor down.
And so that's why it has no history, because it was just burnt down trees.
You know I was thinking about that, the fact that this other place was built on top of the old groves that were there.
And it's, as you said, it was buried.
And I was thinking about truth and buried truth and things like that.
I mean, did that occur to you, too?
Yeah.
I mean, I was just thinking about that how, like the people who go to the Tangerine School, how they are still like using what the people at Lake Windsor just destroyed, covered up and built their houses on?
So it's kind of just like it just shows you how the people at Lake Windsor just don't really care about that stuff.
And then that's how the people at Tangerine make a living.
There was also one point in the book during the freeze, where he was just imagining his parents and his friends, his old friends, at their houses just chilling by the fire and just not caring about what is happening outside, which is like these people could be like becoming broke because their citrus trees aren't working and like they're not producing oranges if they're frozen.
And he was just thinking about how sad that is because his family just doesn't care and it really like hurts him.
Is there a larger story in this book that we haven't talked about?
There definitely is a theme in this book and it's just like a really powerful message and it's to just be yourself.
And even though, like people, like your family wants you to be part of the rich families and like not care about the poorer kids, But Paul just really cares about his friends and even though sometimes they don't accept him, he still wants to be with them.
It's super powerful to me because it reminds me to always be myself, and it's just really cool that Paul has the strength to do that.
And another big theme that happens is you don't really need your eyes to really see, because Paul doesn't have great eyesight.
Like we said in the beginning, he has to wear really thick glasses and he sees a lot of things his parents don't see, his brother doesn't see, the committee doesn't see, but he just notices them because he notices his surroundings.
At the end of the book.
If, If you just think about what had happened if the family had just actually talked to each other and if they had known what was going on with each other and not had just been focused on themselves, then almost at least a lot of the problems could have just gone away like that.
But because they were ignoring each other and just they didn't really care about what they had to say.
They had all of these issues and their life just like completely changed.
So we ask everybody the hardest question in the entire world, which is what is your favorite book and why?
My favorite book is this book called XL.
It's this book about this 15 year old boy who like, is 5'1 or 5'2 when he's 15, so he's really short and Then all of a sudden, on his 16th birthday, he has this crazy growth spurt and I think he ends up being 6'9 or 6'10.
And it's just a book about how all of his relationships completely change when he gets taller, and I just really loved it.
It was a really funny book and I really liked it.
I love books that make you laugh and I thought that it was really well written and because the kid and his dad worked at the zoo and I love animals and I just thought it was like perfect book for me.
My favorite book would have to be the Hunger Games series because even though a bunch of people die and it's like kind of sad, I like that part of it, like it's just like really thrilling to read and there's a lot of detail and it was really well written and the characters are just like super fun and like I like Katniss.
So
I have a lot of favorite books, but one of my favorite books is Bubble and it's about a boy who is like in a hospital room and he's basically in a bubble because he can't go outside and it's kind of his journey as he meets new people and like new nurses and he kind of goes through a really cool journey.
And I like this book because it's about someone who's really different from me, but it's from his perspective.
And so it's kind of like living a different life.
What about you, Edward Bloor?
What's your favorite book?
I would say my favorite book to read, certainly when I'm talking to students is is The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr Seuss.
It has such a wide range of human emotions.
It's got the Sneetches and the Zacks and Too Many Daves and What Was I Afraid Of?
All those stories and all those lessons that really hit home with kids.
And I just never tire of reading it.
Your turn, Jovita Molina.
Got a favorite book or two?
The first book I remember finding in the library as a child probably eighth grade with a person that looked like me on the front cover was called Yo Soy Joaquin I Am Joaquin.
And it's an epic poem written by Corky Gonzalez.
I had no idea what it was talking about because in those days we didn't learn about Chicano history.
So I just held on to that book because it was the first book ever in my life that I found with a person on the cover or about the Mexican culture.
As an adult, I found a book called Ay Rigoberta Menchú, an autobiography by Rigoberta Menchú about her life growing up in Guatemala as a woman in the struggle in the war.
There's so many Latino people.
Latinx authors out there nowadays that, oh my gosh, you guys are so lucky to find books about people like you.
If you identify as a Chicano or Chicana or Latino or Latina or a Latinx person, you are so lucky.
Me growing up as a child, nada, nothing.
There was nothing out there.
But nowadays you have such a great option wwwbookclubforkidsorg.
Thanks this week to our writer, Edward Bloor, and our celebrity reader Jovita Molina.
And thanks to our readers this week at the Lawrence School in Los Angeles Anthony, Simone and Maya and their teacher, Michelle Morris.
If you have a group of readers who'd like to star on a future podcast, just send us an email to bookclubforkidspodcast at gmailcom and we will send you all the information.
Now, if you are attending the NCSS, which is the National Council for Social Studies, virtual conference this weekend, be sure to catch my presentation about teaching elementary civics in a partisan world.
The session begins on Sunday at 135 Eastern, 1030 a.m.
Pacific and attendees get a free 32-page teacher's guide to the book Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza and the podcast The Fina Mendoza Mysteries.
That's Sunday at 1.30 Eastern, 10.30 AM Pacific.
And speaking of the podcast, this week in Washington DC they are lighting the Christmas tree at the US.
Capitol.
Well, we will be taking you there in our other podcast, The Fina Mendoza Mysteries.
This week we are sharing a bonus episode all about Christmas with the Mendoza family, including the annual Capitol Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
That's the Fina Mendoza Mysteries podcast.
And we'll be back again next week here on Book Club for Kids with an extended interview with our writer, Edward Bloor.
I'm Kitty Felde.
Thanks so much for listening.
