Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
The Book Club for Kids podcast began in the smallest quadrant of Washington, D.C., called Southwest.
It was the waterfront for DC, the place where ships would dock bringing everything from building supplies to fresh fish to slaves.
This week marks the 173rd anniversary of what one Washington Post writer calls one of the most courageous acts in antebellum America the attempted escape of African-American slaves on a ship docked at the Southwest waterfront, a ship called the Pearl.
This week, Book Club for Kids honors its roots by reprising our one episode featuring a nonfiction book, Passenger on the Pearl, taped before a live audience.
It's a book club for kids.
It's the book club for kids.
It's the book club for kids podcast.
It is the book club for kids podcast.
I'm Kitty Felde and we are here at George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia, for this special on the road edition of the book club for kids podcast.
We're here with kids from West Lawn Elementary, Rocky Run Middle School and Herndon Elementary, all in Virginia, to talk about a book that explores a little known bit of history that happened in Southwest Washington DC.
The book is Passenger on the Pearl.
And we'll have writer Winifred Conkling with us, as well as our celebrity reader today, the wonderful actress Lolita Marie.
This is the Book Club for Kids, the podcast where middle grade readers talk about books.
We'll tell you how you can be on the show a little bit later on.
But first, let's introduce our panel of readers.
Hi, my name is Kendall Jones.
I'm in the 7th grade, and I go to Rocky Run Middle School.
Hi, my name is Reba.
I'm in 6th grade, and I go to Herndon Elementary School.
My name is Gareth.
I'm in 6th grade, and I go to Westwell Elementary School.
And thank you very much.
Let's have a round of applause for our readers today.
The book is called Passenger on the Pearl.
And who wants to tell us what the heck the Pearl was to start off?
It was a boat.
It was a boat, a pretty big boat.
Yeah.
Kendall, you want to tell us what the book's about?
Sure.
Well, the book follows a story. of two young girls named Emily and Mary and how they tried.
Well, the first section is how they try to escape.
Well, we should mention, I guess that they were slaves and they were slaves.
Yeah.
Let's mention, let's start off easy.
So, and they're trying to escape from their masters.
So they begin and they get all of their siblings.
And they begin to get on the boat.
They do not tell their parents at all.
So you should tell your parents because that's a pretty risky move.
And she explains how the boat is really uncomfortable and how you wouldn't want to be on it at all.
It's not a good cruise ship at all.
So the person that helps them, the person that has the boat, he eventually rats them out because their trust in him begins to diminish.
Then they catch up to the Pearl, and then Emily and Mary are captured.
And they're brought back.
Well, let's pause the story right there and we'll come back to it in a minute.
Actually, let us do this right now and hear just a little bit from the book.
And then I'm going to ask you two to pick up the story.
So we'll take it from there.
But let's bring up our celebrity reader right now to give us a taste of what this book is like.
We are here with, say it twice, Lolita Marie she.
Let's have a round of applause, please.
She's the winner of both the watch and Ruby Griffith Awards on stage around the DMV.
And, of course, for those of you who don't live in our nation's capital, they use that as shorthand for the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia areas.
DMV it's not that Department of Motor Vehicles, which is what I thought it was.
At any rate, Lolita has played brave heroines historic leaders, doting moms, beloved damsels in distress, saucy teenagers, magical senior citizens and even a frog.
And in February she'll be appearing in the classic play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough at Theatre Alliance in Anacostia.
So one more time, a grand round of applause for Lolita Marine.
Escape, April 15th, 1848.
Emily Edmondson waited in darkness.
Sometime near 9 p.m., she heard a handful of dirt scatter across her bedroom window.
That was it, the signal.
She peeked outside and saw her older brother Samuel looking up from the shadows.
She grabbed a small bag, snuffed out the candle by her bed, and tiptoed through the silent house.
She slipped out the back door, leaving the house for the last time.
Emily walked along the dark streets, her brother by her side.
She wore a plain ankle-length dress with a wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders to protect against the chill.
She had pulled her hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck.
Nothing about her appearance drew attention, but her heart still pounded fast and steady.
When they were out of earshot, she asked Samuel, what will mother think?
Don't think of her, Samuel said, not slowing his pace.
She would rather we'd be free than to spend time to talk about her.
Emily hurried to keep up.
He was right, of course.
Of course he was right.
Samuel was 21, a grown man, and she trusted him to keep her safe, as safe as possible.
This was what mother wanted.
This was what they all wanted, to be free.
Thank you, Anita.
Phoebe talk a little bit about that mother and the things she told her children about getting married.
She did not want to get married because she was afraid that her children would be slaves, and the same thing applies to Emily and Mary.
She just didn't want her children to face the fact to be a slave their whole life.
So how did that work?
If you were a slave and you had a child, what happened to that child?
They would be slaves until they were free.
And then just basically if the mother is a slave, then automatically the children will be a slave.
Gareth, let's continue with the story.
So they tried to escape, but the weather was against them.
They sailed down the river.
Yeah, they sailed down the Potomac River and then, once they got to the Chesapeake Bay, they had to stop in a harbor because the wind was against them.
And so they couldn't go any farther, and they had to stop there.
And they got caught.
Uh-huh.
The book is interesting because it also takes us past that period to what happened to them later.
It's like a whole other chapter of what happened to them.
Well, when they were free because Paul paid the money for them to be free Emily, she became a teacher for young colored girls.
Gareth, talk a little bit about slavery and literacy.
Were slaves allowed to read?
It was illegal for slaves to be taught to read.
Why?
Because if they knew how to do that, it was easier for them to organize things and organize escapes and things like that.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting that when slavery was first introduced in the United States, that people were trying to teach slaves to read, so that they could read the Bible.
And then they sort of figured out that it became a dangerous thing.
Go ahead, Kendall.
Can I add on that?
Please.
So, after Nat Turner's attack, Which we should explain for people who've been out of school in a while and may not remember the rebellion,
Well, Nat Turner was this guy and he was pretty much sick of slavery, so he went on a rampage and killed about 40 people.
We're not totally sure.
And that made the slave owners and other people very scared.
So they thought that we have to stay low in power.
We can't learn how to read and write and all these basic skills that we have today.
Because as long as the power is out of our hands then we're not going to be able to rebel the abolitionist movement, because there was a lot of things going on.
You had these two girls, Emily and Mary, meeting with Reverend Beecher, who was one of the abolitionists, and you had them speaking up north to abolitionist groups.
I mean...
What do we know?
What did you learn?
What was about the abolitionist groups?
Garrett?
Well um, most of them were in the North because, of course, in the South, like there was um, the economy in the South was pretty much dependent on slavery.
But in the North, there were a lot of abolitionists who wanted to free slaves.
Let's switch from talking about the history in the book to talking about the book itself.
The writer, Winifred Conklin, uses a lot of different techniques to give us information.
Who can describe the various ways she... You know, it's not just written with a straight narrative.
There's a whole lot of other stuff, if you want to put it in there.
How would you describe that other stuff?
There are lots of... Oh, go ahead.
Oh, sorry.
Well, there are lots of like sidebars and well just um, interesting facts about slavery.
There's a lot of emotion in what winfred konglin put because she she basically got all the facts that emily and mary and everyone was feeling and how their feelings and emotions were.
Well, if you were to look in Chapter 9 right now, there's this picture in there that shows a man who was lashed 200 times.
And it was disgusting.
And it just shows you what happened back then.
That's what we had to go through as African Americans to get to where we are now.
You know, I'm curious because, you know, people listening probably can't see us.
You know, so we've got, you're African American.
Where are you from?
From Virginia area?
No, I'm from Texas.
And Veeba, you're?
My parents are from India and I was born in Reston, Virginia.
So you're a first generation immigrant.
Gareth, I detect an accent over there.
Well, yes, my mother is English.
My father is American.
So I'm curious to know, you know, what did you learn about slavery?
What I think I learned that the slave trade, how do I put this?
The slave trade was a little...
It was a little gruesome.
Like if you were looking at some of the pages of the book.
It shows you how they would taunt and throw items at them.
And I would be pretty mad if someone did that to me.
I thought it was just, hey, here you go.
You can go to this guy now.
But no, they were mean.
They were very vulgar with the words that they used.
And I mean, it's not something that I'm like, whoa, I didn't know this could happen.
It's a little expected when you hear it.
Yeah, I want to hear a little bit more from that particular part.
Lolita, can we bring you back to read this letter?
This is one that is written, as someone was describing some of the people on the ship who had been captured as they were being taken to the slave markets.
Washington, April 22, 1848.
Last evening, as I was passing the railroad depot, I saw a large number of colored people gathered around one of the cars, and from manifestations of grief among some of them, i was induced to draw near and ascertain the cause of it.
I found in the car towards which they were so eagerly gazing about fifty coloured people, some of whom were nearly as white as myself.
About half of them were females, a few of whom had but a slight tinge of African blood in the veins and were finely formed and beautiful.
The men were ironed together and the whole group looked sad and dejected.
At each end of the car stood two ruffianly-looking personages with large canes in their hands, and if their countenances were an index of their hearts, they were the very impersonation of hardened villainy itself.
In the middle of the car stood the notorious slave dealer of Baltimore Slater, who had purchased the men and women around him and was taking his departure for Georgia.
While observing this old, gray-headed villain, this dealer in the bodies and souls of men, the chaplain of the senate, chaplain henry slicer, entered the car and took his brother slater by the hand, chatted with him for some time and seemed to view the heart-rending scene before him with as little concern as we should look upon cattle.
Some of the colored people outside as well as in the car were weeping most bitterly.
I learned that many families were separated.
Wives were there to take leave of their husbands and husbands of their wives.
Children of their parents, brothers and sisters, shaking hands, perhaps for the last time.
Friends, parting with friends and the tenderest ties of humanity surrendered at the single bid of the inhuman slave broker before them.
A husband in the meridian of life begged to see the partner of his bosom.
He protested that she was free, that she had free papers and was torn from him and shut up in the jail.
He clambered up to one of the windows of the car to see his wife and as she was reaching forward her hand to him, the black-hearted villain Slater ordered him down.
He did not obey.
The husband and wife, with tears streaming down their cheeks, besought him to let them converse for the moment.
But no, a monster more hideous, hardened and savage than the blackest spirit of the pit, knocked them down from the car and ordered him away.
The bystanders could hardly restrain themselves from laying violent hands upon the brutes.
This is but a faint description of that scene, which took place within a few rods of the Capitol under enactments recognized by Congress.
Oh, what a revolting scene to a feeling heart.
John Slingerland, Albany, New York.
Thank you, Lolita.
Thanks so much.
Phoebe, I go back to you.
How much of this was new for you?
How much of this had you already been taught in school or learned outside of school?
Well, I was taught in school a little bit, but it wasn't like a really big thing that we learned about.
Just kind of like slaves are, we should not have slavery and all that stuff.
That's what we learned in school.
So what, after reading this book, what kind of surprised you or...
Well, I didn't know that they were treated, so I knew that they were treated badly.
But I never knew that they were treated this badly because they get hurt so much if they try to escape.
They can't even read or anything.
They can't learn to read anything.
They just pretty much like have to live on with their life and try to stay.
They have to like try to escape, kind of somehow if they can gareth.
How do they talk about slavery in england?
Well, I actually Oh, you went to school here too.
Oh, well, throw that question out the window.
Okay.
Tell me what you knew before you read this book.
In school, like her, we didn't learn a huge amount about slavery.
We learned a lot about the civil rights movement and stuff, but we just learned that slaves were considered property and about the abolitionist movement a little bit.
What surprised you after you read this book?
What did you learn that was new?
Well, I learned that I didn't know about how they were treated.
I knew they were treated poorly, but similar to her.
Again, I didn't know they treated this badly.
I think that's interesting that all three of you have brought that up about how the harsh treatment surprised you.
And I'm wondering about you know, I think that sometimes teachers and writers and librarians all worry that certain kinds of books are too harsh for kids.
And there's that balance between the harsh realities of life and the reality itself.
And so I don't know, what would be your advice?
Were there nightmares that followed this for you guys?
I mean...
No, you're all shaking your heads no.
So what would you?
I mean, where do you draw that line between making that reality real to kids versus just sort of glossing over it or making it easier to take?
I mean, how do you make that decision?
If I were to put you in charge of the World Candle and you were going to be writing out the curriculum for students in this area?
Where do you think?
What more information should kids be given?
Is this a good example of the kinds of details?
Is it the details that matter?
Well, it sort of depends on the age, which is pretty big.
You wouldn't wanna be hearing that when you're eight and nine years old.
Okay, it's sort of too much for you to take in.
You wanna go just step by step, and once you're a little bit older and more mature, then you wanna start bringing up those big topics, because it still needs to be known, because it's a big part of American history in general.
And it's, yeah.
Pippa, I'm making you the school superintendent now.
I think that children younger than maybe like 12 or something shouldn't like read really big books, because they probably won't understand it and they'll just think that something's going on.
But when you're older, you'll definitely understand it because you'll need to learn it anyhow.
Gareth?
Well, I agree with both of you.
I think that for people younger, like younger people, they should probably just gloss over things, but people do need to learn it sometime.
Well, let's talk about why.
I mean, here we are in the 21st century.
Emancipation came in 1865, so That's, you know, 150 years ago.
Talk about why these events are so important to us as Americans today in the 21st century.
Kendall?
Well, one big thing is because... Sorry.
One big thing is because racism is still something that's huge today.
It might not be as bad as slavery, but it's still going on and we might not be able to totally stop it.
I don't believe we can totally stop it, but it's still going on and it's still a big part of what we're doing today.
You know, a lot of people I don't think see a connection between slavery and racism.
They will say that, again, it happened long before my grandparents were around.
Why should that have anything to do with my relations between African Americans and other people today?
What do you say to that?
What I think is you were treated so differently.
And everyone else was because we were different.
We have a different color of skin.
We have different hair and everything.
And that's why we were shunned and we were slaves.
They're doing the same thing today, just not totally captivating us.
They're still treating us horribly.
Not everyone, of course, but those people are.
And it's just really sad.
That's why people in Baltimore were rioting a lot because of police brutality against African Americans.
And that's racism.
And that's just like they were doing back then.
Phoebe, what do you think about...
You know why this is so important today for us to look back at our dark history in America.
Well, because we don't want it to happen again.
Like we don't want anyone to start it.
And yeah, like he said, it's racism is like also a part of thing right now and we have to stop it.
But it's probably not going to happen because it's been going on since a while and slavery has ended and it has been going on since a while.
So yeah.
Garrett?
Well, I think that if people don't learn about things in the past, they're more likely to repeat things like that.
Maybe not actually enslaving people, but treating people poorly.
Yes, treating people poorly.
There is slavery going on in the world today, you know, but perhaps not on such a mass scale as we saw in America.
Yeah, it's happening overseas.
Yeah.
Well, let us do this.
Let's bring on our author and let us ask her some questions about this book.
Maybe some feelings.
She's hiding in the back of the room.
Let's have a big round of applause for Winifred Conley.
I'm going to give her a little bio though here.
She was born in Chevy Chase, Maryland, but moved across the river to Virginia.
Besides writing books, she has worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta India, and she has taught reading to inmates in prison.
And Winifred Conklin, thanks so much for coming in today.
Thank you.
So you guys got to get some questions ready.
You want me to start?
You should start.
All right, I'll start.
All right.
Tell us, how come this book?
Why did this book speak to you?
I love history.
I love writing about history.
And to me this was a great story because we had a 13-year-old girl And a lot of you are kind of in that same age range.
And I'm always looking for stories, particularly historical stories of importance that have protagonists or main characters that are the age of the readers.
Because my hope is that when you were reading the book, you were thinking, hmm, what would I do?
What would I run away or would I stay?
How would I respond to each of the challenges?
So sometimes history becomes something that you're talking about.
You know, you learn it in school and you just learn a certain part of it.
But my hope was with the book.
By featuring one history following Emily through the story, it would help you relate to her as a full-blown character and imagine how she might have been feeling.
Well, how did you first hear about The Pearl?
I first learned about it walking around the streets of Southwest DC and they have those little history signs here and there.
Right.
And I actually, for a time, lived in Old Town Alexandria.
And right now they have a statue of the two girls.
But that is fairly new.
It's only been there for about maybe five years or so.
And I learned about, they're actually still slave pens.
On Duke Street, there was a whole strip along there.
And currently the building still stands.
The tall wall where the slaves were behind that wall.
The wall is down, but the house itself is still there and has an insurance building in it right now.
Wow.
It's so strange to me coming, again, from California.
The history is so different when suddenly you walk down the streets and you see stuff.
To me, it somehow makes it somehow much more real.
How did you do your research?
I did a lot of research over time.
This was a great story because of the connection.
We talked about Henry Ward Beecher, whose sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe.
And she wrote a very, very important book called Uncle Tom's Cabin.
And she wrote the book and it changed, opened the world's eyes about what was going on in slavery.
And people didn't believe it.
So she did another book two years later called A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.
And when she was doing the research for The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, she interviewed Emily and Mary and Mother Amelia.
So we have kind of like an oral history account of this history.
And it's fabulous because it was recorded in, you know, 1850.
So it's a primary source from the time that captured their voices.
So that's why within the book, anything that has direct quotes around it, those are not my words.
Those are the words as recorded by people in history.
Although we should say, when we say recorded, you're talking about they wrote it down.
They wrote it down.
It didn't mean they had a tape recorder because they didn't have tape recorders.
They were based on her notes from her interview at the time.
And also the ship captain, you talked about him, he wrote an autobiography.
So some of the details about the escape at night and what the weather conditions were like and when they snuck away, and some of the dialogue and things that happened on board the ship.
He were very lucky to have his actual records where he wrote down everything that happened that night.
So between primarily those two excellent sources, It's very unusual to have such good primary source material.
You guys got some questions for our writer?
I have a question.
All right, go ahead.
Where did you get all the images in the book?
Because they were like really long time ago.
I was so grateful to find those images because I think the pictures really help.
You know, Just like you were saying about, it's a very disturbing image and I wondered whether I should put it in.
The man with the whip marks all over his back.
It's a very classic image and I thought, is that too scary?
I really wasn't sure.
And I spoke to the editor and we you know, As you, I believe Kendall said earlier, that's the real history.
That is, in fact, what happened.
So it's important to try to make it real.
Library of Congress has a lot of these photographs.
And there were certain images that I hunted down.
And then it's important to get the rights of the person who owns the photograph.
So it's a really tricky process.
But we're really lucky that for a lot of this history Library of Congress has those photographs available.
Go ahead, Kendall.
In writing the book, how did you feel when you got to the end?
I really love the ending of the book.
I love the fact that it opens with Amelia, the mother, who had 14 children.
And she, as you had talked earlier, said you know, don't marry until to have children who would become slaves.
And it ends with Emily's marriage and Emily's promise of a family.
And at the wedding, 13 out of 14 of those children are free.
And it's not in the book, but it's very likely the 14th was also free.
But the documentation was not quite as clear.
But we believe that he was actually freed and moved to Alabama.
But it couldn't be proven, so it's not in the book.
Did you choose this story?
Because I don't want to say it had a happy ending, but it's a hard topic to write about, to talk about, to look at closely.
It is so depressing and sad and horrific.
I mean, did you deliberately choose a story that had a better outcome?
Yes, absolutely.
It was the combination of the fact that you've got a young person, so you can imagine her journey.
It also has good documentation.
And there are a lot of horrible things that almost happened that didn't.
So she, you know... could have been freed and she was brought back.
So we know people were beaten, but Emily was not beaten.
We know that some of them were sold into inappropriate things in the South, and that did not happen to her.
We know there was an outbreak of yellow fever, but she was pulled away before that happened.
So there were a lot of things that we acknowledge happened, but we don't have to live through it by watching those things happen to Emily.
So that is what made it a perfect story for me, because you can present exactly what happened as it happened and not take it too far.
Because, as you were saying, you want to tell the truth, you want to put it all out there, but it's also really scary.
And some of those things are scary for people of any age.
So it can acknowledge that history without making it as scary.
By the way, there's an effort to rebuild the Pearl, the boat down in southwest Washington DC and they're having a fundraiser in November.
And if anyone listening would like more information, we will have a link on our website, which is bookclubforkidsorg.
It's a great place to find recommendations for books.
It's a great place to find earlier podcasts.
So it's your go-to website.
Well, you know, we like to spend time on Book Club for Kids talking about all of our favorite books.
And I'm going to ask our audience if they have a favorite book they'd like to talk about.
But I'm going to start right now with our readers.
My favorite book is Dork Diaries because I can, like, relate to it.
Tell me why.
Because in school, like, I have, like, not too many friends and, yeah.
And it's funny too, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Kendall, favorite book?
My favorite book is a book called Ungifted and it was one of the Virginia Reader's Choices last year.
I don't know that book.
Tell me.
Just give me one sentence.
What's it about?
It's about a boy, and he does something horrible to the school gym.
Somehow in a mix-up, instead of him getting expelled, he gets sent to basically the top advanced school all the way up in DC.
So he's on the top of the learning board and yeah, he has to learn there from now on.
That's a good book.
It sounds like a good book.
Gareth, have you thought of one?
Um, Doesn't even have to be your very favorite.
Just like what's a book you... I like the Percy Jackson books.
Of course.
Are you a big Greek God fan?
Yeah.
And tell me what... I like all kinds of mythology.
We did Hound of Rowan was one of our earlier books, which draws on Celtic mythology.
There's a lot of Celtic, which isn't one that you normally see.
Who's your favorite Greek God? know there's too many there's too many to name well let's bring our um can we bring winifred back up here conklin our our writer and ask her to pick her favorite book i would say for you know younger readers rather than perhaps that trashy novel we know you hide in your car The book that made me fall in love with writing for kids was Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie.
I love fiction that kind of has so much heart, and it just, to this day, it makes me feel good.
Okay, great.
Lolita, you got a favorite book from when you were these guys' age?
One of my favorite authors as a young person was and probably a little younger than these guys, but I think his works are timely is Shel Silverstein.
Oh, of course.
Anything that he wrote, I loved.
I loved the whimsy of it and the fantasy of it and the honesty of it.
So, yeah, he was one of my faves.
The giving tree is just so poignant.
You can read it as a young person and sort of kind of get it.
And then as you age, you get it even more.
And it's one of those books.
It's a little kid's book but it just might as well be for adults because it's a giving book.
So there you have it.
Great suggestion.
Thank you very much.
All right, I see someone in the audience who's going to come up and tell me her favorite book.
I'm even going to give you my microphone, because she's a little shorter and may not be able to reach up there.
Tell us your name.
My name's Eva.
Eva, where do you go to school?
Greenbrier West.
Okay, and that's in Virginia.
What's your favorite book?
The Night on the Titanic.
Oh, tell me about that.
The reason I like it is because I like adventurous books and any Titanic book.
It was really fun to read, too.
Well, does it make you scared to go on a boat?
No?
Why not?
Well, probably because there's no icebergs around Virginia.
So have you seen the movie?
No.
Oh, okay.
Why the interest in the Titanic?
I'm not really sure.
Yeah, I mean, I always find that interesting that a lot of people are really interested in that particular shipwreck.
You know that the ship goes down.
What was it about the story that captured your imagination that people pretty much said that it was unsinkable, and then I think it was the first night, and then they just crashed.
They did.
They did.
Have you been to see the Titanic Memorial in Washington?
Oh, you should go see it.
It's actually pretty close on the waterfront to where the Pearl is sailed from.
It's right down the way and there's this and it's so interesting because there's it's a statue and it's to the men who gave up their seats to the women and children so they could live.
You know, all the men that died on the ship.
So it's a picture of this guy and he's standing here this arms out like this, which is the image in the movie the Titanic.
There's that image from the movie of Jack and Rose in the front of the boat.
And she's standing with her arms out like that.
And it looks just like that statue.
And I am sure that James Cameron went and saw that Titanic statue in Washington DC and got that idea for the movie.
But I'm not sure.
But that's what I think.
So you should go see the statue.
And there's another Titanic memorial really close to the White House, by where they have the Christmas tree every year on the Ellipse.
It's to a very famous painter and then a guy who worked for President Taft who went down on the ship as well.
It's a place where you could bring your horse to get a drink of water.
That's the memorial they gave to, I don't know why.
I guess because it was practical.
That's what it is.
It's a horse drinking fountain.
Thank you for sharing with us.
Anybody else out there want to come up and share a book?
I won't force you, but...
Your name?
Hi, my name is Tiffany and I'm originally a primary teacher, so I love books that you can read as a child and then read as an adult and get a totally different interpretation of it.
It still connects at those different stages of life.
Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go is my absolute favorite book of all time.
Why?
It connects.
When you're young, you can make those connections and you can relate to the different stages.
But when you're older it's a totally different connection and you see the various stages of life, but it always it has a, a message that it will go on and it'll be fine.
You will go through those really high places where everyone's with you and you're enjoying it.
You're having a wonderful time.
You're the leader of the pack.
You'll have those times where you're alone, where you're playing those games only with yourself, but you'll still continue to survive and thrive.
And I love the message for our children as well as adults.
Great.
Thanks, Tiffany.
I appreciate that.
I've got another one coming up.
Come on up.
Oh, he's going to take the plunge.
I always like this because I get a great book list out of this.
Hello, everybody.
My name is Vishal Dasari.
And one of my favorite books, like, one of my earlier favorite books would be, like, Eragon.
Because I like the book, mostly because it's one of my first fiction books that I actually chose to pick up and read.
So, you know, it's like one of those meaningful books for me.
Even though I can't remember much of it right now.
Isn't that part of a whole series, though?
It is part of a whole series.
Did you go on to read the series?
I think I read the second book and just sort of stopped.
I mean, what can I say?
Well, do you still read for pleasure now?
Because you're in the midst of school when you have to read all kinds of hard stuff.
Oh, yeah, like the books that they give me.
I enjoy reading those books.
So those are like my pleasure books in a sense.
Well, that's encouraging.
Come on up.
Hi, my name is Todd, and one of my favorite books is Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Wow.
I'm originally from Missouri, so growing up near the Mississippi, you know it's pretty evocative for me.
Like Tiffany was saying, you read it as a kid and then when you grow up you see different things into it.
So part of it is it's evocative, and also Huckleberry Finn's relationship with Jim, which is really funny at times.
I mean, their interaction is really, really funny, but also very genuine.
So anyway, that and Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
All right.
We've got a vote for Mark Twain here.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Well, you know, we always like to ask everybody that question.
What is your favorite book?
And if you are listening and you want to be on the Book Club for Kids podcast, all you have to do is send us an email or record yourself on the voice memo app on your mom or dad's smartphone.
All you do is give us your first name, the city where you live, the name of the book you love and why you like it.
And then you email the voice memo to bookclub4kidspodcast at gmail.com.
That's bookclub4kidspodcast at gmail.com.
And if you are looking for a good book, well, we've got lots of suggestions.
You just have to check out our website. bookclub4kids.org.
And please, you can like us on Facebook.
You can subscribe on iTunes, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and also on Stitcher.
So help us spread the word about Book Club for Kids.
I'm Kitty Felde, and we have thanks this week to Jonathan Jensen, who composed and performed our music, to Kara Oakleaf and Bill Miller at Fall for the Book for inviting us to come today, to our writer Winifred Conkling and our celebrity reader Lolita Marie and, of course, thanks to our readers Gareth Kendall and Viva.
Thanks, you guys.
Appreciate that.
And thanks as well to this wonderful audience who turned out in the rain here at Fall for the Book.
Subscribe now to Book Club for Kids on iTunes or add us to your playlist on Stitcher and you will never miss an episode.
And again, help us spread the word about the show to your friends, your teachers, librarians and, of course, our most important audience, all you kids who love reading.
Thanks again for listening.
And, by the way, for Tales of Contemporary Washington DC, Check out our other podcast, The Fina Mendoza Mysteries.
It's the story of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman who solves mysteries on Capitol Hill, giving us a behind-the-scenes peek at Congress and the way government works.
Or doesn't work.
That's The Fina Mendoza Mysteries.
