About this episode
Karina Yan Glaser (The Vanderbeekers series) shares how and why empathy plays such an integral role in her writing. She tells us about her own reading experiences and how they shaped her, along with why she believes in emotional honesty when writing for children.
Maybe if they haven't been in that situation, they know someone who has, or they have friends who have really struggled with losing loved ones. That all helps build empathy." - Karina Yan Glaser
Karina Yan Glaser is always emotionally honest in her stories. Pulling largely from her own experiences, she lets her feelings seep onto the pages in a way that makes it impossible not to feel as a reader. But despite writing for children, she doesn't hide any of those hard emotions such as anger, sadness, and grief. She believes in the power of stories to help kids practice empathy and be prepared for the tough situations we all face in life. Her takes on community, diversity, and hardship are what make her series The Vanderbeekers such a success. In this episode of The Reading Culture, she joins to share how her reading journey has shaped who she is as a writer and how she approaches building empathy into her stories.
Contents
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Chapter 1 - Getting to Know Karina (2:33)
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Chapter 2 - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (7:02)
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Chapter 3 - Becoming a Writer (15:16)
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Chapter 4 - Empathy in Stories (18:56)
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Chapter 5 - The Culture of Reading in Schools (28:29)
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Chapter 6 - A Question From a Reader (32:15)
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Chapter 7 - Beanstack Feature Librarian (35:21)
Karina's Reading Challenge
Download the free reading challenge worksheet, or view the challenge materials on our helpdesk.
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Karina Yan Glaser: A lot of people message me and they're really upset or just like, "You know, we're really sad about this," and I was too, I was really sad writing that, but those were things that kids are going through.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I remember vividly when my son, Cassius first realized that people can die, that we will lose people in our lives. We were walking into our home after a long day of work and daycare, he said to me, "Myra says people can die too, not just plants and animals." His big eyes looked up at me in the evening light and he saw me catch my breath, we consider what to tell him. In that moment, he knew his friend's words were true. He fell to the ground, incredulous, and sad. No matter what we do, that innocence is either lost through experience or learning as kids grow up and it is so important for children to learn how to process hard truths and how to work through difficult situations and emotions. Karina Yan Glaser believes reading can play a critical role in helping kids grow and grapple with life's unexpected turns. Karina is a New York Times best-selling author widely known for her hit children's series, The Vanderbeekers. She embeds empathy into everything she writes, connecting with kids on an honest and emotional level.
Karina Yan Glaser: Just letting myself feel all those emotions when I'm writing it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: In this episode of The Reading Culture, Karina tells us about how she intertwines her real-life experiences into her writing to deepen that connection, about the ways in which reading about tough situations and topics can build resilience and empathy in kids, and how her own experiences with books as a child led her to become an author. Karina also share her own reading challenge that has a unique theme and fantastic set of suggested books. You can hear more about that at the end of our conversation. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey and this is The Reading Culture. A show where we speak with authors and reading enthusiasts to explore ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities, we dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations and why their stories and ideas are connecting so well with kids. Today we welcome Karina Yan Glaser.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Your home is filled with books and plants as I see it, I do. [chuckle]
Karina Yan Glaser: Yes. [chuckle]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Do you go through the books? I’ve seen a bunch of articles and I was thinking that your kids are so lucky to live in that environment. And I was wondering what your environment... Your reading and book environment was like as a kid.
Karina Yan Glaser: Growing up, I don't remember really having so much of a reading culture within our family, like my parents, I don't ever recall them reading to me or doing nightly read-alouds. For me, it was really amazing when I first started to read on my own, because all of a sudden, all these worlds and situations and families became real to me in a way that I hadn't been exposed to before. I don't remember really reading until first or second grade and... But when I did, I was just totally voracious. I just wanted to read everything and I just really fell in love with reading.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah, but if you weren't reading at home, like what made you want to read on your own?
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, we moved around a lot. So I was born in Illinois and lived there until first grade, and then halfway through first grade we made a cross-country trip to California. Because we moved around a lot and because I changed schools a lot, I definitely felt like the library was a huge refuge for me because I would get to a new school and not know anyone and usually the schools I would go to, it'd be like a school where people were pretty rooted, so trying to break into a new grade and not know anyone, I would always find the library first. I just always felt like it was a safe place and also familiar. Every library has a feeling, and a lot of them have similar books, so it'd be nice to just go there and be like, "Okay, this is familiar and safe."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Did your experience growing up and that attachment that you had to libraries and books inform how you are raising your own children now and the ways in which you read to them, read with them, help curate the books they're reading or don't, now?
Karina Yan Glaser: When I first got pregnant with my older daughter, I was most excited about reading to her and so when I was pregnant, I was even reading to her when I was pregnant and my husband would get in on it too, [chuckle] and he just like lying in bed and we read these children's books and it was really fun. And then when she was born, we would read a lot and just have baskets of board books, so she was always surrounded by books. We'd be on the subway a lot, so I had a bag or two bags that were just filled with books. We'd always be reading on the subway to pass the time and when I was bathing her, I would read sort of longer chapter books like EB White just to... I don't know, I just really loved reading to her, and then my second daughter was born and we were... We did the same thing and we just always had books, we'd go to the library, we discovered that there was a limit of 50 check-outs, which should be enough, [chuckle] and...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah, picture books go quickly though.
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, they do go quickly. [chuckle] So we ended up taking out a card in both of their names so we could just get up... We can have more to check out, and then it just became this nightmare of, "When are these due? Where is that library book? They were always losing them, but it was just really lovely, and I think that those early years, like books we're just... We were always reading, it was so great. And now my kids are 12 and 14 and they read a ton still but mostly on their own. I've missed that time when we were... We would just all hang out and read, and sometimes we still do that, but not as often.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As Karina found herself more engulfed in the world of literature, the idea of living in New York City took hold. She read book after book about the city, its interesting communities and diverse cultures, and the allure of a place where she could imagine herself living. It's no surprise that as an adult, she would end up writing a magical series like "The Vanderbeekers" where the family's Harlem neighborhood plays such an integral role. Although Karina read many stories about the imaginative world that is New York, there was one that stood out from the rest. It was a book where she saw not only who she was as a kid, but also who she could be as an adult.
Karina Yan Glaser: One of my favorite books is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I think that that was probably the book that made me wanna move to New York. I just loved the author's description of the city and neighborhoods, community. That was a very important book to me, and I remember giving it to my older daughter a year ago, and I was like, "This is my favorite book, so if you don't like it, don't say anything to me." And she was like, "I'm afraid to read it 'cause I don't... If I don't like it, I don't wanna have to lie to you." [laughter] So she didn't read it, but I love that book. I also love sort of these big family New York City stories like "All-of-a-Kind Family" by Sydney Taylor. I love that book, "The Moffats," "The Saturdays." And I think definitely those books inform "The Vanderbeekers," and there are definitely lots of elements in those books about big families, about New York, about community that I wanted to bring into "The Vanderbeekers," while also making sure readers knew that this was set in a modern time, that there is this sense of, well, I tried to at least write this timelessness into "The Vanderbeekers." So definitely a lot of those books. I fell in love with New York City because I read about it and just thought it was... Just sounded so great. [chuckle]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Betty Smith's 1943 novel, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the semi-autobiographical story chronicling the coming of age years of Francie Nolan. It begins with 11-year-old Francie and her family, living in the Williamsburg tenement neighborhood of Brooklyn, and ends as she turns 17 and heads off to college. Francie's story is wide-ranging, both uplifting and heartbreaking. The book deals with difficult topics like poverty, and addiction, and war. Despite being set in the first two decades of the 1900s, the story has still found ways to resonate with a modern audience. It is a singular story that somehow captures a universal experience. Karina told us about how and when she first fell in love with "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."
Karina Yan Glaser: I remember having to do a report or something on it. It was a free reading book and then you had to write about it, and I remember my teacher... It was the first year I was at that school, so I wasn't really sure how things went at that school, and it was a lot tougher than the school I had previously gone to. And I remember the teacher asking, "What is the significance of the tree?" [chuckle] And I wasn't reading at a very deep level when I was in sixth grade.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: To like this story. [chuckle]
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, now, I think I could expound more on the tree, but back then I was like, "I don't know." [chuckle] I remember not having an answer and being sort of embarrassed and like, "I did read it, but I don't know."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You're not reading for metaphor?
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, exactly. So I was definitely growing as a reader, but I remember reading it and feeling very connected to Francie Nolan, who is the main character. I felt like she was a lot like me. We both had brothers. We had parents who had difficult marriages. We had a dad who was not fully there and we were often... Both of us were often sort of left on our own to sort of fend for ourselves. But when I looked at Francie, I just felt like there was this really amazing strength about her and just fortitude and a sense of knowing where she wanted to be and really working to get to that point on her own. And one of the things I loved was right in the first part of the book where she's sort of wandering around the streets of Brooklyn and her and her brother are collecting little scraps of metal, and they bring it to their junkyard, so they can sell it and make some money, like spending money. She gets a whole nickel, [chuckle] 'cause they have to save some of the money for her mom, and then they had to keep some of the money. So she has a whole nickel and she's wandering around the little stores and trying to decide where she's gonna spend this money.
Karina Yan Glaser: And then she goes to the library and there was a Warren Bull piece of pottery. And she's like, "I'm gonna have that when I grow up." A little vase made of pottery and have flowers in it, like that change of the seasons, and then she goes over to the bookshelves and she is wanting to read every single book in the whole library, it's in alphabetical order. It's so funny 'cause she talks about some of them being very boring, and then some of them she looks a little ahead, and I was like, "I cannot wait for that one. That just sounds amazing."
Karina Yan Glaser: But I think on Saturday or Sunday, I don't remember exactly what day, she lets herself choose or ask the librarian for a recommendation, and the librarian only recommends two books. [chuckle] And she gets there and the library recommends the book that she really wanted 'cause the last couple of weeks, she recommended the other one and she was really excited about it. But she's at the library and she's just looking around and just dreaming about how things will be different when she gets older. And she says, "When I get big and have my own home, no plus chairs or at least curtains for me and no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green glider every Saturday night, and a row of shining yellow pencils, already sharpened for writing, and a golden brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it, and books, books, books."
[music]
Karina Yan Glaser: I think this book really helped me understand what it meant to want something different from maybe the situation you're growing up in, and I think that's what really kept me motivated through many years growing up, like knowing this is what I wanna do with my life, I wanna go to New York, I wanna go to college, I want to be something more than what I feel like is around me. And I felt like having that goal through adolescence and high school, and it really helped me feel grounded and have a specific end game in mind, and I think that book helped me really figure that out.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I was curious if any of that book or any of the other books that you read, and that's a really beautiful passage and sort of light into what your life kind of appears to be now, actually, but did you ever think about wanting to become a writer and create stories like those when you were reading them or was that... How did that come to be?
Karina Yan Glaser: Well, I started writing as soon as I could read, so around second grade, I started writing my own stories, and my dad is an architect, and back then he worked at a firm that had a photocopy machine, which back then was like a really big deal, and he would bring my story to his office and photocopy it and staple it. Yeah, that was really special, it felt official. And if you would asked me when I was in second grade what I wanted to do when I grow up, it would be writer, and then I probably lasted until high school, and then high school, you're just exploring so many different things and you're impacted by the people you meet, and the same thing in college. And so when I had my two kids, I started reading books to them and also being exposed to so much great work that's been happening in the last 20 years with diversity in publishing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. That's a huge shift, right, from what you're kind of expecting like...
Karina Yan Glaser: Huge shift, yeah from when we were growing up. I mean, like the one Asian character I was exposed to was Claudia Kishi and the Baby-Sitters club and [chuckle] yeah and now when I was looking at these books for my kids, I was just amazed, like Grace Lin and Linda Sue Park and Jackie Woodson, and all these authors who really were trailblazers and really being traditionally published and having books that were well loved and heavily awarded and reading those books to my kids, and it just made me remember, "Hey, I used to love to write, maybe I should try." and that's sort of how I started writing again. And it was around when my younger one was going to pre-school, you know like when they start, it's like very little, like a couple of hours, a few times a week, and you really... We didn't have time to go home so we just go to the coffee shop.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: To the coffee shop?
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, and just have like two hours by myself and write and it was great, and I remembered how much I loved it and remembered how much I love stories, and that's sort of how The Vanderbeekers came to be.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: My daughter, Florence, has a quirky self-created reading ritual. She has about five books at her bedside, and every night she rotates through them equally so that none are neglected. When she finishes one book, she selects a new one to fill in the rotation. However, when it came to The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street and the subsequent books in the series, that system went out the window. She absolutely devoured them out of order. As kids grow up and develop stronger reading preferences, it can sometimes be difficult to gauge what kind of books they will love.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I've noticed that if I make sure we have a wide array of options available, and thank you for a very high check-out limit, DC Public Library, and pay close attention. Kids will show us what they want to read, with Flo, I didn't even need to pay close attention to notice her passion for the Vanderbeekers series. She was so invested in the lives of the characters, always sharing the details of their adventures when I would tuck her in. But one night, she came to me with tears in her eyes, she had just read Spoiler Alert, the part where a beloved character, The Vanderbeekers upstairs neighbor, Mr. Jeet had passed away. It was one of the moments where I realized how incredible Karina is at building such strong emotional connections between her readers and her characters. I was curious to learn how she does this, so I asked.
Karina Yan Glaser: I think the first thing I always try to do is really fall in love with the characters myself, so like to create characters that I feel like are very nuanced. They're not all one thing or the other thing. They are not... Like even people have said to me like, there's not really a villain in your stories. There's a more antagonist, but not someone who's ever truly evil, like there's... You can always really see that there are multiple sides to a story, or there might be a reason why someone's acting in a certain way. And I think a lot of that is just how I grew up, and the compassion a lot of people have shown me. I've had lots of people who have acted as mothers to me and mothered me in a way that helped me grow a lot, and also having kids myself and seeing the situation they're in and things that they're going through.
Karina Yan Glaser: Mr. Jeet and Ms. Josie who are neighbors in the book, they are very close to the Vanderbeekers, almost like surrogate grandparents. And we have, like down our hallway, a woman who is very kind and sweet to our family and has been a part of our family since we moved into this building, which was back when my younger one was just born. So thinking about that, I also had a really good friend who was like a dad to me when I was working at Homes for the Homeless, and he passed away right around when my first book came out. And just like the depth of feeling I felt for losing him, also just like gratitude for all the ways that he loved me and changed my life, so just really like going back to remembering those things, building that into the story, that helps a lot, letting myself feel all those emotions when I'm writing it.
Karina Yan Glaser: I cried a lot writing the fourth book, which is when Mr. Jeet passes away. And a lot of people messaged me [laughter] and they were really upset or just like, "We're really sad about this," and I was too. I was really sad writing that, but those are things that kids are going through. They're losing loved ones. It's hard to process, and I hope in a way, reading about those situations, maybe if they haven't been in that situation, they know someone who has, or they have friends who have really struggled with losing loved ones, and that all helps build empathy and to help know what to do. And also, with Mr. Jeet, I tried to build up to that point. So even when we first meet him, he's not super healthy in the first book either. He...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh yeah. I don't think it comes as like a big surprise. Is that...
Karina Yan Glaser: Right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: They're prepared.
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah. I hope so. I have [laughter] gotten so many emails of people very sad or there's like, "Chapter 17. Oh my gosh." [laughter] But yeah, that's a part of life, and I really try to reflect what families are going through in the books. I think all of my books, even though they are fun and they're funny, I try to make them really funny. I also don't try to shy away from hard topics that we are all going through.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: In Karina's latest novel, A Duet for Home, she takes an even deeper dive into hard topics. The story is about two young characters who become friends while living in a homeless shelter after experiencing immense trauma. It follows their fight against a new housing policy that would harm them and their families. With support from one another and some important adults in their lives, the young heroes of the story move from feeling powerless to being agents of their own story. It's an intense premise, but it's yet another example of the talent Karina has for developing such empathetic connections for young readers while not ducking challenging themes. Much like the Vanderbeekers series, she evoked her own life experiences to draw raw and real emotion into her story.
[music]
Karina Yan Glaser: I did a double major in Asian cultures and political science and thought I really wanted to do more nonprofit work, which I did. I worked at a homeless shelter in New York City for many years. All of those things were amazing for getting life experience and getting a better idea of different people and how to work with others and understanding other people's circumstances.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Thinking of your own daughters or even the schools you visited, have you noticed teachers or the librarians there using books to address some of the harder issues that kids might be experiencing?
Karina Yan Glaser: I just think it's really hard to grow up right now. [chuckle] Like, you're just... There's a lot of media and there's a lot of news and it just feels like every day, there's just something really shocking on the news. And I feel like kids who are reading a lot, they are equipped to understand and deal with a lot of the things that are happening in the world because they can remember situations that came up in a book they've read that helps them be more prepared for how to deal with it, how to cope, how to have resilience. I do think we're in this amazing renaissance in children's literature where we're getting so many more different viewpoints and different topics are being addressed that were never addressed before, and I feel like my kids have such a broader understanding of the world because they read a lot.
Karina Yan Glaser: I'm just really grateful that my kids are growing up in a time where there is so much out there for them to read. When I talk to my friends, who're all around like my age and have kids, and they're writers, and the story is always the same. When we were growing up, we didn't have books that reflected us, and that was really hurtful and harmful, I think, because you grew up feeling like you were never the hero of the story. Books never reflected a situation that you were going through, and because of that, you didn't really have like worth because you were never truly seen. And I think now, we have this opportunity to share our perspectives and share what life was like growing up or to put in our books heroes that look like us, who have families like us, who have cultures and religions and all these things that make us unique, and we can share that and kids have that unique perspective, and I'm really thankful.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I'm just, sort of last couple questions here, wondering if you... When you visited any of the schools where you've been, I know it's been a pandemic, so maybe not in person too much, but when you have, if you've noticed anything in particular about the schools that you visit where you really feel it kind of strikes you that, "Wow, they're really doing something here that makes it seem like reading is a part of what's happening." It feels like it's really woven, reading for the sake and the joy of reading is built into the culture or the fabric of the school.
Karina Yan Glaser: I had a fantastic school visit in Ohio, Columbus, Ohio in May. It was scheduled for 2020, May, 2020 and so I just recently went. And this librarian, Annie Ruefle, she had just incredible energy, and you could see her impact throughout the whole school. It was a private girls school. She had a really small library, but it was just packed with everything, like books and art, and she was really big into incorporating art with reading. And they have a theme every year that is incorporated in the whole school, and they do art work all throughout the halls. And I think there was this big glacier that they had made out of paper just in the hall, 'cause they were weaving in animals and different things into reading. And when I visited, it was incredible. She and the kids, they had made jewelry with a Vanderbeekers book cover on it, and so all the kids were wearing earrings or necklaces.
Karina Yan Glaser: In my books, I talk a lot about pets and animals, so they had a whole wall where they had just kids with their pets, reading with their pets. They had brownstones everywhere made out of boxes, like Florida ceiling brownstone artwork all down the hall. And I just felt like reading was such a big part of the school. It just didn't feel like, "Okay, this is library time and this is when you read." It was just incorporated in everyone's classroom. It was incorporated in their art and the school as a whole. It was really incredible, and I see this at so many schools where there's that one person who just really makes it their mission to get as many kids to read as possible, and I just think it's just so incredible the work they do, and you can really feel it when you walk in 'cause kids are in and out of the library.
Karina Yan Glaser: They love being there. It's a safe space for them. And you can tell in the way they talk and the way they bring up other books when they talk, and it's really special. And those kids are so lucky, in this one school and a lot of these schools I visit, they're so lucky to have librarians and teachers that are so invested in them being exposed to so many different stories. They'll have that the rest of their life and pass that on to their kids and it's just really, really lovely.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That must be kind of full circle for you, when you're going back and seeing the school libraries where you took refuge as a kid, to be there and sort of being back there now with your own books and your own presentations.
Karina Yan Glaser: Yes, yeah. It feels very surreal.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As I mentioned earlier in this episode, my daughter, Florence is a massive fan of Karina's.
Karina Yan Glaser: Hi.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You can say hi.
Florence: Hi.
Karina Yan Glaser: Hi Flo. It's nice to meet you.
Florence: Nice meeting you too.
Karina Yan Glaser: I have my cat with me. [chuckle] It's like an assistant.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: When we first started thinking about how we are going to create this podcast and what it would be about, my daughter was adamant that I had to get Karina Yan Glaser, and right away, I loved that idea, because my job is literally hunting for better ways to engage kids with reading. So I wanted to find out how Karina has built such a powerful connection with young readers, like my own daughter. But while my questions focus a lot on what adults want to know, of course, I had to give Florence the opportunity to ask a question or two about what kids might want to know.
Florence: I know that my favorite character in the book is Laney, so I was wondering if you have a favorite character.
Karina Yan Glaser: Mm-hmm. Well, I also love Laney. It's really interesting, 'cause when I started writing the books, I wondered if I was gonna have a favorite, and it turns out that I really like all of them. I like all of the main characters a lot, and I never feel like when I'm writing it, that I'm annoyed that I have to write someone's perspective, like, "Oh man, I have to write Jessie now. She's so boring." I never feel that. I always feel really excited to see their perspectives. And Laney is super fun to write because Laney is a lot like my younger daughter, at least when my younger daughter was younger. So when I started writing The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, my younger daughter was four and three quarters, which is how old Laney is at the start of the books. So a lot of the characteristics that Laney has is very similar to my daughter, and things like the way she dressed or the way she hugged everyone, she's like a big hugger. She would say hi to random strangers on the subway, which is what Laney does and all those things were... It was the easiest character to write 'cause I was like, I have real-life inspiration living with me. I can really knock this character out of the park, so I'm glad you like Laney too. She is really fun to write.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Again, that was Karina Yan Glaser, New York Times best-selling author, known for her series, The Vanderbeekers, and more recently, A Duet for Home. Karina created a fabulous reading challenge for our listeners. Her theme is, "Books where New York City is a character". That tracks, right? You can join Karina's challenge by visiting thereadingculturepod.com. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Before we end things, I want to take a moment to shout out the Beanstack Featured Librarian for this episode. This week, that title goes to Megan Wilson. Megan is a librarian at Aggieland High School in College Station, Texas, which is part of the International Leadership of Texas charter schools network. ILTexas has been a Beanstack client for a few years, and Megan has had great success engaging what can be a tough group, highschoolers. Today, Megan shares with us a book she loves to recommend to her students.
Megan Wilson: My number one go-to is Lovely War by Julie Berry. The thing that's so cool about it, is she actually wrote it from the perspective of Aphrodite and Apollo and Ares and Hades, like several of the Greek gods, and they are sharing the story about how they, I don't wanna use the word manipulated, but how they had a hand in a relationship that was developing during World War I. I don't know exactly how Julie Berry came up with this really grand and in-depth well put together novel that I thought was really unique, but it is phenomenal.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been The Reading Culture. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and currently, I am reading The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan and re-reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. If you liked this show please rate, subscribe and share among your friends and networks. To learn more about how you can help grow your community’s reading culture, you can check out all of our resources at beanstack.com. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of the show. Thanks for joining and keep reading.
[music]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I remember vividly when my son, Cassius first realized that people can die, that we will lose people in our lives. We were walking into our home after a long day of work and daycare, he said to me, "Myra says people can die too, not just plants and animals." His big eyes looked up at me in the evening light and he saw me catch my breath, we consider what to tell him. In that moment, he knew his friend's words were true. He fell to the ground, incredulous, and sad. No matter what we do, that innocence is either lost through experience or learning as kids grow up and it is so important for children to learn how to process hard truths and how to work through difficult situations and emotions. Karina Yan Glaser believes reading can play a critical role in helping kids grow and grapple with life's unexpected turns. Karina is a New York Times best-selling author widely known for her hit children's series, The Vanderbeekers. She embeds empathy into everything she writes, connecting with kids on an honest and emotional level.
Karina Yan Glaser: Just letting myself feel all those emotions when I'm writing it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: In this episode of The Reading Culture, Karina tells us about how she intertwines her real-life experiences into her writing to deepen that connection, about the ways in which reading about tough situations and topics can build resilience and empathy in kids, and how her own experiences with books as a child led her to become an author. Karina also share her own reading challenge that has a unique theme and fantastic set of suggested books. You can hear more about that at the end of our conversation. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey and this is The Reading Culture. A show where we speak with authors and reading enthusiasts to explore ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities, we dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations and why their stories and ideas are connecting so well with kids. Today we welcome Karina Yan Glaser.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Your home is filled with books and plants as I see it, I do. [chuckle]
Karina Yan Glaser: Yes. [chuckle]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Do you go through the books? I’ve seen a bunch of articles and I was thinking that your kids are so lucky to live in that environment. And I was wondering what your environment... Your reading and book environment was like as a kid.
Karina Yan Glaser: Growing up, I don't remember really having so much of a reading culture within our family, like my parents, I don't ever recall them reading to me or doing nightly read-alouds. For me, it was really amazing when I first started to read on my own, because all of a sudden, all these worlds and situations and families became real to me in a way that I hadn't been exposed to before. I don't remember really reading until first or second grade and... But when I did, I was just totally voracious. I just wanted to read everything and I just really fell in love with reading.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah, but if you weren't reading at home, like what made you want to read on your own?
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, we moved around a lot. So I was born in Illinois and lived there until first grade, and then halfway through first grade we made a cross-country trip to California. Because we moved around a lot and because I changed schools a lot, I definitely felt like the library was a huge refuge for me because I would get to a new school and not know anyone and usually the schools I would go to, it'd be like a school where people were pretty rooted, so trying to break into a new grade and not know anyone, I would always find the library first. I just always felt like it was a safe place and also familiar. Every library has a feeling, and a lot of them have similar books, so it'd be nice to just go there and be like, "Okay, this is familiar and safe."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Did your experience growing up and that attachment that you had to libraries and books inform how you are raising your own children now and the ways in which you read to them, read with them, help curate the books they're reading or don't, now?
Karina Yan Glaser: When I first got pregnant with my older daughter, I was most excited about reading to her and so when I was pregnant, I was even reading to her when I was pregnant and my husband would get in on it too, [chuckle] and he just like lying in bed and we read these children's books and it was really fun. And then when she was born, we would read a lot and just have baskets of board books, so she was always surrounded by books. We'd be on the subway a lot, so I had a bag or two bags that were just filled with books. We'd always be reading on the subway to pass the time and when I was bathing her, I would read sort of longer chapter books like EB White just to... I don't know, I just really loved reading to her, and then my second daughter was born and we were... We did the same thing and we just always had books, we'd go to the library, we discovered that there was a limit of 50 check-outs, which should be enough, [chuckle] and...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah, picture books go quickly though.
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, they do go quickly. [chuckle] So we ended up taking out a card in both of their names so we could just get up... We can have more to check out, and then it just became this nightmare of, "When are these due? Where is that library book? They were always losing them, but it was just really lovely, and I think that those early years, like books we're just... We were always reading, it was so great. And now my kids are 12 and 14 and they read a ton still but mostly on their own. I've missed that time when we were... We would just all hang out and read, and sometimes we still do that, but not as often.
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Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As Karina found herself more engulfed in the world of literature, the idea of living in New York City took hold. She read book after book about the city, its interesting communities and diverse cultures, and the allure of a place where she could imagine herself living. It's no surprise that as an adult, she would end up writing a magical series like "The Vanderbeekers" where the family's Harlem neighborhood plays such an integral role. Although Karina read many stories about the imaginative world that is New York, there was one that stood out from the rest. It was a book where she saw not only who she was as a kid, but also who she could be as an adult.
Karina Yan Glaser: One of my favorite books is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I think that that was probably the book that made me wanna move to New York. I just loved the author's description of the city and neighborhoods, community. That was a very important book to me, and I remember giving it to my older daughter a year ago, and I was like, "This is my favorite book, so if you don't like it, don't say anything to me." And she was like, "I'm afraid to read it 'cause I don't... If I don't like it, I don't wanna have to lie to you." [laughter] So she didn't read it, but I love that book. I also love sort of these big family New York City stories like "All-of-a-Kind Family" by Sydney Taylor. I love that book, "The Moffats," "The Saturdays." And I think definitely those books inform "The Vanderbeekers," and there are definitely lots of elements in those books about big families, about New York, about community that I wanted to bring into "The Vanderbeekers," while also making sure readers knew that this was set in a modern time, that there is this sense of, well, I tried to at least write this timelessness into "The Vanderbeekers." So definitely a lot of those books. I fell in love with New York City because I read about it and just thought it was... Just sounded so great. [chuckle]
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Betty Smith's 1943 novel, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the semi-autobiographical story chronicling the coming of age years of Francie Nolan. It begins with 11-year-old Francie and her family, living in the Williamsburg tenement neighborhood of Brooklyn, and ends as she turns 17 and heads off to college. Francie's story is wide-ranging, both uplifting and heartbreaking. The book deals with difficult topics like poverty, and addiction, and war. Despite being set in the first two decades of the 1900s, the story has still found ways to resonate with a modern audience. It is a singular story that somehow captures a universal experience. Karina told us about how and when she first fell in love with "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."
Karina Yan Glaser: I remember having to do a report or something on it. It was a free reading book and then you had to write about it, and I remember my teacher... It was the first year I was at that school, so I wasn't really sure how things went at that school, and it was a lot tougher than the school I had previously gone to. And I remember the teacher asking, "What is the significance of the tree?" [chuckle] And I wasn't reading at a very deep level when I was in sixth grade.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: To like this story. [chuckle]
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, now, I think I could expound more on the tree, but back then I was like, "I don't know." [chuckle] I remember not having an answer and being sort of embarrassed and like, "I did read it, but I don't know."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You're not reading for metaphor?
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, exactly. So I was definitely growing as a reader, but I remember reading it and feeling very connected to Francie Nolan, who is the main character. I felt like she was a lot like me. We both had brothers. We had parents who had difficult marriages. We had a dad who was not fully there and we were often... Both of us were often sort of left on our own to sort of fend for ourselves. But when I looked at Francie, I just felt like there was this really amazing strength about her and just fortitude and a sense of knowing where she wanted to be and really working to get to that point on her own. And one of the things I loved was right in the first part of the book where she's sort of wandering around the streets of Brooklyn and her and her brother are collecting little scraps of metal, and they bring it to their junkyard, so they can sell it and make some money, like spending money. She gets a whole nickel, [chuckle] 'cause they have to save some of the money for her mom, and then they had to keep some of the money. So she has a whole nickel and she's wandering around the little stores and trying to decide where she's gonna spend this money.
Karina Yan Glaser: And then she goes to the library and there was a Warren Bull piece of pottery. And she's like, "I'm gonna have that when I grow up." A little vase made of pottery and have flowers in it, like that change of the seasons, and then she goes over to the bookshelves and she is wanting to read every single book in the whole library, it's in alphabetical order. It's so funny 'cause she talks about some of them being very boring, and then some of them she looks a little ahead, and I was like, "I cannot wait for that one. That just sounds amazing."
Karina Yan Glaser: But I think on Saturday or Sunday, I don't remember exactly what day, she lets herself choose or ask the librarian for a recommendation, and the librarian only recommends two books. [chuckle] And she gets there and the library recommends the book that she really wanted 'cause the last couple of weeks, she recommended the other one and she was really excited about it. But she's at the library and she's just looking around and just dreaming about how things will be different when she gets older. And she says, "When I get big and have my own home, no plus chairs or at least curtains for me and no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green glider every Saturday night, and a row of shining yellow pencils, already sharpened for writing, and a golden brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it, and books, books, books."
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Karina Yan Glaser: I think this book really helped me understand what it meant to want something different from maybe the situation you're growing up in, and I think that's what really kept me motivated through many years growing up, like knowing this is what I wanna do with my life, I wanna go to New York, I wanna go to college, I want to be something more than what I feel like is around me. And I felt like having that goal through adolescence and high school, and it really helped me feel grounded and have a specific end game in mind, and I think that book helped me really figure that out.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I was curious if any of that book or any of the other books that you read, and that's a really beautiful passage and sort of light into what your life kind of appears to be now, actually, but did you ever think about wanting to become a writer and create stories like those when you were reading them or was that... How did that come to be?
Karina Yan Glaser: Well, I started writing as soon as I could read, so around second grade, I started writing my own stories, and my dad is an architect, and back then he worked at a firm that had a photocopy machine, which back then was like a really big deal, and he would bring my story to his office and photocopy it and staple it. Yeah, that was really special, it felt official. And if you would asked me when I was in second grade what I wanted to do when I grow up, it would be writer, and then I probably lasted until high school, and then high school, you're just exploring so many different things and you're impacted by the people you meet, and the same thing in college. And so when I had my two kids, I started reading books to them and also being exposed to so much great work that's been happening in the last 20 years with diversity in publishing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. That's a huge shift, right, from what you're kind of expecting like...
Karina Yan Glaser: Huge shift, yeah from when we were growing up. I mean, like the one Asian character I was exposed to was Claudia Kishi and the Baby-Sitters club and [chuckle] yeah and now when I was looking at these books for my kids, I was just amazed, like Grace Lin and Linda Sue Park and Jackie Woodson, and all these authors who really were trailblazers and really being traditionally published and having books that were well loved and heavily awarded and reading those books to my kids, and it just made me remember, "Hey, I used to love to write, maybe I should try." and that's sort of how I started writing again. And it was around when my younger one was going to pre-school, you know like when they start, it's like very little, like a couple of hours, a few times a week, and you really... We didn't have time to go home so we just go to the coffee shop.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: To the coffee shop?
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah, and just have like two hours by myself and write and it was great, and I remembered how much I loved it and remembered how much I love stories, and that's sort of how The Vanderbeekers came to be.
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Jordan Lloyd Bookey: My daughter, Florence, has a quirky self-created reading ritual. She has about five books at her bedside, and every night she rotates through them equally so that none are neglected. When she finishes one book, she selects a new one to fill in the rotation. However, when it came to The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street and the subsequent books in the series, that system went out the window. She absolutely devoured them out of order. As kids grow up and develop stronger reading preferences, it can sometimes be difficult to gauge what kind of books they will love.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I've noticed that if I make sure we have a wide array of options available, and thank you for a very high check-out limit, DC Public Library, and pay close attention. Kids will show us what they want to read, with Flo, I didn't even need to pay close attention to notice her passion for the Vanderbeekers series. She was so invested in the lives of the characters, always sharing the details of their adventures when I would tuck her in. But one night, she came to me with tears in her eyes, she had just read Spoiler Alert, the part where a beloved character, The Vanderbeekers upstairs neighbor, Mr. Jeet had passed away. It was one of the moments where I realized how incredible Karina is at building such strong emotional connections between her readers and her characters. I was curious to learn how she does this, so I asked.
Karina Yan Glaser: I think the first thing I always try to do is really fall in love with the characters myself, so like to create characters that I feel like are very nuanced. They're not all one thing or the other thing. They are not... Like even people have said to me like, there's not really a villain in your stories. There's a more antagonist, but not someone who's ever truly evil, like there's... You can always really see that there are multiple sides to a story, or there might be a reason why someone's acting in a certain way. And I think a lot of that is just how I grew up, and the compassion a lot of people have shown me. I've had lots of people who have acted as mothers to me and mothered me in a way that helped me grow a lot, and also having kids myself and seeing the situation they're in and things that they're going through.
Karina Yan Glaser: Mr. Jeet and Ms. Josie who are neighbors in the book, they are very close to the Vanderbeekers, almost like surrogate grandparents. And we have, like down our hallway, a woman who is very kind and sweet to our family and has been a part of our family since we moved into this building, which was back when my younger one was just born. So thinking about that, I also had a really good friend who was like a dad to me when I was working at Homes for the Homeless, and he passed away right around when my first book came out. And just like the depth of feeling I felt for losing him, also just like gratitude for all the ways that he loved me and changed my life, so just really like going back to remembering those things, building that into the story, that helps a lot, letting myself feel all those emotions when I'm writing it.
Karina Yan Glaser: I cried a lot writing the fourth book, which is when Mr. Jeet passes away. And a lot of people messaged me [laughter] and they were really upset or just like, "We're really sad about this," and I was too. I was really sad writing that, but those are things that kids are going through. They're losing loved ones. It's hard to process, and I hope in a way, reading about those situations, maybe if they haven't been in that situation, they know someone who has, or they have friends who have really struggled with losing loved ones, and that all helps build empathy and to help know what to do. And also, with Mr. Jeet, I tried to build up to that point. So even when we first meet him, he's not super healthy in the first book either. He...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh yeah. I don't think it comes as like a big surprise. Is that...
Karina Yan Glaser: Right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: They're prepared.
Karina Yan Glaser: Yeah. I hope so. I have [laughter] gotten so many emails of people very sad or there's like, "Chapter 17. Oh my gosh." [laughter] But yeah, that's a part of life, and I really try to reflect what families are going through in the books. I think all of my books, even though they are fun and they're funny, I try to make them really funny. I also don't try to shy away from hard topics that we are all going through.
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Jordan Lloyd Bookey: In Karina's latest novel, A Duet for Home, she takes an even deeper dive into hard topics. The story is about two young characters who become friends while living in a homeless shelter after experiencing immense trauma. It follows their fight against a new housing policy that would harm them and their families. With support from one another and some important adults in their lives, the young heroes of the story move from feeling powerless to being agents of their own story. It's an intense premise, but it's yet another example of the talent Karina has for developing such empathetic connections for young readers while not ducking challenging themes. Much like the Vanderbeekers series, she evoked her own life experiences to draw raw and real emotion into her story.
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Karina Yan Glaser: I did a double major in Asian cultures and political science and thought I really wanted to do more nonprofit work, which I did. I worked at a homeless shelter in New York City for many years. All of those things were amazing for getting life experience and getting a better idea of different people and how to work with others and understanding other people's circumstances.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Thinking of your own daughters or even the schools you visited, have you noticed teachers or the librarians there using books to address some of the harder issues that kids might be experiencing?
Karina Yan Glaser: I just think it's really hard to grow up right now. [chuckle] Like, you're just... There's a lot of media and there's a lot of news and it just feels like every day, there's just something really shocking on the news. And I feel like kids who are reading a lot, they are equipped to understand and deal with a lot of the things that are happening in the world because they can remember situations that came up in a book they've read that helps them be more prepared for how to deal with it, how to cope, how to have resilience. I do think we're in this amazing renaissance in children's literature where we're getting so many more different viewpoints and different topics are being addressed that were never addressed before, and I feel like my kids have such a broader understanding of the world because they read a lot.
Karina Yan Glaser: I'm just really grateful that my kids are growing up in a time where there is so much out there for them to read. When I talk to my friends, who're all around like my age and have kids, and they're writers, and the story is always the same. When we were growing up, we didn't have books that reflected us, and that was really hurtful and harmful, I think, because you grew up feeling like you were never the hero of the story. Books never reflected a situation that you were going through, and because of that, you didn't really have like worth because you were never truly seen. And I think now, we have this opportunity to share our perspectives and share what life was like growing up or to put in our books heroes that look like us, who have families like us, who have cultures and religions and all these things that make us unique, and we can share that and kids have that unique perspective, and I'm really thankful.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I'm just, sort of last couple questions here, wondering if you... When you visited any of the schools where you've been, I know it's been a pandemic, so maybe not in person too much, but when you have, if you've noticed anything in particular about the schools that you visit where you really feel it kind of strikes you that, "Wow, they're really doing something here that makes it seem like reading is a part of what's happening." It feels like it's really woven, reading for the sake and the joy of reading is built into the culture or the fabric of the school.
Karina Yan Glaser: I had a fantastic school visit in Ohio, Columbus, Ohio in May. It was scheduled for 2020, May, 2020 and so I just recently went. And this librarian, Annie Ruefle, she had just incredible energy, and you could see her impact throughout the whole school. It was a private girls school. She had a really small library, but it was just packed with everything, like books and art, and she was really big into incorporating art with reading. And they have a theme every year that is incorporated in the whole school, and they do art work all throughout the halls. And I think there was this big glacier that they had made out of paper just in the hall, 'cause they were weaving in animals and different things into reading. And when I visited, it was incredible. She and the kids, they had made jewelry with a Vanderbeekers book cover on it, and so all the kids were wearing earrings or necklaces.
Karina Yan Glaser: In my books, I talk a lot about pets and animals, so they had a whole wall where they had just kids with their pets, reading with their pets. They had brownstones everywhere made out of boxes, like Florida ceiling brownstone artwork all down the hall. And I just felt like reading was such a big part of the school. It just didn't feel like, "Okay, this is library time and this is when you read." It was just incorporated in everyone's classroom. It was incorporated in their art and the school as a whole. It was really incredible, and I see this at so many schools where there's that one person who just really makes it their mission to get as many kids to read as possible, and I just think it's just so incredible the work they do, and you can really feel it when you walk in 'cause kids are in and out of the library.
Karina Yan Glaser: They love being there. It's a safe space for them. And you can tell in the way they talk and the way they bring up other books when they talk, and it's really special. And those kids are so lucky, in this one school and a lot of these schools I visit, they're so lucky to have librarians and teachers that are so invested in them being exposed to so many different stories. They'll have that the rest of their life and pass that on to their kids and it's just really, really lovely.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That must be kind of full circle for you, when you're going back and seeing the school libraries where you took refuge as a kid, to be there and sort of being back there now with your own books and your own presentations.
Karina Yan Glaser: Yes, yeah. It feels very surreal.
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Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As I mentioned earlier in this episode, my daughter, Florence is a massive fan of Karina's.
Karina Yan Glaser: Hi.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You can say hi.
Florence: Hi.
Karina Yan Glaser: Hi Flo. It's nice to meet you.
Florence: Nice meeting you too.
Karina Yan Glaser: I have my cat with me. [chuckle] It's like an assistant.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: When we first started thinking about how we are going to create this podcast and what it would be about, my daughter was adamant that I had to get Karina Yan Glaser, and right away, I loved that idea, because my job is literally hunting for better ways to engage kids with reading. So I wanted to find out how Karina has built such a powerful connection with young readers, like my own daughter. But while my questions focus a lot on what adults want to know, of course, I had to give Florence the opportunity to ask a question or two about what kids might want to know.
Florence: I know that my favorite character in the book is Laney, so I was wondering if you have a favorite character.
Karina Yan Glaser: Mm-hmm. Well, I also love Laney. It's really interesting, 'cause when I started writing the books, I wondered if I was gonna have a favorite, and it turns out that I really like all of them. I like all of the main characters a lot, and I never feel like when I'm writing it, that I'm annoyed that I have to write someone's perspective, like, "Oh man, I have to write Jessie now. She's so boring." I never feel that. I always feel really excited to see their perspectives. And Laney is super fun to write because Laney is a lot like my younger daughter, at least when my younger daughter was younger. So when I started writing The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, my younger daughter was four and three quarters, which is how old Laney is at the start of the books. So a lot of the characteristics that Laney has is very similar to my daughter, and things like the way she dressed or the way she hugged everyone, she's like a big hugger. She would say hi to random strangers on the subway, which is what Laney does and all those things were... It was the easiest character to write 'cause I was like, I have real-life inspiration living with me. I can really knock this character out of the park, so I'm glad you like Laney too. She is really fun to write.
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Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Again, that was Karina Yan Glaser, New York Times best-selling author, known for her series, The Vanderbeekers, and more recently, A Duet for Home. Karina created a fabulous reading challenge for our listeners. Her theme is, "Books where New York City is a character". That tracks, right? You can join Karina's challenge by visiting thereadingculturepod.com. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Before we end things, I want to take a moment to shout out the Beanstack Featured Librarian for this episode. This week, that title goes to Megan Wilson. Megan is a librarian at Aggieland High School in College Station, Texas, which is part of the International Leadership of Texas charter schools network. ILTexas has been a Beanstack client for a few years, and Megan has had great success engaging what can be a tough group, highschoolers. Today, Megan shares with us a book she loves to recommend to her students.
Megan Wilson: My number one go-to is Lovely War by Julie Berry. The thing that's so cool about it, is she actually wrote it from the perspective of Aphrodite and Apollo and Ares and Hades, like several of the Greek gods, and they are sharing the story about how they, I don't wanna use the word manipulated, but how they had a hand in a relationship that was developing during World War I. I don't know exactly how Julie Berry came up with this really grand and in-depth well put together novel that I thought was really unique, but it is phenomenal.
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Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been The Reading Culture. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and currently, I am reading The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan and re-reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. If you liked this show please rate, subscribe and share among your friends and networks. To learn more about how you can help grow your community’s reading culture, you can check out all of our resources at beanstack.com. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of the show. Thanks for joining and keep reading.
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