Episode 208 Every Day Has a Story: Ashley Franklin and Rahele Jomepour Bell on Our Favorite Day of the Week

What makes a day of the week your favorite? Swimming with Dad? Shabbat dinner? Chinese class? Fútbol with cousins? Grandma Day? What about trash day? In Our Favorite Day of the Week, ordinary routines become extraordinary windows into friendship, family, culture, and the joyful ways children see the world.

About This Episode

In Episode 208 of the Adventures in Learning podcast, Dr. Diane welcomes author Ashley Franklin and illustrator Rahele Jomepour Bell for their very first conversation together. We celebrate their new picture book, Our Favorite Day of the Week, a warm and joyful follow-up to Our Favorite Day of the Year.

Musa and his friends each have a favorite day—not because of a generic calendar rhyme, but because that day holds something meaningful: a family tradition, a beloved person, a community ritual, or a moment that makes a child feel fully seen. As the friends share their stories, young readers are invited to recognize that our routines may be different, but connection, belonging, and joy are things we all understand.

Ashley and Rahele take us behind the scenes of their creative process, talk about the importance of honoring children’s complex identities, and reflect on the power of picture books to offer both windows into other lives and mirrors in which children can recognize themselves. Our Favorite Day of the Week will be released on September 29, 2026. 

In This Episode

• Why Our Favorite Day of the Week belongs on classroom, library, and family bookshelves.
• How seven children’s favorite days become a celebration of family routines, culture, friendship, and community.
• The creative collaboration behind a picture book, especially when the author and illustrator have not met during the process.
• How Ashley Franklin approaches layered, authentic child characters and complex identities.
• How Rahele Jomepour Bell’s Persian and Iranian cultural influences, architectural memories, and love of detail shape her visual storytelling.
• Classroom possibilities: favorite-day graphs, personal narrative writing, family interviews, calendar exploration, and empathy-building community conversations.
• Sources of hope: children, creativity, and the stories young readers are eager to discover.

Chapters

• 00:00 Welcome: A picture book for every classroom bookshelf
• 01:13 Ashley Franklin and Rahele Jomepour Bell meet for the first time
• 01:41 Creating a sequel and finding the story’s voice
• 02:41 Seven favorite days, seven joyful perspectives
• 05:10 Classroom connections: identity, graphing, stories, and empathy
• 06:04 Cultural representation and the details that make stories feel true
• 08:47 Windows, mirrors, and everyday joy in picture books
• 10:10 Rahele’s artistic inspiration: Persian culture, architecture, and memory
• 12:00 Ashley on complex identities and writing children who feel seen
• 15:31 Finding the path to children’s books
• 20:06 What’s next: Our Favorite Time of Day and new projects
• 21:12 What is currently bringing Ashley and Rahele hope?

Book & Creator Links

• Featured Book: Our Favorite Day of the Week by Ashley Franklin, illustrated by Rahele Jomepour Bell
• Meet the Creators: Ashley Franklin and Rahele Jomepour Bell
• More Books Mentioned
  • Not Quite Snow White by Ashley Franklin, illustrated by Ebony Glenn
  • Our Favorite Day of the Yearby A. E. Ali, illustrated by Rahele Jomepour Bell
  • Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson
  • We All Play by Julie Flett
  • You Matter by Christian Robinson

Classroom Connections

After reading Our Favorite Day of the Week  invite children to explore the stories and people behind their own favorite days.

• Favorite-day graph: Ask students to choose their favorite day of the week, graph the results, and notice similarities and differences in the class community.
• Personal narrative writing: Invite each child to complete the prompt, “My favorite day is _ because _.”
• Family and community interviews: Encourage children to ask a family member or trusted adult about their favorite day and the tradition, person, food, activity, or memory that makes it special.
• Calendar and culture study: Explore how calendars, weekly rhythms, faith traditions, family schedules, and community routines can shape our experiences of time.
• Windows and mirrors discussion: Ask, “Which part of this story felt like a mirror for you? Which part gave you a window into someone else’s life?”

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Adventures of Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Diane Jackson Schnorr. And if you have been building up those special books on your bookshelf where you're allowing kids to be able to see different cultures, different perspectives, different humanities, you want this next book. Our favorite day of the week deserves a spot on your bookshelf alongside Lap Stop on Market Street. We all play, You Matter, come and join us. It's one of those books where your children are going to feel seen and they're going to feel heard and it's gonna open up so much empathy and discussion in your classroom. And today I am so excited because I have not just the author, not just the illustrator, but both of them together for the very first time. Please join me in welcoming to the show author Ashley Franklin and Illustrator Rachele Jamper Bell. Wonder, Curiosity, Connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr. Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. Ladies, welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. I am so excited to have you here. And you know, when we got on the call a few minutes ago, it was the first time you'd actually seen each other. That's pretty cool. Um I think I know that a lot of people don't understand that the author and the illustrator don't usually meet when they're working on a project. Can you talk a little bit about how you all came together? Because this is your second book and sort of how that process has gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Well, I'll just say it's my first book. Because I actually took over the series. So I was the new kid on the block when I was asked to jump in and finish it out. And I had already admired Raheli's work. And so I was nervous, but I was like, oh, she's so good. You know, the expectations. I really wanted the words to like live up to the standards to just match her beautiful artwork.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Thank you, Ashley. And I loved, I loved, you know, like introduced to Ashley for the second book because this is from a series. There's gonna be the third book, too. But after the first book be, you know, like get a lot of love at and attention from uh you know readers, then then the second one was born by Ashley and her, you know, like magical words, you know, made it so great. So I wanted to keep going and continue illustrating this this amazing subject matter, especially in a book for kids.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

And I used to teach early childhood, I taught preschool, and we would always do stuff with the days of the week, you know, today is Sunday, today is Sunday, that kind of stuff. You get tired of that real fast. And I loved the fact that this book, there were seven different stories. Each person had a story for why a particular day was their favorite day of the week. And you do tie in in the end pages, it's beautiful. You tie in sort of some of the history of the days. But I like the fact that why a day is your favorite is really about what that day means to you. Can you talk a little bit about sort of that creative process in how you decided to present the days of the week?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Well, it was very important because each of the children has such unique personalities from the first book. So it was important to carry that over, even as something as the days of the week. Because, like you said, it can be overdone or expected. So I felt like the best way to do that was really hone in on what makes it special to that kid. Because if you've ever been around children, you know there is a unique story coming out of left field at any given moment. And I think that's just the beauty and innocence of children that you get to capture. And so what an opportunity to be like, okay, why does this day mean something special to you? And I liked it was just unconventional, whether it be family or just something they admired about an event, like the trash truck.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Right. Rayleigh, do you have something to add?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Yeah, to me, you know, like I I actually love that as Ashley said that it's coming from the voice of the children. And the deeper layer, you know, after you see that this is like a routine talk, children, you know, talking about their favorite day. To me, it's just like that diverse group that, you know, like talking and introducing to the reader. And also, you know, like how they shared love, love for the community they're coming from. You know, like everything that we need, even the adult, you know, like a follow- we want to follow that. We work hard for having that unique perspective and unique, you know, like community that we're building and trying to build. So that's that deeper, you know, sort of like layer behind of the words are I love it. Explain that book more.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

And it made me think that you could easily use this book as a way to jump off and after you've read it and you introduce the idea that days of the weeks have meaning based on culture, based on your family, based on what you do, have the kids pick their day and be able to share stories. You could graph, you could graph favorite days, you could share the stories back and forth. It could be a lovely way to sort of build your classroom community at the beginning of the year and develop that empathy muscle that we all need so desperately these days. So one of the things I noticed, and I think it's beautiful, is in this book, so many different cultures are represented. It's not one culture, it's not a single story. I know you're continuing a series, but how did you decide which cultures to include, what stories to present?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

The editor, had a big hand in that. She kind of gave me the blueprint and was like, okay, make it cutesy. So that's where I came in. Like, of course, we have Musa and he covered Ramadan and things like that and Eid in the previous book. So the children had already learned about that if they were previous readers. And so this time around, I kind of stepped away from Islam because I wanted to show another part of his identity. And so I thought swimming pools. As we know, the United States had segregated swimming pools back in the day. And children of color really are still behind when it comes to swimming and having swimming lessons. It's that financial barrier as well, you know, as well as access. And I wanted to show that in the pictures, like look at him swimming. It's something he looks forward to. And I felt like that added, like Red Hele said, that layer of specialness to some of the stories.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Uh to me, if you were asking me, uh, after seeing, you know, like the characters introduced introduced in the pictures, you know, in the last story, I would I knew them. I knew them pretty well. But then me and Laurent Lee in the art director, we said that let's, you know, we have Moussa and we have our you know main characters already introduced. Let's just like shift a little bit our focus to the kids that they didn't have the chance to speak up in the last version or the, you know, like the book before this one. So I was thinking, because I had them all illustrated in the first book, I think that which one goes pretty well, you know, under, you know, like the names of, you know, Ashley came with. So that was the really great opportunity for me to come up with, you know, like more research, doing more research about different characters coming from different cultures, Chinese, you know, like, or you know, that's why I have those, you know, like buildings sort of like a structure and representing them in the background. Uh, like for the first book, I had the mosque and Musa going to the to the mosque with the family. For this one, I have the what do you call them? You know, like the Chinese place. Forgive me if I don't have, you know, the word for it, I can't be focused. But I did a lot of, you know, like different buildings or, you know, like in the city. And Cecilia has actually said that helped me a lot with coming and making, you know, sure those are truth to the reality.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Well, and I love that because we often talk about, and my husband's gonna laugh. He listens and he goes, You mentioned Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop again. I can't help it. I adore her, I love her work, and I think it's seminal to what we do as authors and illustrators, but also as librarians and teachers and parents, in that, you know, books provide that portal. They're that window into the world where we get to see places that we've never been before. It transports us. And it also does that other equally valuable thing where it allows us to see ourselves in the pages, and particularly for children who have not been represented traditionally, to see themselves represented and not from a civil rights standpoint or a this is history, but a you're living your daily life and you have family and you're doing these amazing things that are part of being a kid and being joyful. It's important to have those stories. And I think that the work you all did really beautifully marries that idea of windows and mirrors together. How has that, because I saw you both nodding along as I brought up Dr. Sims Bishop, how has that idea sort of worked through not just this book, but through your previous books as well?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

You know, like I always, when I have some of the presentation about the, you know, like how I get inspired for my art, I bring the Persian culture, specifically from those architectures that, you know, like I grew up with, the beauty of them. I tell this a story. I used to go to the mosque with my grandma from a big city mashad in northeast of Iran. And it's a sort of like religious city. But I used my grandma used to bring me to this mosque. And in that time I didn't care about the religion really. What I cared was the beauty that I was exposed to. And all of that, you know, like I don't know, I I can't say the words for it, but I I was a little, you know, like creature standing underneath of those big arcs and and then looking at those tiles with all the details, you know, like representing the Islamic, pre-Islamic, all of them together. I just learned it later on in our history. But in that moment, it was just like created the momentum with my grandma and uh experiencing, you know, like something called religious in a beautiful way, you know. And uh that's that became, you know, my inspiration source. And that's why I just like emphasize on architectures or the backgrounds in my illustration. I work on that part, also characterizing that part in my, you know, giving the character, you know, like the the objects also is so important. And I feel like representing a character, an idea with objects, all of them together, you know, create help the story just like to be told to the kids better. I don't know if I answered your your question.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Ashley, I think for me, excuse me. I think for me, it is always important to have characters that have all these layers. We want the story to have layers, but that individual character, I think that makes it more realistic for a child. So I have characters like in my book Not Quite Snow White, you know, she was a little black girl, you know, she was chubby, you know, she had anxiety. So I like to tackle all those things in my characters. Just what else could this child be experiencing? You know, what what type of child or community can relate to this child and their identities? Because I myself I'm African American, but I'm a Muslim revert. I grew up Christian, you know, apostolic Pentecostal, all of that. So we are layered as adults, and I feel like it's a disservice if we can't get that in children too. So I will always champion complex identities and characters within children. So that's something I try to capture with every book that I do.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Well, and I think that that's so respectful to who a child is. I often will tell teachers, you know, the common phrase is, you know, we start from seeds, but I'm like, no, when you get a child, that child is already, they're a seedling and they're already touched by so many experiences, by family, by culture, by the street on the neighborhood, by grandparents or lack of grandparents. You know, there are so many different things that impact who a child is that we can't just isolate them and go, in the time I have them, I am everything. It's like, no, you're part of something, and you have to respect and work together with all of the gardeners at play. Oh, I love that. Imagine a space where curiosity drives innovation, where empathy fuels collaboration, and where learning feels less like a task and more like an adventure. My message isn't about adding more to your plate, it's about changing how you see the plate entirely. I'm Dr. Diane Jackson Schnorr, and through the power of purposeful play, I equip leaders, educators, and organizations with the tools you need to unlock creative problem solving, deepen human connection, and build resistant ecosystems of empathy and innovation. Attendees will walk away not just inspired but empowered, with immediately usable strategies to spark curiosity in teams, to lead with empathy, and to infuse learning into their everyday cultures. You'll learn how play isn't child's work, it's the secret weapon of the world's most effective leaders and change makers. This is not a feel-good talk that fades by Monday morning, it's a movement. A shift in how we engage people, solve problems, and lead meaningful change. My talks and workshops are shaped by decades of experience in education and a transformative message that connects across sectors. Whether your audience is corporate, educational, or nonprofit, they'll leave ready to rethink what's possible, both personally and professionally. Because when we learn and lead through play, we don't just change organizations, we change the world. Check it out at drdianeadventures.com. So let's talk a little bit about YouTube. You know, you touched on some of the work that you have done. For our listeners who may not know your work, maybe talk a little bit about how you got into doing what you do. What led to this? Ashley, you go first.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

I go first? Okay. Well, I got into children's literature almost by accident, so to speak. I always thought I would be a poet because I liked shorter forms and things. However, after graduate school, I went to the University of Delaware. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And so I ended up working at like a preschool kindergarten. And that's when I realized, wow, kids are helping. They're just the most amazing little beings. I was like, yeah. I was like excited to go to work every day working with kids, you know. And I that's when I first saw how enthralled and how in tune they could be with a story during reading time. Like within seconds, they could be running around, running around, like, all right, it's time to read. And they could plop down and be attentive. I was like, look at the power that a story can have. And I wanted to see if that's something that I could do as well. Like, I have an English degree. How hard could this be? Spoiler, it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. And so, really, it wasn't until I had my own child I started wanting more books that could relate to him as a young black boy Muslim. There were not a lot of options. And so, you know, if you see a gap, go ahead and try to fill it. And so that's when I really started taking trying to become a published author seriously because I wanted to feel that need, I wanted that that feeling of being seen to be something that my child could have as well. And just the idea of being seen, that's kind of how my first book came about with not quite snow white. And she wanted to be seen as Snow White, but she was black. And so because the other children didn't see her as that, she questioned if she should be able to see herself as that. So that was one of the first messages I wanted to get out. And from then on, like I said earlier, it's been important to me to show complex identities that children have, that other children and sometimes even adults need to see, recognize, embrace, and celebrate.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Is it my turn on this question? Asking an artist why you can't how you came to this one. Well, it's just like I always say that children picture book is an area for me, the best area, because I feel like I have never grown up. I always like tell even my students, I'm just like seven years old, Rahele inside of me, try to pretend to be an adult. But overall, you know, I in the time that I was growing up, it just like it was a little bit dark, darker than this moment, I think, this this era. But uh, it just like, you know, for me, picture books were some somewhere that I can coop, you know, like get cozy and comfy and find myself, imagine myself in those stories. And then later on, when I grew up as a teenager, I learned that this is something you can pick up as a job and you can go study for it. And I didn't know before that. So I just like tried my heart, and then I found graphic design the closest one. And I loved illustration because it's part of the communication art. You have to have the audience, you know, over there, and you you work for them and you know that what's coming to you. And it's just to me, it's like a very luxurious gallery open to everybody. You know, it's not just like open to the specific dealers or very, you know, like rich people to buy an art piece. It's just open to everyone. And who is the, you know, it's the best having the audience like kids to be your audience. You I love it. And I just like love to explain it very simple, uh, showing the the beauty of the life, every everyday life experience. That's why I love this book too a lot. Because it's just like talks about, you know, like deep meaning in very, you know, like light way on the surface.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Oh, I love that. Now, returning to the book for a minute, our favorite day of the week is the second in a series. You hinted there's a third coming. Are you at liberty to talk about it? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Actually, do you?

SPEAKER_01 20:20

I don't know either. The title is Our Favorite Time of Day. That's all I've got. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

So we'll be looking forward to finding what the next one is. I love that. In the meantime, are you all working on other projects as well? I assume.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

I am. Ashley, do you? I am. I'm working on my first novel and returning those revisions next week. So very excited for that. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

That's exciting. That's amazing. Yeah, I'm working with also like Nosy Crow in UK, working finishing, finalizing the everything now. It's a book coming. Like the title is not decided yet, but so yeah, they're gonna change the title, but it's coming from Nosy Crow both in UK and US.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

That's exciting. So I like to finish up a conversation by asking a question that I think is really important today, and it's the question of what's currently bringing you hope.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

I can go first. It might be cliché, but kids just like looking at my own kid every day, you know, like having things to do, you know, like being passionate, passionate about the books that in the bookstore we go graphic novels. She's waiting for her favorite graphic novels from Christina Suntor Mad, Betty Tank, and she's just mad at me because they're not coming yet until 2027. So yeah, seeing this makes me so hopeful.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

I have to agree. I was about to say my kids as well. My kids are 12 and 14, and just seeing how they navigate through life, and my 14-year-old, he's the one that motivated me to write, and now he's very into music, so he's leaning into his creative side, and he gives me such hope because he was my premi baby, and just seeing how he has developed and is tackling the world, it's just it feels like a privilege, and that is what fills me with hope each day.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

I love that. Well, the work that you all do and the joy that you bring to the world also fills me with hope. And folks, our favorite day of the week is out. It just came out. I hope that you'll run and grab it. And thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having us. It is a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning Podcast with your host, Dr. Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download, and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianeadventures.com. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.