WOW Reads: S3, Bonus - End of Year Review

Worlds of Words Center Middle School and Teen Reading Ambassadors discuss the past academic year as they read and promoted reading together.

For us, books and bagels are a natural pairing. Bruegger's by the University of Arizona, if you're listening, know that once a month since January of 2018, multiple bagel bundles fuel our reading discussions. This is not a paid announcement, just facts. But... if you have cheddar to share, we'll take your dough.

Meanwhile, each Reading Ambassador studied four novels this year. We met at least eight authors, participated in the Tucson Festival of Books, had our first in-person Read-A-Thon, and recorded 10 episodes of this podcast. We continued to hear about the surprising frequency of book bans and challenges. We shared our best book recommendations, changing perspectives, librarian love, and advice for having a good school experience.

Books and authors mentioned in this episode:
Fiona Frizzle (iykyk)
Donna Barba Higuera -- The Last Cuentista and Alebrijes
Bill Konigsberg -- Destination Unknown
Karen McManus -- The Cousins
Sally Rooney -- Normal People
Nic Stone
Kait Waterhouse -- A Stirring from the Depths

This podcast was recorded in the U of A College of Education media studio with assistance from the U of A COE Tech Team.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Lit Discussant: Kait Waterhouse, U of A COE Graduate Assistant
Learning & Engagement Intern: Bonnie Rock, U of A W.E. Franke Honors College Student
Audio Engineer: Alexis Mendoza, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Art Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Student Employee and Nursing Major

For more information on the WOW Reading Ambassadors, visit wowlit.org (under the About tab).

We Can Promote Global Literature Together!

The Worlds of Words Reading Ambassador program is completely free for participants who receive a book for themselves and a book to share with their school librarian, ELA/English teacher, or other school entity. If you would like to support this program, please make a gift on-line through the University of Arizona Foundation.

Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

Hello, welcome to WOW Reads, a podcast of Worlds of Words that centers middle school and teen voices around literature that is written for them. Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world.

Worlds of Words Reading Ambassadors engage in a university experience of children's literature within the University of Arizona College of Education. Reading Ambassadors learn about literature for young people under the direction of faculty and staff with expertise in children's literature, education, library science and marketing.

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples. Today Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign native nations and indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

My name is Rebecca Ballenger, I am the associate director for Worlds of Words, and this summer I'm going to be conducting a comprehensive inventory of all of our collection.

Hi, my name is Nia, and this summer I'm going to Alaska and the Philippines.

Hi, my name is Calliope, and this summer I'm going to be doing a lot of baking.

Hi, my name is Christian and I'm going to be traveling to California for the summer.

Hi, my name is Gabriel and this summer I'm going to be playing on my computer.

Hi, I'm Cheyenne, and this summer I'm going to be going to sleepaway camps.

Hi, my name is Carlos, and this summer I'm going to be playing soccer.

Hi, my name is Emaline, and this summer I'm going to be going across the country a little bit.

So this is our recap, that we have finished a whole year of reading together. We've read four books, we've had four author meetings, we moderated a session at the Tucson Festival of Books, we've had a Read-a-thon, we’ve accomplished so much this year. I'm really proud of you. One of the things Melissa Marr said, after we met with her, was that you ask very clever questions, and I am so proud of each and every one of you. That's probably one of my favorite things that happened this year. Will somebody please share your favorite things that happened this year?

My favorite thing that happened was when we did the podcast because I've never done a podcast before.

My favorite thing this year was the Read-a-thon, because I got to read in a library where there were so many books that normally I wouldn't be able to read at home.

Normally our Read-a-thons are virtual, but this year we did a hybrid, and so we had some people show up in person. I agree Nia, I had so much fun. It was fun hanging out with you and the other people who were there. Next year, I think I'm going to do a bigger push to have more people present for the Read-a-thon.

I say it was really exciting to see that my own classmates were acknowledging the books that us Reading Ambassadors were reading. So I got the feeling that they liked, I got the feeling that they would also like-

So these are books that you brought to the school, and because you could see them reading them, you felt a kinship and you knew that you got to be the person that brought that to them. Yeah, fantastic Christian, I love that.

Yeah, there was too many things to pick from, I can't pick one.

Same, too many options.

What do you hope that you remember as you go into next year? Or if you were in high school and you look back on this program, what are the experiences or skills or techniques for reading that you hope you will remember, that you can carry on?

Being able to comprehend certain literature and read different styles of writing and appreciate it with a group of people who have similar interests as me.

Meeting DC comic book author.

Being able to share reading with the world.

Meeting with some of the best authors in the world, all while munching on bagels in the U of A.

The bagels are always cool. So, it wasn't all easy, some of it was really challenging. What advice would you give to somebody who is considering coming in as a Middle School Reading Ambassador? You know, somebody who is just moving into middle school, having that big transition who's coming into sixth grade?

Always have an open mind on everything. It's important to be open to anything you are introduced to, because you never know if that's going to become something that you really bring out as you grow up and go along the world.

All that I can say are some of the famous words of the famous cartoon character Miss Frizzle. Take chances, make mistakes, but don't get messy. Seriously, the janitors probably have enough work as is.

Any other advice or final reflections?

Eat the bagels before everyone else does.

Do we need to buy more bagels?

Yes.

Yes? All right.

We should get a truck.

A bagel truck, yes, our unofficial extra member of the Reading Ambassador program is the bagel shop.

Yeah.

They're an honorary member.

Yeah. (?) at Bruegger's Bagels, Go buy them. Yeah.

Top ten would recommend.

All right. Thanks to the Middle School Reading Ambassadors for their perspectives on their last year with the Reading Ambassador program. In part two of this episode, we will hear from the Teen Reading Ambassadors.

Hi, my name is Kait Waterhouse, and I'm the discussion leader for Worlds of Words Reading Ambassadors, and I'd like to share that my favorite reading event this year was having my debut novel published in December.

Woo woo! Yay!

Hi, my name is Quin and my favorite book related thing that happened to me this year was the Tucson Festival of Books.

My name is Rebecca and my favorite book related thing that happened to me this year was that I started reading Normal People, and a lot of people have read and enjoyed that book, so that was fun.

My name is Maggie, and my favorite book related thing that has happened this year is the interview that we had with Bill Konigsberg.

My name is Audrey, and my favorite reading related thing that's happened this year is just all of the audiobooks that I've been listening to.

My name is Minerva, and my favorite book related thing that happened to me this year was meeting one of my favorite authors at the Tucson Festival of Books.

My name is Jenisha, and my favorite reading related thing that happened to me this year was hosting an author event at the Tucson Festival of Books.

My name is Graham, and my favorite reading related thing that happened this year is I started reading The Cousins by Karen McManus.

My name is Rebecca Ballenger, I'm the associate director of Worlds of Words, and as soon as I introduced myself to Nic Stone, she said she liked my pants and after that, you could not tell me anything.

Let's get started, this is our recap, I'm in with the Teen Reading Ambassadors plus some of our rising Middle School Reading Ambassadors who may or may not choose to be in the program next year. I want to start off just broadly, what did you learn as part of the program that you think will be helpful?

As a senior going to college next year, I learned a lot about college campuses and relationships between the adults that work at the university and just going around the campus. I've been here three years and being on the campus like once a month let me warm up to the different types of people on the campus and the different activities, the many activities that are offered and yeah, I think it just prepared me well for book discussions and college.

I think this program has really given me an insight into how often books end up being banned and like, what sort of topics are usually targeted because pretty much all the authors that we've talked to just this year have had their books challenged or banned and just it really raises more awareness to me of how big of a problem it actually is.

So what is something that you hope that you will remember or that you will take from the program five years from now, ten years from now, next year? What would you hope that you could remember?

I really hope to remember what it was like interacting with a lot of the authors, like I still remember from like last year, interacting with, one of the authors for Alebrijes and talking to her and all of her experiences with writing, and I bet that I will remember next year some of the authors that I that we talked to this year about how they formatted, and what the topics they talked about with in their interviews.

When we talked to Donna Barbara Higuera, the author of Alibrijes, we made her, graph her experience writing. Do you remember that? Yeah.

I got a nod. We made her do math. We made her create a line graph about what it's like to write a book, I will definitely remember that. 

I would say kind of going off of that, just some of the lessons that a lot of the authors kind of put into their monologues that they tell us and how they answer their questions. It's all usually really insightful, and yeah, I think that that's something that I'll remember. 

Do you think your approach will change? Your approach as a normal, regular, everyday person will change? Now, when you're meeting published authors or established professors like Doctor Short, we talked about her being a Regents professor, do you think you will find- and you're talking to librarians at your school. Do you think your relationships with adults, people of authority or people of merit, do you think your approach to them has changed? 

I've definitely gotten a lot better at, you know, communication, being able to interact appropriately and formally with those people. Like with librarians, hey this is something I am doing for this other program, it would be beneficial because X, Y, Z. and then just working with other people to get the book in the library, it's really helped me with that. 

This is a little bit different, but I think that going forward, whenever I read a book, I will have a better understanding of what goes into it when, like you just said, once it's finally put on the shelf, and then also just what the actual process of creating a book is like, because I think for a long time I thought it was this novelty experience that only very few people got to actually go through with, but I think it's very doable for anyone that wants to be a writer when they grow up or is like just semi interested in writing as it is.

Yeah, going off of that, I also think that talking to more authors made me realize that they're also just normal people and that they're not unapproachable or intimidating. They're just people too, that have more experience and something that you don't know much about or a lot of insights to different topics that they've spent a lot of time thinking about.

So I've definitely seen over the years, or I've noticed a tendency sometimes in our literature discussions that we might be critical of a book, or parts of books, or the endings of books, or the themes of books, like we might not like it or we might not connect to it. Then you meet the author and it changes your perspective, changes your point of view. Is this part of your experience as you talk about the authors just being people or being accessible? 

I actually relate to that a lot. Specifically, yeah, I've definitely read books that we've had in our Reading Ambassador Program and dislike them, but when meeting the author it's really insightful to know what they put into the book and it gives me an appreciation for the book that I didn't have. All of the authors are really interesting people, so meeting them as just a person is super interesting. 

What were the hard parts of the program? 

If I'm being completely honest, making sure that I spaced out enough time to have completely read the book, thought about it, and prepared questions for when we did interview the authors.

I wasn't as good about this year as I've been in past years, just because of how busy things have been, but other than that, not too much. 

I definitely see that your schedules are complicated. I think, not only are your schedules complicated, but there are a lot of things that are competing for your attention. So I appreciate that you acknowledge that struggle but also that, to whatever extent, you overcome it, read it by the time that you do meet the author, and then we have these author meetings that are truly respectful of that work. A lot of it is showing up. 

So today we have the teens, we have our eighth graders here meeting in this sort of combined atmosphere. I'm wondering first of all, what our Middle School Reading Ambassadors, what questions would you have for the High School Reading Ambassadors? The corollary is what kind of advice the high schoolers might have for the middle schoolers.

I was wondering, like how in high school, how do you not fill your schedule up too much or overwhelm yourself, especially when you just get into high school? Because it might be a bigger school or for other reasons? 

I'd say take electives or classes that you enjoy taking, you can push yourself yeah, but you also don't want to be in an AP class that's really boring or something that you don't like, cause you're not going to put as much effort into it. Take classes that you like and then do things that you like outside of school, too, I guess. 

I think it's really hard as a high schooler to not fill up your schedule, because there's a lot of pressure to do a ton of things to get into college.

So I almost don't think a lot of people have an answer to that question, because I think that almost every high schooler that I know has fallen victim to just filling up their schedule too much. And there's always going to be stressful weeks, like really stressful weeks where you just have no time. There's going to be weeks where a ton of things just fall on one day and you can't do anything about it, and you just have to figure out what your priorities are. But also make sure to leave like a weekend or a day on the weekend or a night just open to just relax and not stress about everything that you have going on. 

Rebecca, you go to a huge high school, without naming the high school. Sort of in relation to not filling up your sort of class schedule, your course schedule, the transition from middle school to high school is just you're going to go to a bigger school, but you went to a really big school. What suggestions do you have around that transition? 

I would say just find people that you really connect with because there's a ton of people, so you'll definitely find somebody. It might take a year, don't stress out, if it does take longer, you don't meet somebody immediately that you click with or that you meet somebody and then you stop being friends with them. I think this goes for college, too, because I've heard this many times, like the people that you meet in your first year are the people that you meet your true friends through, but those first people that you meet are not guaranteed to be your true friends. So I would say keep that in mind, and as for class schedule, I make sure that I don't have too many classes because I'd rather be doing things outside of school. So that was just that was one of my priorities. And I made sure that it was going to happen. So that just plan your credits accordingly to that. 

Is it worth it to do a lot of stuff, whether it's in school or like extracurriculars? 

I mean, I certainly think the experience is worth it. I'm in a lot of stuff outside of school, and I try to push myself in all my classes at school and if you are able to put in that effort, if it isn't too stressful on you, then it's definitely worth it. But if you're getting to the point where it's just kind of breaking you down mentally, then you need to pull the plug and take some things out. 

Back to your first question about finding time in your schedule, I know you guys sort of already answered that, but like Rebecca said, I would almost say instead of trying to figure out always what you need to fill your schedule with, try your best to find a day or a time when you don't have anything rather than other things because I think naturally it'll fill up. Whether you think it will or not, I think you're going to find things that you enjoy doing. Like this, for example, I'm not sure how you found yourself here, but you're here and I think other things like that will happen also. So I think you can worry less about needing to fill your schedule, but more about time that you have for yourself, because then I think you'll be able to come to the other things that you're doing with like a better mindset. I don't know, if that makes sense. 

I think that they're all worth it, even though they really fill up my schedule. I do think it's worth it, but more for that reason, not because of college or things, not because you just want to do it to to say that you have done it, but because you actually want to do it.

And I think that's where the difference is, that's what makes it worth it. Yeah, I mean I love joining clubs because I meet great people and that's worth it for me. 

Just to add onto that, I started high school this year and we had at my school a club day where all the clubs would come out and pitch the idea to join this club. I wanted to try all the things. So I joined a bunch of clubs and I only ended up going to some of the meetings, and I only ended up staying at some of the meetings. But the meetings that I went to and I stayed at are clubs that I really enjoy being at. So I think if you, just for like a week, try expanding and seeing what all the things are out there, then you'll narrow in on something that's really interesting and that you really enjoy doing, and then you'll put more time and effort into that than just putting yourself into all of these places that you actually don't really enjoy. 

I really agree with Minerva and what she said about, narrowing down what you want to do because you can join a lot of clubs and then realize that one isn’t for you, the way Quin was also saying, and then you can just not go anymore. Like, it's not a lifelong commitment that you're signing up for. You're just trying new things. 

Okay, any final reflections, any last thoughts? 

I really liked the selection of authors we had this year. They were all really fun to talk to, they all had a lot to say, and I'm looking forward to next year. 

I'm glad to hear that Quin. Well, this is the thanks now.

So there's so many people to thank I have to thank all of the authors who met with both the Teens and the Middle School Reading Ambassadors. Doctor Kathy Short, Katherine Conover, who helped out with our teens, Kait Waterhouse, our discussant, Bonnie Rock, our intern, Vianey Torres, who kept us together administratively, Alexis Mendoza and Liam Arias, our sound engineers. I'd like to thank the Max and Abigail Simmons Foundation for funding us. I'd like to thank the University of Arizona College of Education Tech Team; we are currently recording in their studio.