Lily and Barbara Kingsolver, COYOTE'S WILD HOME
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:06]This 30-minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days
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[1:02]I had the immense honor of interviewing Barbara King-Solver and her daughter Lily King-Solver.
[1:09]Together they wrote coyotes wild home.
[1:12]Barbara King-Solver grew up in rural Kentucky.
[1:14]She earned degrees in biology from DePaul University and the University of Arizona and has
[1:19]worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985.
[1:23]Her books in order of publication include The Bean Trees, Homeland, Holding the Line, Women
[1:29]in the Great Arizona Mine Strike, Animal Dreams, Another America, Pigs in Heaven, High
[1:35]Tied in Tucson, The Poisonwood Bible, Protocol Summer, Small Wonder, Last Stand America's
[1:42]Virgin Lands with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt, Animal Vegetable Miracle, A Year of Food
[1:49]Life, The Lakuna, Flight Behavior, Unfiltered, Had a Fly and 10,000 Easy Lessons, and Demon
[1:56]Copperhead, which is still on the bestseller list.
[2:00]She served as editor of Best American Short Stories 2001.
[2:03]Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages and have been adopted into
[2:07]the core literature curriculum in high schools and colleges around the nation.
[2:11]She has contributed to more than 50 literary anthologies and her reviews and articles
[2:15]have appeared in most US, newspapers and magazines.
[2:19]Demon Copperhead was named an Oprah book club selection immediately upon publication and
[2:24]in 2023 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
[2:28]Demon Copperhead also received Britain's prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction, formerly
[2:33]known as the Orange Prize, making her the first author in the history of the prize
[2:37]to receive the award twice.
[2:39]Barbara King Silver was named one of the most important writers of the 20th century by
[2:42]Rogers Digest.
[2:44]In 2000, she received the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for
[2:47]service to the arts.
[2:49]Critical acclaim for her books include multiple awards from the ABA and American Library
[2:53]Association, among many others.
[2:55]The poisonwood Bible was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Orange Prize and won
[3:00]the National Book Award of South Africa before being named an Oprah book club selection.
[3:04]Animal Vegetable Miracle won numerous prizes including the James Beard Award, the
[3:08]Lakuna won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010.
[3:11]In 2011, King Silver was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her body of work.
[3:16]She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
[3:19]Her daughter and co-author also actually the first author listed on the book, as Barbara
[3:24]will explain.
[3:25]Lily grew up in southwest Virginia, where the Appalachian Mountains ignited her passion
[3:29]for wild creatures in the places they live.
[3:31]She has shared her love of the wild as a naturalist and educator in state zoos and parks
[3:35]in southwest Virginia and the space coast of Florida, where she is currently working
[3:39]on a graduate degree in environmental education.
[3:42]She lives in Florida with her husband, dog, and several reptiles.
[3:45]Hi, Odie's Wild Home.
[3:46]It's her first published book.
[3:48]By the way, Barbara and Lily did a post about our interview where they included a picture
[3:54]of all of us waving on their Instagram accounts, which was pretty much the coolest thing.
[3:59]Welcome to this fabulous mother daughter duo that I have here today.
[4:04]So exciting.
[4:05]So Lily and Barbara, King Silver, have co-written coyotes wild home and absolutely beautiful.
[4:11]I'm holding this up, not that anybody who's listening can see.
[4:14]it.
[4:15]On the video, you can see I'm holding up this beautiful cover of a coyote with one of
[4:19]the little cubs.
[4:20]We don't nuzzling and it's so sweet, this whole beautiful image, which captures the
[4:26]beautiful story.
[4:27]So anyway, welcome.
[4:28]Thank you.
[4:29]Thanks for inviting us.
[4:30]This is my first podcast ever, so I'm super excited.
[4:34]I often people often put me first because this is so low key.
[4:40]stress, just the opportunity for you to talk and tell us everything about the book.
[4:45]So how did you two decide to team up on this book, why this book in particular, why
[4:51]coyotes?
[4:52]Tell me the whole story.
[4:53]Well, mom, do you want to start?
[4:55]Okay.
[4:56]I'll start because it started with a letter that an invitation that came to me from
[5:02]Griffin Press, telling me about this wonderful series they have, voices for the voiceless,
[5:09]which is children's books that engage children with nature and with wild animals.
[5:15]So they had read a novel of mine that had a lot of information about coyotes in it.
[5:21]And so they thought that I might be just the person to write a children's book about
[5:27]coyotes for their series.
[5:29]I looked at this, they sent me a previous book about warblers, a warblers journey.
[5:34]And I looked at that book, which is beautiful, beautifully produced.
[5:38]I love the idea, but sadly I had to write them a letter back saying, I wish I were the
[5:46]right person.
[5:47]This is a great idea, but I can't write children's books.
[5:50]I've tried.
[5:51]I don't have those skills.
[5:52]I just don't.
[5:54]Lily came over that day because that was before she went to Florida for a couple of years
[5:59]for her to get her master's degree.
[6:02]We've always lived pretty close together and will again, right, Lily?
[6:05]Yes.
[6:06]So Lily came over, saw this beautiful book on my kitchen table and said, wow, what's
[6:13]this?
[6:14]And I told her, and then she saw my letter and said, well, why, why wouldn't you want
[6:18]to do this?
[6:19]It's so important to give predators some good press, you know, in children's books.
[6:25]And I said, well, I can't think of a way to put the entire complicated natural history
[6:30]of coyotes into a narrative for children's picture book.
[6:35]And Lily said, well, what about this?
[6:38]And she just rattled the plot right off there and then and I said, Lily, you're the person
[6:44]who should write this book.
[6:46]Well, first of all, mom is being modest because she could write absolutely anything.
[6:50]She puts her mind to.
[6:51]And has written a lot of wonderful things, but I am really lucky that I've been able
[6:57]to work with kids for about eight years now.
[6:59]I love kids.
[7:00]I spend a lot of time with kids and when you spend a lot of time with kids, you read a lot
[7:04]of children's books.
[7:05]And so I'm in that world and I'm really interested in them, you know, it's much more fun
[7:09]to read a good children's book than to read a not so good children's book with kids.
[7:14]And so I was just so excited for mom to have this opportunity.
[7:17]I wasn't at all thinking of being part of it at first.
[7:20]I was just like, oh, mom, you can't miss this chance to be in this world.
[7:25]You know, so so dear to my heart and I was so honored by her invitation to be part of it.
[7:31]And I guess the rest is history.
[7:33]And we weren't.
[7:34]And Lily's being modest too because it really was entirely her idea.
[7:39]It really did just unroll so naturally.
[7:44]And I don't have that skill.
[7:46]I mean, Lily has a different skill set.
[7:48]She's a wonderful poet.
[7:49]She's she's really engaged and really good at talking with children.
[7:53]And this is a particular skill, Lily, that you have of explaining complicated things
[8:01]in a way that children can understand.
[8:03]And it's with great respect and it's not condescending.
[8:07]It's really a special skill.
[8:09]And she's got it.
[8:10]And so we wrote back to Griffin Press instead of we tore up,
[8:14]my letter saying can't be done.
[8:17]So the different letter saying, how about if we do it as a team?
[8:21]And it turns out that Griffin Press is a mother-daughter team as well.
[8:25]So they loved the idea, but Lily is the first author on this book for a reason.
[8:29]It was her it was her idea, her story.
[8:32]I really and I really we enjoyed working together on it.
[8:36]And we really enjoyed bringing in our friend Paul Marocha as the illustrator.
[8:41]It was it was fabulous project, but it really all happened because of Lily
[8:45]because you came into my kitchen that day and saw that and saw that,
[8:48]but it was serendipity.
[8:50]I feel so lucky.
[8:53]So after you sent the letter back, what happened?
[8:56]Did you sit down and write it together right away?
[8:58]How did you collaborate?
[9:00]Did you write it on paper?
[9:02]Somebody had a computer?
[9:03]What did that whole process look like?
[9:05]So Griffin accepted this proposal very, very soon before I moved to Florida.
[9:11]So all of a sudden I was not near mom anymore.
[9:13]And it was really wonderful to have this project that we were working on
[9:16]because I think it connected us, especially in those first few months where I felt
[9:20]kind of untethered here.
[9:21]I was, you know, just starting grad school, didn't know a lot of people.
[9:24]It was great to have that reason to call home every other day, you know,
[9:28]even though I probably would have been doing that anyway,
[9:30]because I was homesick, but I was like, oh, we need to talk about page 14.
[9:35]I was going to say, Lily, we text each other like sometimes like 15 times a day.
[9:41]We're we're lucky to have a really wonderful adult relationship.
[9:46]One of my favorite things about having daughters is that they grew up to be
[9:51]amazing women who are my friends.
[9:53]So it was really as friends that we and colleagues that we got to work on
[9:58]this project together.
[10:00]And the process was that we sent, well,
[10:03]we didn't really, it's the first children's book
[10:05]for both of us, we had no idea of the format
[10:09]or really sort of what the rules were.
[10:11]So after Griffin, after Emily and Dana,
[10:14]very enthusiastically said yes, let's do this as a team,
[10:20]they said, you know, write up a proposal.
[10:24]So we sent them a proposal for our story
[10:29]that was about what was it, Lily 3000 words?
[10:33]Mariah.
[10:34]And that was our proposal.
[10:35]And they wrote back and said, well,
[10:36]a children's picture book has to have about 1200 words.
[10:41]So we said, oops.
[10:43]And I would say the most challenging and interesting part
[10:51]of the process for us was really condensing even further,
[10:57]these big ideas that we had about biology and predators
[11:02]and how predators are so important to ecosystems,
[11:06]reducing that all to 1200 words.
[11:10]I think in the end we ended up with maybe 1400,
[11:13]but it was just, we just kept thinking
[11:18]and thinking at a big light bulb moment for us.
[11:22]I think was when we realized that in a picture book,
[11:25]the pictures really are worth a thousand words.
[11:28]So we figured out how to lean on the pictures.
[11:30]We don't have to describe the setting.
[11:32]We let the illustrations do that.
[11:34]What else, Lily?
[11:35]What could you think of that was challenging for us
[11:37]in the beginning?
[11:38]Well, goodness.
[11:39]Yeah, a lot of it was just honing those things down.
[11:41]Also, because biology ideas are so big, letting go
[11:45]of certain things we wanted to say, you know,
[11:47]realizing that we couldn't fit every single thing
[11:50]into a children's book and that's okay.
[11:52]It doesn't need to be every single thing.
[11:55]You know, there can never be enough children's book
[11:57]because maybe that's a different one in the future.
[11:59]And so yeah, accepting that we could only put
[12:02]a certain amount of message and then deciding
[12:04]what our message was going to be.
[12:06]Was a challenge, but a really good one.
[12:08]And I feel like we both brought our own perspectives
[12:11]from our own work experiences in the past.
[12:15]I mean, I absolutely would not have been able
[12:17]to do this whole process without mom saying,
[12:19]okay, this is the part where we send them this.
[12:22]You know, this is the part where we send them the manuscript.
[12:23]This is the part where like she knows all
[12:26]the whole process of writing a book, you know,
[12:28]which I would not have been brave enough
[12:29]to go into by myself.
[12:31]Even, you know, I texted her this morning and said,
[12:33]what do you do on a podcast?
[12:34]How many out of them?
[12:38]Full disclosure, she said, well, we have to talk
[12:41]for hours and hours.
[12:42]No, no, no, no, no, no.
[12:44]And I said, I've never had one that lasts
[12:46]a more than an hour and the time goes really fast.
[12:50]No, I would not keep you on that to snip.
[12:53]Mom, I have hours and hours and hours.
[12:56]I wouldn't have time to do my podcast, you know.
[12:59]The great part, not the great part.
[13:00]One of the great parts about this book, in particular,
[13:03]is the dual storyline, if you will,
[13:06]of the daughter and the grandfather
[13:09]who are walking through the woods.
[13:11]And then you also have the actual coyote
[13:15]and the coyotes family and how these two basically meet
[13:19]are very, very close toward at the end of the book
[13:22]and how the story is almost, it's propulsive in that way
[13:26]because you're trying to figure out
[13:27]how are they connecting and what are they trying
[13:30]to teach each other?
[13:31]So talk a little bit about that and how that formatting
[13:35]and the storytelling of it led to the bigger message.
[13:40]Well, I'm gonna jump in first and say
[13:42]that was entirely the genius of Lily.
[13:44]That was the narrative that she just rolled right out
[13:49]at my kitchen table that day.
[13:51]And it is brilliant because we're biologists
[13:56]and we also are naturalists and environmentalists
[14:01]and we care deeply about these animals
[14:04]and we didn't wanna reduce them to cartoons
[14:07]or anthropomorphize them or pretend that they're people
[14:10]because they have their own value as who they are.
[14:14]So this narrative, this idea, Lily, came up with
[14:17]of having a dual narrative with a child
[14:22]having her first experience in the woods
[14:24]with a beloved relative and a coyote pup
[14:28]having his first experience as a learning to hunt
[14:33]with a beloved relative.
[14:35]That allows us to bring kind of human language
[14:39]and comprehension into a story about animals
[14:43]that don't speak English and really show with parallels
[14:47]that they're doing the same things.
[14:49]A lot of the same things.
[14:51]I think seeing those parallels for kids
[14:53]is a lot of what helps to develop
[14:55]the environmental sensitivity that we know kids need
[14:58]to later in life have environmentally responsible behavior.
[15:02]They need to have a basis of seeing themselves
[15:05]reflected in nature and in biology.
[15:07]And I think there's so many ways to do that.
[15:09]There are kids everywhere in nature learning different things
[15:13]and it just, I mean, it's so easy to see those parallels.
[15:17]We are a top predator.
[15:19]We are omnivores not well, but so are coyotes.
[15:23]Coyotes aren't carnivores, you know,
[15:24]like many people think they're omnivores too.
[15:26]They are, they feel a very similar niche to us in many ways.
[15:29]And so it just seemed, I don't know.
[15:32]So it's so clear to me to position them opposite.
[15:35]But also it was really important to us
[15:37]that they not truly meet because so much of that respect
[15:41]for predators is giving them the space they deserve,
[15:45]giving them what they need to be co-habitants with us,
[15:50]what they need to share our environment.
[15:52]And so we talked about it a lot and we decided,
[15:55]you know, the coyotes see the people at one point
[15:58]and they decide to leave,
[15:59]which is what coyotes mostly do when they see people.
[16:02]They don't want to stick around and we want to, you know,
[16:05]encourage kids to understand that that distance
[16:08]is a kind of respect.
[16:10]And even still, I'm holding up this picture,
[16:13]which is my favorite moment of the book
[16:15]when the coyote, it's a beautiful painting
[16:18]of the coyotes peering through a little hole in the bushes
[16:21]and they're seeing, on the river bank,
[16:23]they are seeing grandpa and Diana
[16:26]and contemplating, you know, this other species.
[16:29]Just, there's so many things that it's kind of a climax
[16:32]because they do, that's when they almost meet.
[16:35]But it's also this, it's a kind of a spiritual moment
[16:38]when you realize that animals have their fears
[16:41]and their, their curiosities as well.
[16:44]As we do, it's just, it's just, it's a lovely moment.
[16:47]And then as Lily says, they all leave each other
[16:51]to their own lives, to their own safe spaces.
[16:54]So yeah, and another, another thing that was really helpful
[16:59]and useful with this device of the double narrative
[17:02]is that Diana, our little girl who is on her first camping trip
[17:07]with her grandfather, is she's from a city
[17:10]and she's on, she's, she's new to this world.
[17:13]And so it gives us a natural opportunity
[17:15]for grandpa to explain things to her
[17:18]and when she hears the coyotes, she's afraid
[17:20]and he explains to her why he's not afraid
[17:25]and how important predators are
[17:28]in this ecosystem, one important job they have to do
[17:32]and Diana thinks, oh, animals have jobs.
[17:35]So it's this way of introducing sort of a teacher
[17:39]into the story in a natural way
[17:40]that just comes right about of the, out of the story.
[17:43]Amazing.
[17:44]Well, I think it's so important, particularly now,
[17:47]but always when you fear something, someone,
[17:51]to really make sure you understand
[17:54]because once Diana and her grandfather really understand
[17:58]and they understand what the role is
[18:01]and who they are and what they're thinking and feeling,
[18:04]it's really just this big opportunity for more empathy
[18:08]and to stop the fear and the retaliation
[18:13]often fear causes action, which can be incredibly harmful.
[18:16]And I think part of the story is take a beat here
[18:19]and figure it out like why should you not be afraid
[18:22]or how can you have respect for someone else
[18:24]who is doing what they need to be doing
[18:27]and coexist that way.
[18:28]Yeah, one of the main reasons we wanted to do this book,
[18:32]actually, I'm sorry, I interrupted you Lily.
[18:35]I want to talk about our feelings about predators
[18:38]and predator representation in literature.
[18:41]I mean, go, you can start for sure.
[18:44]I have a lot of similar things to say.
[18:47]I do think predators are so vilified
[18:50]and we have always been the kind of people who care deeply
[18:54]for things that are misrepresented,
[18:55]who want to give care to things like the Big Bad Wolf,
[18:59]that are positioned in all of these stories
[19:03]as these terrifying others
[19:07]that are misrepresented of all things bad.
[19:10]And that's kids have the ability to understand nuance
[19:15]because kids understand stranger danger,
[19:16]kids understand the difference between their parents
[19:19]and people that they meet on the street.
[19:21]So they can understand that it's okay to meet something
[19:25]that's very different from you
[19:26]that could have the potential to be dangerous
[19:30]if you react in appropriate ways.
[19:33]If you keep your distance just like you would with a stranger,
[19:36]if you don't engage, if you don't go with them,
[19:38]right, there are ways for kids to understand
[19:42]just non-action, you know?
[19:43]If you see something you're afraid of,
[19:45]you don't have to approach it and fight with it.
[19:47]You can just remove yourself.
[19:49]And that's respectful to the animal.
[19:53]I'm sorry, I work in a nature preschool
[19:55]and I'm thinking of last week, we live in Florida.
[19:57]So we have lots of wonderful fauna
[19:58]and last week, A.
[20:00]Evan Foot rat snake came into our nature nook
[20:02]and I said, oh, what a beautiful rat snake.
[20:04]And then it sat there all through nature nook time.
[20:06]And the kids, you know, some of them said
[20:08]that they were very afraid and others said they loved it.
[20:11]And they, you know, wanted to make it a picnic
[20:13]and I said, don't do that, you know,
[20:17]that it's okay to be afraid of that snake
[20:20]and still just stand back, give it that respect,
[20:23]give it that space.
[20:24]And like you can validate a kid's feelings
[20:27]and you don't need to take away that fear,
[20:29]but you can also instill in them.
[20:32]Kind of a piece, a calm about it.
[20:34]And like you said, just taking a beat
[20:36]and giving space.
[20:38]I just, we keep coming back to space.
[20:40]At preschool, we talk about it all the time.
[20:42]Sometimes you need space, sometimes an animal needs space.
[20:44]Right.
[20:45]And even beyond, you know, the relationship
[20:49]and the response or reaction to an animal,
[20:54]it's so important.
[20:56]We, we feel, we believe to appreciate
[21:00]that that animal has a job in its own importance.
[21:03]And predators in particular, as Lily said,
[21:06]have been vilified throughout history
[21:08]has been put, you know, put into children's stories
[21:11]as the scary enemy.
[21:13]In fact, predators are incredibly important.
[21:16]Predators are the most,
[21:18]so that the certain predators like wolves,
[21:21]like coyotes are keystones in their ecosystems
[21:25]that help keep the whole thing in balance.
[21:27]People don't think about the fact that,
[21:29]well, the reason, the whole reason that deer
[21:33]are overrunning the Eastern United States
[21:36]and considered widely considered a pest
[21:38]because there are so, so many of them.
[21:40]That's because people, you know, the early colonists
[21:44]who came here shot and killed all the wolves.
[21:47]And the wolves were keeping the whole system in balance.
[21:51]The coyotes, in fact, have moved into this region
[21:54]over the last century because they found this empty niche
[21:59]and they're filling it.
[22:00]And so they're starting to restore balance.
[22:03]That's a beautiful thing.
[22:04]And it seems like a really complicated idea
[22:07]to put into a children's book.
[22:09]But guess what?
[22:10]We did.
[22:11]We found a way, you know, to, to understand it's not just,
[22:15]you know, step one is a value, you know,
[22:18]give space and evaluate our, our reevaluate our fears.
[22:22]Step two is respect and observe and,
[22:25]and think about the importance of another,
[22:28]another creature and the role at place.
[22:30]We're predators too.
[22:32]This is the whole, if you start taking something apart
[22:35]that you don't really understand.
[22:37]It's like a table you're trying to make, right?
[22:39]You move one of the legs a little bit.
[22:40]The whole thing comes falling over.
[22:42]And you're like, but it was just like an inch.
[22:44]Yeah, exactly, exactly.
[22:46]That's ecology, that's the science of ecology,
[22:49]how important all of the different pieces
[22:51]are in how they fit together.
[22:53]So, yeah, these are complicated ideas.
[22:57]That's why if my initial response was no way
[23:00]and Lily's response was, yes way, we can do this.
[23:03]And when we turned it over,
[23:04]I will tell you that when we turned our text over to our
[23:07]illustrator Paul, he said, you know,
[23:11]Barbara and Lily, you've written the war and peace
[23:14]of children's picture books.
[23:17]So we're kind of proud of that.
[23:20]You said we ran.
[23:21]Well, it still works.
[23:22]And Lily is a teacher, I know you know this,
[23:25]but it still works.
[23:27]It's still easily communicated.
[23:28]And I think people sometimes underestimate
[23:31]what kids can understand.
[23:32]And a lot of books don't necessarily value,
[23:36]you know, they're bright and relaxed and everything.
[23:39]So anyway, I would not worry about the kids.
[23:41]This was totally, this is great.
[23:43]And very entertaining in the art itself
[23:45]is just absolutely beautiful.
[23:46]When did both of you, or maybe,
[23:48]Barbara was your love that informed Lily's,
[23:51]but become such, you know, staunch,
[23:54]environmentalist and nature lovers.
[23:56]And how do you, how is that part of your family life
[23:59]on like a day-to-day basis?
[24:00]Like my family and I don't have a specific view
[24:03]on the role of predators and literature, for example.
[24:06]But you do.
[24:08]So tell me, tell me a little bit about that.
[24:10]And how is this dinner table conversation?
[24:13]How does this all come up with a do of you
[24:16]and the rest of your family?
[24:17]Well, mom, we should start
[24:18]because you were an environmentalist before I was born.
[24:21]I think it's just completely integrated into our lives.
[24:24]And I will say that it probably is an essential part
[24:28]of this is the fact that both Lily and I grew up
[24:31]in a rural place.
[24:33]I grew up in rural Kentucky.
[24:36]My playground was the woods, the fields and the woods
[24:40]around our house.
[24:40]So from the time that the earliest I can remember,
[24:44]I spent a lot of time on my own without a dull supervision.
[24:47]Well, my brother's supervision, he's only two years older.
[24:50]So that was very limited to prison.
[24:52]Just, you know, playing in the woods, trying things out,
[24:56]you know, finding instead of collecting, you know,
[24:59]Pikachu cards or whatever, we collected acorns
[25:04]and beautiful rocks and turtle shells and things
[25:08]that we found.
[25:09]And that was just, that was our wonderland
[25:11]in that sense of wonder and appreciation and awareness
[25:15]that I am one species among many, actually millions
[25:20]of other species who all have an important,
[25:22]who all believe frankly that they are
[25:25]the most important creature on earth, you know,
[25:27]and we all have that sort of centric notion of ourselves.
[25:31]But it's, every, we're all working together.
[25:35]And even right now, it's important to me
[25:37]when I look out the window in my office,
[25:39]I'm looking at trees.
[25:40]And it was important to me to raise Lily and her sister
[25:44]with the same appreciation.
[25:46]So what was your playground, Lily?
[25:50]So, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of the same things to say
[25:53]as mom, but I also want to add, I'm getting my masters
[25:56]in environmental education and I've been learning
[25:58]a lot recently about how we instill these environmental values
[26:02]in kids and something that we know for research
[26:04]is that in the first, I believe it, don't quote me on this,
[26:09]but I think the first thousand days of a person's life,
[26:13]they, that is when you have the opportunity
[26:15]to develop this environmental sensitivity
[26:18]and really before the age of five during early childhood,
[26:21]big experiences either of positive interaction with nature
[26:25]or negative, not negative interaction with nature,
[26:28]but seeing something negative happen in nature.
[26:30]So for example, I was really, really lucky
[26:33]that I got to grow up first in the Sonoran Desert
[26:36]and my parents took me outside every day
[26:39]and I played in under the Mesquite trees every day.
[26:41]And then when we moved to Virginia,
[26:43]they let me go into the woods every day and explore myself.
[26:47]So I had all these really positive experiences.
[26:50]My husband grew up in a less rural place
[26:52]and he had a creek behind his house
[26:55]that he watched become more and more polluted.
[26:57]And he said he remembers as a kid finding frogs and bugs
[27:01]and then the water looks orange
[27:03]and then it's oily and then the frogs and bugs aren't there anymore.
[27:06]And he was devastated.
[27:07]This creek that he played in growing up became something else.
[27:10]You know, and he saw this happen and that impact
[27:14]allowed him to develop a lot of these same feelings
[27:17]about protecting nature and its intrinsic value.
[27:20]And so it doesn't have to be,
[27:22]I mean, I'm so, so fortunate that I got all these early
[27:26]positive experiences in nature,
[27:27]but it doesn't even necessarily have to be,
[27:30]you know, putting your kid outside in the woods every day.
[27:32]It's really just giving them some experience
[27:36]where they see either the benefits that nature can provide
[27:39]or they see why nature needs to be protected,
[27:42]if that makes sense.
[27:43]And I just feel so grateful that I was given all those
[27:46]early opportunities to connect to frogs and bugs and coyotes
[27:50]and all the wonderful things out there
[27:52]that not everybody loves, honestly.
[27:55]I feel like your husband's stream
[27:57]should be its own book.
[27:58]Maybe that's your name.
[28:00]Actually, that's a really good idea.
[28:03]And so, well, since this is a podcast for moms,
[28:07]I want to say as a mom that I learned really,
[28:14]that it doesn't have to be, you know,
[28:16]you don't have to live next to a national park.
[28:19]You live close to, I mean, barring very sad exceptions,
[28:24]you live close to some trees.
[28:26]I'm sure that there have to be some trees
[28:29]near where you live.
[28:30]And I remember from the earliest, my earliest days as a mother
[28:35]that on the fussyest days, it would always calm my babies
[28:41]to take them outside under trees
[28:45]and let them look up at leaves moving in front of the sky.
[28:48]There was just something magically calming.
[28:50]And I don't know, maybe it was helping to call me down.
[28:53]I was going to say that, but I don't know.
[28:54]Or just the break, but there's something, honestly,
[28:58]I believe it's just, and this is just, you know,
[29:01]this is the theory of Barbara.
[29:03]But I think there's something inside of us
[29:06]that is calmed by natural things,
[29:09]by the site of things that were not made by humans.
[29:13]And I think that, you know,
[29:14]even just taking your kid to the park,
[29:18]even if it's a funny thing in Tucson,
[29:21]we used to go to the cemetery because it had the biggest
[29:26]trees and the most grass.
[29:27]It was sort of the greenest, leafiest place around.
[29:31]So that was one of my refuges to take the babies
[29:33]to the cemetery.
[29:35]They didn't know.
[29:36]They didn't know there were dead people around this.
[29:39]But just as a mom, and maybe I was also tapping into my own,
[29:44]the sort of the thread of the sort of that river of calm
[29:49]in myself, tapping back to my own childhood,
[29:52]how I always felt comforted by being outside.
[29:55]But I think that does, I was just thinking,
[29:58]Lily, when you said the first thousand.
[30:00]days, I'm trying to remember how many times I took you camping in your first thousand
[30:05]days.
[30:06]I remember one time, oh gosh, you were not even one year old and we took you camping and
[30:12]I had you in your car seat and somehow when my back was turned, you had jumped out of
[30:16]the car seat and you were sort of crawling around in the dirt, covered in dirt.
[30:22]And happy is could be.
[30:23]And you know, some people might think that was terrible, but it wasn't.
[30:28]I wouldn't be the rain for my immune system.
[30:32]Yeah, just getting outside.
[30:36]And honestly, kind of that same topic of bringing your kid to the graveyard, so much of
[30:40]nature is how you frame it.
[30:41]And I just have to say, I hear these preschoolers every day say things that they've heard
[30:45]their parents say.
[30:47]And if they've heard their parents say snakes are ugly, that's what they're going to say,
[30:50]you know.
[30:51]And so all about this, this nature preschool is based in an a Z a certified zoo, it's a really
[30:56]good zoo.
[30:57]And so we're lucky that we get to see all these really incredible animals.
[31:01]And sometimes the kids are parroting things they've heard and they'll say, that crocodile
[31:05]is really ugly.
[31:06]And we always try to say to the kids, can we look at the crocodile with kinder eyes?
[31:10]Can we think of, you know, we say a lot, we don't use mean words to describe our friends
[31:15]or animals or anything alive.
[31:17]Can we think of another way to describe it that's maybe that crocodile is very bumpy.
[31:21]That crocodile looks very different than me that crocodile is really interesting.
[31:25]You know, trying to frame things in a way that allows your kid to absorb more than just
[31:33]that coyote's mean or that snake is ugly, you know.
[31:36]And so the graveyard, I didn't know it was a graveyard, I'm sure.
[31:40]I really love what you just said about thinking of animals as our friends and speaking
[31:47]of them the way we would speak of friends.
[31:50]That's a really good rule, I think, for parents to bear in mind.
[31:55]As we wouldn't, we don't, I mean, what we're doing when we're at our best as parents.
[32:01]We don't speak ill of other people or of friends.
[32:04]We model kindness towards people and it's interesting that we wouldn't think to extend
[32:11]the same modeling of kindness to species other than our own.
[32:17]We were aware, as we wrote this book, as I think one has to be when writing a children's
[32:23]book that we're also writing for parents.
[32:26]And one thing we're really aware of, and this actually came up in the editing process
[32:32]because I've read a million books to children, I mean, not a million books, but certain
[32:39]books a million times it seems.
[32:41]And now Lily has two and we're aware as adults that you enjoy reading the books that
[32:50]engage you as well.
[32:52]And so we were aware of several things.
[32:55]One is that we want this to be educational for parents, too.
[32:58]We think that there are parents who are going to learn some interesting ecological information
[33:02]from this book in a very simple, enjoyable way.
[33:06]But also there was, there's things that are harder and easier to read.
[33:11]There was one place where the editors wanted us to, the coyotes, how, oh, there's that
[33:16]happened.
[33:18]And there was once they wanted us to put it three times on the same page and we said,
[33:22]no, that's our compassion for the parent, you have to, you have to be part of this.
[33:31]But also another thing I love about this book, which was part of the format that was given
[33:37]to us by Griffin Press is that, and I'm holding it up again for those who can see it.
[33:42]So the last two pages are for, really, for the parents, more for the adults.
[33:51]facts about coyotes.
[33:53]And you can learn a lot more information about this wonderful, beautiful animal from those
[34:00]last pages.
[34:01]And that helped us when we had to pare down and pare down our story.
[34:04]We kept saying, well, we can put that in the end pages.
[34:07]Wow.
[34:08]Well, one thing I've learned from the two of you is not just how to respect nature,
[34:13]but what happens when mothers and daughters treat each other with the most respect, I mean,
[34:18]the two of the way you to speak to each other.
[34:20]I'm guessing it's not just for this podcast, but we're really liking each other a lot.
[34:27]So it's really wonderful as a role model type relationship to see what can happen as you
[34:34]get older and have just the same interests and collaboration and just that respect that we
[34:39]should have fundamentally of each other and all living creatures, but really those closest
[34:43]to us the most.
[34:44]So thank you for modeling that as well.
[34:46]And I don't want to keep you all day.
[34:47]This is not an all day podcast.
[34:49]So thank you again for coming on.
[34:51]Congratulations on this beautiful, beautiful book and the difference that it will make
[34:54]in so many family's lives.
[34:57]Thank you.
[34:58]Much.
[34:59]Okay.
[35:00]Bye bye.
[35:01]Take care.
[35:02]Bye.
[35:03]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[35:06]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[35:11]Books.
[35:12]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[35:16]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[35:18]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[35:22]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out
[35:26]to your music.