It's the Book Club for Kids.
The Book Club for Kids.
The Book Club for Kids.
The Book Club for Kids.
It's the Book Club for Kids podcast.
Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
This week we get an insider's view of the White House from fictional and historical kids who got to live there.
Who is your father, she asked suspiciously.
Teddy.
Teddy who?
Teddy Roosevelt.
That's our celebrity reader, actress Elizabeth Logan.
The book is White House Clubhouse, and its writer knows quite a bit about life in the White House.
Sean O'Brien was a speechwriter for then Vice President Joe Biden.
It became the big project to work on after the Obama administration ended and I had a lot of time on my hands.
The book takes place during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.
Our readers from Fairfax Virginia, just outside of Washington DC, say some of Roosevelt's mottos ring true to them today.
Dare greatly is kind of like, if you never ask, you won't know the answer.
So dare to ask the questions, dare to do the things that other people are too scared to do.
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, but first, let's meet our readers.
Hello, my name is Rosalie.
Hello, my name is Serena.
Hello, my name is Nevin.
Hello, my name is Tessa.
Hello, my name is Eleanor and we're sixth graders at Oakview Elementary School in Fairfax, Virginia.
The book is The White House Clubhouse, so what's it about?
Marissa and Clara, who are two young girls that travel through time to other kids in the White House.
They travel back into Teddy Roosevelt's time of being president and they go on a really thrilling adventure to save families tree.
Their mission is to save a redwood tree that's going to be chopped down for lumber.
It's just really important to Marissa and Clara and this is why they go on the mission and they want to get back to their White House.
So this book takes place in Washington DC on a train crossing the country.
It's a hundred something years ago.
And California.
Well, how many of those places have you guys been to?
I've been to California and I washington dc.
Have you seen the redwood trees?
Yes, i have.
How would you describe them?
Well, it's like i went to a park and they were kind of dressed up, i guess, so they were enhanced, but they're really big and tall and thick and really pretty.
Who has toured the white house in your trips to dc?
Um, i've actually lived in washington dc and been into the white house like two times for birthday parties.
Yeah, Wait a minute.
You went to birthday parties?
Who did you know?
Just this girl that scheduled a tour in the White House.
So we meet the family of Theodore Roosevelt.
Who wants to describe the Roosevelt clan?
It's very different because you have some kids who are very like energetic and they love to like have fun with their dad.
And then you have the sisters that are very like I like the one sister that's very like formal and she's very like I can do everything.
Like I want to help my dad do his work.
Well, let's hear a scene from the book where our present day daughters of the president meet the children of a president from the 1900s.
Our celebrity reader is actress Elizabeth Logan.
She didn't know everyone working in the White House but she was pretty sure she knew everyone with access to the family residence.
Is your father, she asked suspiciously.
Teddy, said the boy.
A distant train whistle wailed beyond the open window, a horse neighed close by teddy who asked marissa.
The boy gave her a funny smile as if he thought she was crazy.
Everybody knows teddy.
Well, i don't answered marissa.
Teddy roosevelt, said the boy, rolling his eyes.
What? asked Clara from under the table.
Marissa cautiously took the newspaper page out of her pocket and unfolded it.
March 1st, 1903.
The paper was crisp and new.
That's mine, the boy said, and he ran over and pointed at the crayon marks on the newspaper.
I was coloring it in when, oh, He looked at Marissa.
His eyebrows shot up.
That was you!
He grinned, revealing two missing front teeth.
You came from the clubhouse!
And you knocked over the chair and ran away, said Clara as she emerged from under the table.
I did!
I did! said the boy, looking at Clara and bouncing up and down in excitement.
I was by myself in the clubhouse because my brother Archie is sick and he can't play.
And my other brothers Kermit and Ted are at boring school.
Boring school, asked Clara.
Not boring school, the boy said impatiently.
Boring school.
Boarding school, said Marissa.
Right, the boy said. trying to enunciate against the gap in his teeth.
Boring school.
And my sister, Ethel, says I'm annoying, the boy continued.
And my other sister, Alice, is almost a grown-up because she had a different mother.
Quentin said, an elegant female voice.
Is there any more of my personal business you'd like to spill to wandering strangers?
A beautiful young woman walked through the lobby doorway.
Her old-fashioned dress was light blue with a high-laced collar that went right up to her chin.
Hello, Alice, Quentin said.
He put one hand next to his mouth and loudly whispered.
Else would you describe it?
I mean, it's kind of a little of a lot of things.
It's like a circle of life and how the girls save a tree that helps save their mother, which leads to them being born and their life starting.
I feel like it connects like a lot of characters in the book, not only like marissa and claire, the main characters, but it like ends up being a story where there are a lot of problems but also a lot of solutions in the end, and there's also like A key blanket in the story that ties back to present day as well as in the time that Marissa and Clara travel to.
So it's kind of cool how you can see different parts of the history affecting the present day.
Yeah, and Marissa and Clara not only save themselves by going back into time, they also save the family and connect Ethel and Quentin back with Roosevelt.
He are on the camping trip and they seem very happy after that.
Quite the character, Theodore Roosevelt.
Talk a little bit about how he appears in this book.
At first he's very like mad and he's very angry because he was like working out and the kids kind of ran through his area.
But as the story goes on, we can see that he's very stiff and then he becomes more like loose and he starts to go back to his former self, where he's very fun.
He loves the outdoors.
He wants to save it.
Do we like him as a character?
Do we like them all as characters?
I mean, who's your favorite?
I'd say I like Clara the best because she reminds me of a lot of characters in books, like the fun younger sister that's like outgoing kind of, and thinks she can do anything, like how she climbed the tree when Quentin challenged her.
And I feel like she just brought a lot of humor to the story.
And I also feel like Clara is my favorite too, because she was really brave at the end to go sit in the redwood tree to like protect it from getting cut down, and I just feel like it adds a lot to the story because like they probably would have cut it down if she wasn't up there.
I really like the like.
I think they said it was like the Swedish guy who was up in the tree too.
Oh, the Scottish guy yeah, he was up in the tree with Clara and he was just like, oh yeah, hi down there.
Like he acted like it was no big deal.
He's like oh yeah, there's a storm coming, nice storm.
And he's just kind of like very chill and very relaxed and he's really humorous too.
You know who I think that is?
They didn't give him a name.
They didn't identify him in the book, did they?
I think that was John Muir.
I think in the back of the book it said characters he was inspired by and John Muir was one of them.
But he wasn't John Muir.
All right.
Well, that's who I thought it was was John Muir, because he and Theodore Roosevelt.
That was where the whole idea for the national parks kind of got cooked up.
One of our benchmark topics was about John Muir.
So you guys know about John Muir.
Well, what can you tell the rest of us that wasn't true versus what was in the book?
He, like, hiked down many paths, I think.
Yeah.
Well, let's go over some of the sayings that are bandied about in this book.
One of them is in the arena, in the arena.
What does it mean?
I think that means like you're in the arena of life and you just kind of got to fight your way through life.
Like you got to win your own battles and you got to push through.
Have you had to do that yourself?
Um Yeah, I do gymnastics and I have some mental blocks and I constantly have to like try and push myself.
Yeah, I play soccer and there are like a bunch of tournaments and stuff and games and you know, when you lose you just got to pick yourself back up and go and win the next tournament.
Yeah, I play basketball and I also have a lot of tournaments, so like it's just tough because sometimes my team loses by a lot or we win by a lot.
So it's just like life is a battle, so you just have to be ready for what could come at you.
I do ice skating and one of the things I did was a group ice show which one kid wasn't cooperating and somehow made every single kid fall in the middle of what we were trying to rehearse.
So we all had to try to recover and continue.
Besides sports, like going into middle school next year.
I think it's just you have to be open to meeting new people and putting yourself out there in the arena.
One of the other things is dare greatly.
That was another one that kept being mentioned over and over again.
Do you dare greatly at anything?
Connecting to in the arena.
Like dare greatly is when you're in the arena, you not only have to like put yourself in it, but you also have to like dare to stay in it and like make choices that will like keep you in it and like benefit your goals.
Dare greatly is kind of like, if you never ask, you won't know the answer.
So dare to ask the questions, dare to do the things that other people are too scared to do.
You can like dare to wear what you want, like act how you want, have your own like bold personality because like, if you just try and like fit in with everybody and you're not like daring to be yourself, then like life would be so boring.
So I feel like you just do what you want as long as it's safe and stuff.
Like, yeah.
You can also like climb a tree, like Clara did, to just prove yourself that you can do stuff that other people can't, and you can succeed.
What's the tree, not a literal tree, but what is the tree that you would dare to climb?
I would dare myself to read more because, even though I love reading, I don't make time for it in my day.
So I would just try to put reading first in my day.
Well, what's your favorite part of the book?
My favorite part is when Claire throws up over the tree on the person below, because I found that very entertaining when she just threw up.
Also like the part where, like Roosevelt comes in at the end and he kind of just makes the change of like we're keeping the tree, and then he kind of I feel like his character really developed at that point and I liked how you could see his character development throughout the book.
You know that's an interesting question.
He's such a larger-than-life character and, as you say, you actually saw character development in him.
Did we see character development in anybody else?
I think Marissa's character development, because at the beginning of the book she really hates the White House and she just doesn't want to live there.
She wants to go back to California.
But at the end of the book she finally calls the White House her home and she feels like she belongs there now.
A lot of kids' books are written from first person, so that's a different kind of style.
I mean, compare that to the third person that's used in this book and different perspectives.
So this book.
It showed bits of their perspective, but personally I really liked first person because then you can really see the person and their whole thoughts, everything they're feeling and everything they're seeing.
But then I also liked that in third person you could see everyone's thoughts and what they thought, without saying dialogue.
But in first person it's kind of like easier to complete, like rosalie said, easier to complete the um like thoughts and sentences from one person.
But in third person you do get that variety.
Oftentimes books are one genre, like fantasy, or historical or contemporary.
This book is kind of crossing a bunch of lines.
How did that?
How did that work?
I think it worked very well because it brought like emotions from the modern time period where Clara and Marissa were, and it brought them over to how they translated to the olden times and like how everything was different for them.
But it still all came back to a resolution of the story.
And I feel like it.
Also having like the fantasy element of the time traveling was helpful to the characters because it led to the resolution as well.
You guys got some questions for our writer, Sean O'Brien?
What gave you the inspiration to write this book and have the multi-genre?
I was working in the White House as a speechwriter for the vice president at the time, Joe Biden.
And my kids, who were little at the time kindergarten level We were doing a whole lot of reading ourselves and getting into history.
And we actually read a book about presidential pets.
And that led us to some interesting stories about, for example, the Roosevelt kids bringing a pony up to the second floor of the White House.
A lot of these things that really happened.
And in my spare time from speech writing I started getting into kind of writing this stuff down as a book fiction idea.
What if there were a couple of kids who lived in the White House who could go back in time and work with other kids who had been there?
And a lot of those ideas came from my kids, Jay and Claire.
And this idea of a hidden clubhouse and a secret passage really just kind of spiraled in.
And so it became the big project to work on after the Obama administration ended.
And I had a in the book inspired after actual people or are they just from your imagination?
They came from my imagination.
They're you know.
I mean there's some partial inspiration in my own kids, but really they kind of took on a life of their own pretty soon after I started writing it.
So they became their own distinct kids, made a couple different choices.
You know where they were from.
We thought maybe they would be from California.
All those things are kind of choices made that are important, but not central to the plot.
Well, the central is just having these two kids who get thrown into this unusual situation that only about 40 other kids in history have faced.
You know, it's well documented both what they ended up doing, those real kids, how they ended up using this position to do good but also just kind of to choose to live their own lives.
So they are fictional characters, but they're kind of based on a lot of different things coming together.
Did you do research like in the White House, like research on the book, to where the table was, how they got to the secret hideout and like the objects in the book?
That is a great question.
Yeah, so for White House Clubhouse.
A lot of the research that I did was building off of whatever was an interesting story.
So we start off with that presidential pets book and that's just two pages about a pony going up to the second floor.
So then I started reading some biographies of Teddy Roosevelt.
And I've always loved biographies.
It's just as pleasure reading.
I did that as a kid, too.
But at some point, if I was parking my car and the whole South Lawn is shut down and you have to walk around, at some point, I asked a Secret Service agent, you know, is there an event going on?
He just kind of said, no, the kids are playing.
And so just that's something you wouldn't think of, right?
But it kind of really sparks your interest.
Boy, what would it be like if you just want to go outside and play and that initiates a whole Secret Service protocol?
So I knew some of those things.
But diving in on, for example, Teddy Roosevelt coming into his family, it was a matter of learning some more about what he did and finding a time to center too.
We'd already chosen the presidency, but not exactly when.
1903, April of 1903 became the time because there was this train trip that he took.
Even just visiting my cousin Roger out in Merced California, I learned some more about how, when Roosevelt had a three-day camping trip with John Muir, that ended up really kind of sparking more of his interest in bolstering national parks to create a whole national system.
And so I thought, okay, Maybe these kids in a story, they can help make that happen.
They can push it along.
Also though, finding out about the characters of the individual kids, how they used to play pranks, how they used to— we ended up writing in a lot of that into the stories.
How long did the writing process take and what was, how did you get the idea for the book?
Yeah, well, it took a while.
Yeah, I mean, I think the first year process, you know, probably took about six months to come up with a full draft.
But then over the space of six years was the revisions.
And what's interesting actually is that when I ended up writing the second book, that only took about six months.
And so it helps, when you already know who your editor is, you already kind of have some experience and you really know who your characters are at that point.
Do you have a particularly favorite speech you've written?
I really like the one that I did for Vice President Biden on the anniversary of the Star Spangled Banner.
It was September 14, 2014, which was 200 years after the attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor.
And that was really an opportunity.
He was going to be on live TV.
He was going to be constrained within five minutes.
He normally would speak far longer on everything.
He was not somebody that we ever did really quick hit things for.
But this is national TV and we'll be able to keep him in there.
So I wrote it with a lot of rhetorical devices that I wouldn't normally mix into a Biden speech, really kind of making every single line almost more like a John F Kennedy speech, where it's just like rhyming and building off the same things.
It's literally about flag waving and just continually asking the same question.
That's in the national anthem, which is does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave?
And so it's yet wave over Biden.
Three firemen at 9-11.
Does it yet wave over one astronaut on the moon?
All of that sort of stuff.
And it was really fun to work into that.
And then it ends up tying in with what became the second book, because I later went and worked for the Secretary of the Navy and I learned a whole lot of Navy and Marine Corps history about the War of 1812, which is a war that most people don't know much about.
But it's so relevant, particularly here in Washington, D.C.
We're surrounded by it.
We're two blocks away from the street that the British marched down, Maryland Avenue.
And so it was really fun to be able to kind of tie that speech in with then what I did later in the Pentagon, to then bringing these stories to life in the second book, which is White House on Fire.
Well, now we come to the time when I ask the hardest question, which is what is your favorite book of all times and why?
My favorite book is The Chronicles of Weatherbyte by Anna James, because Anna James is my favorite author.
She also writes the Pages & Co. series, and I like how she always has fantasy tied in, and Pages & Co. is set in both the real world and the fictional world of traveling through books.
I really like Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan because it's also a multi-perspective book and it just has so many details and it kind of changed me when I finished that whole book.
Wow, that's a strong statement.
It changed me once I finished the book.
How?
It just I mean, after looking at all those different time periods because one it was like World War II, the Great Depression and then the immigration it just changed me about how like I feel about those characters and the time periods.
My favorite book is probably Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, yeah.
I read that back in third grade I think, and I've always considered it my favorite book because I just love the story and I love the characters and just everything that happens.
My favorite book is Wonder, because I experienced a lot of emotions reading that book and it was really just a roller coaster of up and down like happy and then I'm sad and I feel like it was powerful because it changed my perspective on people who have that disability.
It really made me like experience what the main character August Pullman was experiencing.
And that was one of our Book Club for Kids podcast episodes, so I will include a link to it on the website and in the show notes.
Favorite book, Rosalie?
Well, I actually have a favorite series.
This is a hard choice, but I just finished recently reading the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare and it was really good.
I love fantasy and I love the entire plot line because there are several times where, like times where I was just like so sad and then really happy and laughing.
And it was a really well written book.
What about you, Sean O'Brien?
What's your favorite book?
I think probably my favorite book overall is a book called All the King's Men, which is a fictionalized biography of Huey Long, who was a politician in Louisiana in the 30s.
And, by the way, he's in book three which is coming out in september.
That's going to be about eleanor and franklin roosevelt.
It really i like the book because it flows and it's got a lot of characters in it and it also kind of feels kind of relevant because the main character in there is, you know, the chief of staff to a politician, which was me for five years.
So, hey guys, this is elizabeth.
I thought it would be fun to to talk about one of my favorite books, charlotte's webb.
I love that book so much.
And one of the things I absolutely love about it are the illustrations.
They're so alive and they capture the characters of all the different animals so well.
You know, I mean just the expressions on Wilbur's face, you know, and the way he captures his body fleeing.
You know, it's just so vivid.
And of course, you know, it's all because of the wonderful descriptions coming from E.B.
White, the author.
I love the whole story.
I love how Charlotte is so caring and so determined to make sure that Wilbur will not be slaughtered and that she comes up with this brilliant plan.
You know, by weaving this massive web and you know, having this one word, that everybody goes oh my god, what is this?
And they treat it like a miracle.
I actually, when I first read it, I didn't have my own copy.
It was a copy borrowed from a friend.
And I really didn't want to give the book back.
And so the morning that I had to give it back, I got up early and I started to copy out the book by hand with a pencil on paper.
And you know I'd only got a few pages written down when my you know parents said OK, you got a hand over the book, got to give it back.
Christmas came and I got a present and I opened it up and it was Charlotte's Web.
And I still have that copy of Charlotte's Web to this day.
And I still read it every so often have a list of everybody's favorite books at our website bookclubforkidsorg, and if you have a favorite book, you can be on the book club for kids podcast too.
Just have your teacher, parent or librarian send us an email to kitty at bookclubforkidsorg and we will send you all the information.
That's kitty at bookclubforkidsorg.
Thanks this week to producer chad.
Francis brandon baker composed our theme with additional music from andrew walton.
Emma Steinkellner designed our logo.
Thanks to our writer, Sean O'Brien, and our celebrity reader, actress Elizabeth Logan.
And thanks to our readers this week Rosalie Serena Nevin, Tessa Eleanor and their librarian, Marcy Atkins, from Oakview Elementary School in Fairfax, Virginia.
If you're looking for reading tips, sign up for our free newsletter at the website bookclubforkidsorg.
I'm Kitty Felde.
Thanks so much for listening.
