Hi, I'm Kitty Felde. We have been celebrating 10 years of podcasting on The Book Club for Kids. counting down our top 10 episodes, the episodes you have downloaded and listened to more than any others.
Well, today we reach, and drumroll please, our number one show of the decade.
It's Shannon Messinger's keeper of the lost cities.
Give a listen. It's the book club for kids.
The book club for kids. It's the book club for kids.
It's the Book Club for Kids podcast. Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
How does a telepathic girl from San Diego end up in a world surrounded by mythical creatures like elves?
This week, our readers from Maryland chose our book, Keeper of the Lost Cities.
Maya first read the book, and then she recommended it to Olivia, and then Olivia, she recommended it to me, sort of.
It's a world where the rules of physics don't apply.
Haven't you heard of the theory of relativity?
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Who came up with that? Albert Einstein? Never heard of him.
That's our celebrity reader, All Things Considered host, Nick Roman.
Our writer, Shannon Messenger, says the book was inspired by two very different sources.
The inspiration came from a number of different places, but two of the big ones were Lord of the Rings and X-Men.
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, Catherine, Maya, and Olivia, all of them fifth graders at St.
Elizabeth School in Rockville, Maryland.
The book we chose is Keeper of the Lost Cities.
In the book, a 12 year old girl named Sophie who lived with humans until she met a mysterious boy in a museum on a field trip. who kind of like attacked her by asking her questions that she didn't want to answer.
And then he took her to a land of elves and showed her where she truly belonged.
And she learned all the things about elves and her future and a little bit about her past.
So are these elves like the kind you see in the Will Ferrell movie?
No, they don't look anything like it. They don't have pointy ears until they get like old and they're like really pretty and really smart.
They're given a birth fund, so they have infinite money and almost infinite lifespans.
They also are born with special abilities or some of them aren't and they're labeled as talentless and That's just mean.
It's not only mean. What happens to them?
They don't get to do special courses at school.
And they don't get good jobs. They get the job poop scooper.
Let's talk about Sophie's new life. How different is it from, oh, let's say from your life.
So they live in big crystal mansions. You don't live in a big crystal mansion?
No. They can like teleport and it's really cool.
Like their land is really pretty and they have really fresh air.
They're known to be really peaceful people, so they don't have police and stuff like that there.
Oh, if you... Do something really bad, you'll be exiled and cast into a land of a school where you're banished from. the whole entire world of elves.
Well, how would you describe this book to somebody then?
It's a fantasy book, so many things in it aren't real.
Well, most things aren't real in it. Almost everything isn't real.
Well, it has all these different powers, and when I first read the series, I was waiting to find out what other powers the elves had.
I found them really cool. Well, let's say you were chosen to go to this particular school, Foxfire, which gift do you wish that you could discover that you had?
Which one would you choose if you could choose it?
Well, I don't really have a specific one I would like, because they all sound really cool. like communicating with other people and like their mind.
It's really cool. I think I'd want to be a hydrokinetic.
You have to explain what that is. You can manipulate water to do what you want it to do.
What would you like to do with water? I don't know.
It just sounds cool. I want to be a pirate.
Pyrokinetic. Yeah, because they... Are really obsessed with fire.
And they're like immune to it. That just sounds cool.
Are you obsessed with fire? No. If I couldn't communicate with other people, I want to be a vanisher, because you can turn invisible and go through walls.
And that's really, really cool. Let's hear a scene from the book where Sophie is trying to make sense of this new world.
Our celebrity reader is Nick Roman from public radio station KPCC in Pasadena.
Where are we? our capital. We call it eternalia, but you might have heard it called Shangri-La before.
"'Shangri-La,' she repeated, shaking her head.
"'Shangri-La is real?' All the lost cities are real, but not how you picture them, I'm sure.
Human stories rarely get anything right.
Think of all the ridiculous things you've heard about elves.
She had to laugh at that, and the sharp burst of sound echoed off the trees.
It was so quiet there, just the gentle breeze brushing her face and the soft murmur of the river.
No traffic, no chatter, no hammering unspoken thoughts.
She could get very used to the silence, but it felt strange, too, like something was missing.
Where is everyone, she asked, rising on her tiptoes to get a better view of the city.
The streets were a ghost town. Fitz pointed to a domed building that towered over all the others.
The green stones of its walls looked like giant emeralds, but for some reason the building sparkled less than all the others.
It looked like a serious place for serious things.
See the blue banner flying? That means a tribunal is in progress.
Everyone's watching the proceedings. a tribunal, when the council, basically our royalty, holds a hearing, to decide if someone's broken a law.
They're kind of a big deal when they happen.
Why? He shrugged. Laws are rarely broken.
Well, that was different. Humans broke the law all the time.
She shook her head. Was she really thinking of humans as something other?
But how else could she explain where she was?
She tried to wrap her mind around the idea, tried to force it to make sense.
So, she said, cringing over her ridiculous next question, this is magic?
Fitz laughed, a full-body laugh, like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.
She glared at him. It couldn't be that funny.
No, he said when he regained control. Magic is a stupid idea humans came up with to try to explain things they couldn't understand.
Okay, she said, trying to cling to the remaining strands of her sanity.
Then how can we be here when five minutes ago we were in San Diego?
He held the Pathfinder up to the sun. casting a ray of light onto his hand.
Light leaping, we hitched a ride on a beam of light that was headed straight here.
Well that's impossible. Is it? Yeah, you need infinite energy for light travel.
Haven't you heard of the theory of relativity?
She thought she had stumped him with that one, but he just laughed again.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Who came up with that? Uh, Albert Einstein?
Huh? Never heard of him, but he was wrong.
He'd never heard of Albert Einstein? The theory of relativity was dumb?
She wasn't sure how to argue. He seemed so ridiculously confident.
It was unnerving. Is Sophie's school similar to your middle school?
Kind of. well, but they do have special courses for their own abilities in the afternoon.
Other than that, they have pretty similar school subjects like history and PE and stuff like that.
But in PE, they do things with their minds and brains and telekinesis.
They're vegetarians. So they don't eat meat because they think that's wrong.
So we have like... is blob of vegetables, and it tastes like human food.
So there's some that taste like pizza and cheeseburgers.
Would you rather eat the hamburger holding onto it and the pizza that looks like a pizza, or would you be okay with the way they're serving these foods?
I'd rather eat it like how I'm used to it because otherwise like if it's a blob then I don't know what I'm going to Find out what it's going to taste like.
You might find out that it's like disgusting tasting or something like that.
It might be something you really hate. Like vegetables.
You hate vegetables? Yes. Every vegetable?
Yes. Not one you like? I like carrots. Who chose the book?
Maya first read the book, and then she recommended it to Olivia, and then Olivia, she recommended it to me, sort of.
I saw her reading it, so I decided it looked okay.
And it was good. Well, why did you first pick it up, Maya?
I went to the bookstore and I saw it and read the back and thought, this might be good.
So what'd you say to Olivia to make her excited about it?
I guess I didn't really say anything, I think she just saw me reading it.
I was bored and I finished reading a different book.
So I went through a different one and I saw that she had been reading that one for like five months.
It was like two. you start in September good point do you guys like fantasy is that your favorite genre all three of you Yes.
Why? Well, because it would never happen in real life, and most of the experiences sound Really cool to imagine.
If you read a nonfiction book, it's like, oh wow, that happened.
But when you read fantasy, it's like you go into another world.
Does that mean that that world is more interesting than the world you exist in right now?
Yes, very interesting. They normally have really high tech, and you can do these really cool things.
And you can't do it here yet. So you guys have read a lot of fantasy.
How does this compare? Is this like another series you've read?
It's unique and it's very interesting. It's a mix between a bunch of books I've read and all put together.
It has the magic from the Land of Stories.
It has the monsters from a bunch of books.
Like ever? It has like the mythical creatures and it's really cool how the mythical creatures like We find out what they're actually like in the book.
Tell me what specifically you liked. Is there a scene you liked?
Is there a character you liked? Uh oh. I like Sophie.
And Dex. you like Sophie. So let's do talk a bit about Sophie.
Tell me about Sophie. Uh, he's like, Smart, like very smart, and she has a photographic memory.
But when it comes to new things, It kind of takes her a little bit of a time to understand it.
But then when she understands it, she finds new stuff out every day.
She sometimes can be very brave and others not so much.
She finds it really amazing how the world turns out to be.
The elves, she was really surprised that they didn't look like have pointy shoes and pointy ears.
Eventually they will get pointy ears when they're like ancient.
Like medieval century old. Over a thousand years old.
I want to ask about that. I mean, would you like to live for a thousand years?
No. Why? It would get boring after, like, the first 1,000 because you're just going forever. things keep happening you've already seen them happen I would want to live for like a thousand years if The world I lived in was interesting, but if it was boring, then I probably wouldn't want to live that long.
I'd only live that long if there was something worth living for.
Well, that seems to be a problem in my mind with this book is if they have all the money in the world and they can live forever, what's their motivation?
I believe in the book they say that work is fun for them.
It's not like set at a desk and do paperwork all day.
Do you believe that? Well, I think it wouldn't be boring to just do paperwork all day, so be active more, I think.
Some jobs are more fun, though. than others, while others are kind of boring.
They do paperwork a lot, but they also go places and meet different species.
Oh, they went to, like, Atlantis because they say that they deliberately sank Atlantis. because the humans were getting out of hand, so they sank it, and now they have to go into a whirlpool to get down.
It's really cool. One of the things that kind of surprised me in this book as being kind of of the moment was when they talked about the wildfires I'm from California and we've had so many wildfires and it seemed like, oh,
The wildfires weren't natural. They were like white and they smelled like sugar.
They were like in a pattern. They said they were like in the shape of a swan.
They were in the swan symbol. You guys got some questions for our writer, Shannon Messenger?
What was like the inspiration for the story?
The inspiration came from a number of different places, but two of the big ones were Lord of the Rings and X-Men.
I wanted to write about elves that were cool and powerful and almost godlike, like they were in Lord of the Rings.
But I wanted to see that kind of creature in a much more modern world, and I didn't want there to be magic.
I wanted their abilities to feel more like superpowers.
Do you like Fitz or Keef more? Ooh, that is actually an impossible question for me to answer.
And I know no one believes me when I say this, but it really is true that I work really, really hard. to never pick a favorite, really between any of the characters, but especially between characters that are sort of in like the love interest kind of realm.
Because I don't want my own opinions to bias the story.
So I will actually do like exercises if I find myself starting to favor one boy over another, I will sit down and like make a list of all the things I love about the other boy. until I feel equally in love with both of them again.
Who is your favorite side character? Ooh, again, I can't pick between the kids.
But I can pick a favorite side character out of the creatures.
And honestly, she really is. a character that I absolutely love writing, Sylvanie, the alicorn. in the series.
There is just nothing more fun than getting to sit down and figure out what it is like to be in the head of a sparkly flying alicorn.
I mean, if you think about it, that is my job.
I get paid for that to sit down. And figure out, okay, so if I were an alicorn, what would I be thinking right now?
And it's really fun, too, because... On one level, she's very simple.
Everything is sort of single words with lots of exclamation marks and all caps.
She repeats things a lot. But there's actually, you know, she is a character and there is nuance to her thoughts and she does show quite a range of emotion just with those simple words that she uses, which is both a challenge and really, really fun for me as a writer.
So I have a ton of fun when I get to write any scenes with Sylvanine.
Let's ask the hard question, which is, of course, what is your favorite book and why?
I like the Warriors series because it's a story about a cat who lived in a house, but then he...
Doesn't like really belong there. So he goes out into the woods and then he meets a clan and He meets clans, and it's about how cats survive on their own in the wild.
And why do you like it? because I like seeing things from a different perspective.
It's not a human perspective, it's a cat perspective.
I think my favorite series would be The Blackthorn Key, because it's about... figuring out clues within clues.
They have to find out things that they didn't think could be real.
It's just cool how there are so many different things that happened back in England in like the 1600s.
Do you like reading history? No. So what's the difference?
Because I think it's about the adventure that they go on to solve the mystery.
My favorite book is The Serpent's Secret.
It's about a girl who thinks she's from New Jersey.
But her parents are super weird. And on her birthday, they go missing.
Why do you like this book? There's a bunch of adventure, and they have to figure out clues in a poem to get to your parents.
And they travel all over and meet fun people in cool places.
They bond over friendship. What about you, Shannon Messenger?
What's your favorite book? Another question that asks me to pick favorites.
In case you haven't noticed, I am really bad at picking favorites.
It's really, really hard to choose just one.
So I will just say a book that made a big difference to me is Ella Enchanted by by Gail Carson Levine.
That was the first middle grade book that I read as a grownup.
And I read it because I was thinking about writing a middle grade book. to read just how beautiful that book was and how complicated it was.
It just made me realize. yes, this is what I wanna do.
This is the kind of story that I wanna tell.
And boy, I was a fool for thinking that kids' books are simplified.
They are not. Favorite book, Nick Roman?
I'm big on history. So there's a book called At Dawn We Slept.
Gordon Prang is the author. which is about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was just endlessly fascinated.
There was so much in there about how that happened and the history behind the conflict at the time between the United States and Japan.
And there are so many things in there that you learn about how stupid we can be, but how things don't work the way that anyone plans.
We'll have a list of everybody's favorite book This episode is funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. and by a grant from the Nora Roberts Foundation.
Thanks to our producer Ilse Setziel, Jonathan Jensen created our theme music with additional music from Charles Nilman.
Emma Steinkellner designed our logo. Thanks to our readers this week, Catherine, Maya, and Olivia.
And thanks to Karen Gavin for organizing this group.
Thanks to our writer, Shannon Messenger, and our celebrity reader, Nick Roman.
We have a free newsletter with lots of tips about how to get a reluctant reader to pick up a book.
You can sign up at the website bookclubforkids.org.
That's also where you can find free curriculum for this episode.
And if you know a teacher or a librarian who might like to host a Book Club for Kids podcast episode taping at their school, well, just send us an email, kitty at bookclubforkids.org.
And I am Kitty Felde. Thanks so much for listening.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for watching!
