E260: HELP! I’M BEING EATEN BY A BEAR by Neil Sharpson & Dan Santat

Now, this book is so much fun.

As you said, the words are fun, the illustrations, just the emotions, the expressions on the face, the details of trying to pry him out of the bear's mouth and the things holding his mouth open.

As an educator who has read a lot of books, on a lot of carpets with a lot of kids in a circle, it is the best when you're the teacher and you are reading a book aloud to a child and the giggles come and they lean in and they're looking at the pages.

And this book is going to come with a lot of that from the kids, I imagine, from the caregivers and the teachers as well.

And And I would love to ask the both of you as a way to round out the episode of what your hope is for the book or for the readers who get the chance to experience it.

I would say so.

I think I think the highest compliments a kid can play can pay your book is when someone is reading to them and they just look and they say, it doesn't really say that, does it?

Yeah.

And that's kind of, I hope that we get that help of being eaten by a bear.

It gets a lot of kids saying, it doesn't really say that, does it? Yeah.

That's my hope for it.

I, you know, my hope, whenever I... go to school visits, one thing that I hear from educators or teachers or librarians, I just came back from an event in Iowa and these librarians, they said, well, when we invited you, we were questioning, we were deciding whether or not we wanted a more literary author to talk about books, which doesn't really bring the energy, you know, it's, it's like, I've made this beautiful book.

Kids appreciate it one way, you know, it's just like, this is a beautiful story.

This is a work of art.

I appreciate it for what it is.

But they said, we think this year we wanted to invite an author that really makes reading ridiculously fun.

And so, um, I've, I've kind of taken a little bit of pride in myself and this is from years of doing school visits where I will get the kids.

It's almost like by the end of the presentation, I feel like we're just reading a book out on the playground and everybody's laughing and shouting and having a good time.

And.

I want to try to invigorate that kind of excitement back into reading.

And I definitely think that funny books are those things that can deliver that kind of excitement.

And I'm going to just quote John Sheska from years ago.

He said, funny books play a huge impact on literacy, but they're never seen as books that should be award winners, which kind of lessens their impact because if it doesn't have a shiny sticker on it or something, then for some reason they regard it as lesser of a book.

But by getting kids into reading and having fun and just screaming and laughing over a book, to me, I think that is something that this country in particular needs right now, especially after studies said that reading for pleasure has gone down 40% in the last 20 years.

I definitely think that that is something we need to put more emphasis on.