[music]

[applause]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. Thanks, Sean Carlson, I usually don't get to see you. Sneaking out of The Greene Space like you do. Everybody we are live here in The Greene Space. Thank you for spending part of your day with us whether you're here in person, listening on the radio, watching the live stream, really happy to have you all. A little bit of All Of It housekeeping. This is your last weekend to submit a public domain performance to The All Of It Public Song Project. That's where we've asked you to reimagine a song or work that's up for grabs in the public domain. If you still need that extra push, here's a little demonstration from our friend, Brian Lehrer.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, I'm Brian Lehrer, host of The Brian Lehrer Show and I'm going to play the first few measures of Duke Ellington's Black and Tan Fantasy on this Rolland digital instrument called an Aerophone Mini in clarinet setting.

[playing Black and Tan Fantasy]

Now, you certainly can do better than that.

[laughter]

Alison: Thank you, Brian. Submissions are due Monday, so get your songs in. Everyone who submits a public domain song will have it shared online through our accounts, but a select few will have their chance to be interviewed on the air about their creation. Go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject for more information and inspiration. Speaking of songs, Yo La Tengo with a bunch of new ones. Today is the album release for their new one. They'll be performing very shortly. Let's get this started On we go with Emma Straub.

[music]

Best-selling author and store owner of Books are Magic, Emma Straub has written her very first picture book. It's called Very Good Hats. It's all about different objects that make great headwear from paperback books to empty soup bowls to bath bubbles. Now, that does not sound like the kind of book that would provoke the ire of school boards, and yet, last month, two elementary schools outside of Houston, Texas disinvited Emma from scheduled readings.

Administrators wrote to parents and teachers of the decision, "It has been brought to our attention that this author has regularly used inappropriate and foul language on her social media platforms. Specifically, repeated use of the F word. This type of language as you know does not align with our school and community values." Now, Emma's tweet that seemed to provoke the ire of these parents in Texas was this one posted on the day of the Uvalde Shooting. "F guns, F people who care more about controlling women's bodies than protecting all of us from people with guns. F it's too much, so heartbroken."

It's a latest incident in a larger pattern of troubling school board decisions banning books from schools libraries, especially titles that center on LGBTQ characters or discuss race or racism, or women's rights but this hasn't stopped Emma from sharing her delightful book with kids around the country. Plus she's launched a new Book Are Magic location. She appeared on the cover of New York Magazine as one of the reasons to love New York. Last year her novel This Time Tomorrow was a national bestseller. Let's talk about all of it with the woman herself, Emma Straub come on in.

[applause]

Emma: Hello. [unintelligible 00:03:42]

Alison: Yes, I'm so happy to see you. Let's do the news part first. Where were you when you first got this news that you were being disinvited to read this sweet book to sweet children--

Emma: Yes, maybe.

[laughter]

Alison: --somewhere in Texas.

Emma: I will say your producers, as you were speaking just now, they were all laughing and cheering me on and saying things, and then one of them turned around and said, "Okay, but you can't say it out there."

[laughter]

I promise to follow all the FCC guidelines. I had flown into Houston, Texas the night before the school visits that I was supposed to do, and my friend Kathy from Blue Willow Books, one of the best independent bookstores in the country in Houston, Texas. She picked me up and she said, "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we are on our way to a wonderful school where you are going to read this book to hundreds of children." I was like, "Okay." She said the bad news is that we're not going to the schools that we were scheduled to go to because this is what happened. We didn't know yet the specifics. We didn't know that this was the problem. I think that we can all agree that the F word was not the problem but yes, it was very surprising. I've never been uninvited from anything before.

[laughter]

I feel like I'm a pretty good party guest. I always send thank you notes. It was a surprise.

Alison: Was there any part of you that wanted to say, "Wait, can we talk about this? Can we engage and maybe find some common ground." Or was it just you realized no.

Emma: Yes. Especially after I saw a helpful parent posted the receipts of this on Twitter and so I got to see everything that the parents who complained it actually said. It was clear to me that it had so little to do with me. It had so little to do with me, and I have been invited to come back to other places in Texas. It's not about me. That's really how I felt about it immediately and continue to feel. The problem is not that I couldn't read my honestly, very good book about very good hats to these first graders. The problem is that there are parents who are getting books, important books pulled from their kids' libraries left and right all over Texas, and Florida, and in particular. That's the problem. It's not me.

Alison: When you said you got receipts, what happens?

Emma: Oh, just that a helpful parent in a school district had posted the photos of what the parent had said, and just what you read, that was the tweet that they had shared with the school board. That was the problem.

Alison: It was more about the guns and abortion.

Emma: Sure was.

Alison: [chuckles] What has it been like as an author, as someone who's devoted your life to selling books and getting books in people's hands to see this approach to book banning?

Emma: It was surprising. It was surprising and honestly, it was surprising to have it happen to me and this book because it was, mostly what is going on now is people are pulling books for the book's content. If it's a book, like genderqueer as a graphic book that's getting pulled and banned all the time now, which is about gender identity, and things like that. Books that contain ideas that some parents find unpalatable or don't want their children to have access to. It was quite a surprise for it to not be the book's content at all, but just me.

Alison: [chuckles] Me is Emma Straub. The new picture book is called Very Good Hats. We'll be taking questions. Emma has agreed to take some questions from the audience. Maybe you want to know what to read next, maybe a question about writing a children's book, social media, you can reach out as well @allofitwnyc. Why do you think it's about kids' books specifically?

Emma: Well, if you think about the books that you loved the most as a kid, why did you love them? You love them because they spoke to something in you. All of those pieces from books that speak to you, they add up and they turn you into a person with a brain. People often talk about books as doors or windows-- Sorry, mirrors. Excuse me. They could be a door too.

[laughter]

Emma: Fantasy novels, often doors. We want there to be as many different kinds of mirrors as possible. I think that is what these parents are afraid of. They're afraid of their children seeing something and understanding something about themselves, or having empathy toward their classmates that their parents don't share. It's about control. What is magical about children's books, is that they provide access to all different worlds and possibilities, and feelings. They're the best books. I shouldn't say this, maybe because I own a bookstore, but I will. Is that I could stop reading books for grownups and I think I'd be fine as long as I could still read books for children.

Alison: Let's talk about Very Good Hats. People think writing children's books that it's easy. It is not easy. What was a challenge?

Emma: I started writing this book in about April of 2020. I don't know if you remember that. Fun time.

[laughter]

Emma: I was at home with my two small children who were then three and six. I couldn't work on the novel that I was trying to write because there I was, my husband was, [unintelligible 00:10:38] [crosstalk]

[laughter]

Alison: And there they were.

Emma: There they were all together. I found what I could do was work on picture book ideas because I could do it with my kids.

Alison: Nice.

Emma: Of course, the difficulty of writing children's books is the difficulty of writing poetry is that unfortunately, every word has to be right.

Alison: Because the limit is what usually?

Emma: It's just because you've got so little language. If you've got six sentences, they have to be right. If you're writing a 400-page book, if some of the sentences are more utilitarian, it's okay but in a picture book, it's not okay. They have to be good.

Alison: Speaking of words, right off the top, we get a big word, haberdashery, haberdashery. What went into haberdashery? There are some adults who can't say haberdashery [chuckles].

Emma: [laughs] There are a few things. Number one, if you say a funny long word that children don't know, they will laugh.

[laughter]

Emma: Number two, everybody likes to learn things. Also, it's a word that is in some other children's books. It's in Maira Kalman and Daniel Handler writing as Lemony Snicket wrote a book called 13 Words about 10 years ago. One of the 13 words is haberdashery. It's so satisfying. It's fun to say, so long.

Alison: [laughs] Can we talk about your illustrator too?

Emma: Yes.

Alison: Let's give a shout-out to your illustrator, Blanca Gomez.

Emma: Blanca Gomez.

[applause]

Emma: Yes. Let's clap for Blanca. If you're in the studio here, you can see these pictures, and if you're on the radio, you can Google. She's incredible. She lives in Spain and she and I have never met in person, but I knew it was going to be great because when we started emailing, she sent me an email that said, "I hate pictures of myself. I never should publicly share pictures of myself, but I thought you should see this." She sent me a photograph of herself with a banana on her head. I just thought, "This is really going to work out."

[laughter]

Alison: When you've been reading the book to kids, kids say the funniest things. What's been something that stuck with you a kid has said or a question that you're like, "Wow, that came out of your little face?"

Emma: Yes. Well so most of my questions-- I was reading this book mostly to kindergartners and first graders, and their concept of the word question is pretty loose. I got a lot of questions, like, "I have seven dogs."

[laughter]

Emma: There are a lot of questions like that. In Houston, actually, at the school that I went to, one kid asked me, he raised his hand, he was so serious and so small, and he said, "How many dinosaurs could fit in your city?"

[laughter]

Emma: I thought about it. Then I started talking to him about how Houston takes up a lot more space than New York City so that probably there could be more dinosaurs that would fit in Houston than can fit in New York City. Then we started talking about different kinds of dinosaurs. It was a great conversation. Not so many questions about Hats.

[laughter]

Alison: Do you remember a book that-- You've talked about how books when we read as kids they really become who we are and we think about them even in our adult lives. Is there one or two that you still think about?

Emma: Oh, yes. I own a bookstore, so I was like, think about these books all day. I have two small children who will still let me read picture books to them. Eloise, I would say is really in the DNA of this book because if you remember Eloise who lived at the Plaza, I'm sure you all know Eloise. She says at one point, tissue boxes make Very Good Hats, which of course they do because they already have the opening. All you have to do is pull it on. I think about Eloise and her joie de vivre a lot.

Alison: I think about Ferdinand the Bull all the time.

Emma: Oh, yes.

Alison: Just you do you. You do you, Ferdinand.

Emma: You do you. I know. I love Ferdinand so much. I tell my children-- we read it all the time, and I tell them that Ferdinand-- I really thought about naming both of them Ferdinand. I wouldn't have named them both Ferdinand. I did name the first one Ferdinand and so I still could have named the second one, Ferdinand. I think they're glad I didn't. That's how much I love that book.

Alison: How great would it be if your kids were Ferdinand and Eloise and you own a bookstore? [laughter] So good. Maybe you should get some pets.

Emma: Yes. Good idea.

Alison: Get store pets, maybe.

Emma: Yes. [laughs]

Alison: My guess is Emma Straub, the new picture book is called Very Good Hats. Of course, she is the owner of Books are Magic. There's a new Books are Magic at 122 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. It's exciting to think about more bookstores.

[applause]

Alison: When did it become clear you could do this? You could expand.

Emma: We opened our first store, which is on Smith Street in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn in 2017. I would say starting that first week, people were like, "When are you going to open one in Brooklyn Heights?" Because it's the adjacent neighborhood, but it's long enough. It's about a 20-minute walk in between the two stores. It's far enough that if there were another one, we knew we had a lot of customers who would go there.

My husband and I just said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Then, it was 2020 and we said extra, no, no, no. Then we looked around and we looked at spaces and we both agreed that unless we found a place that was really perfect that we wouldn't do it. Then we walked into this place and we just said, "Oh, no." The real estate agent was like, "What's wrong?" We were like, "It's perfect." [laughter] We did it. It's been great. The neighborhood is so happy they haven't had a bookstore in 30 years, so they're really happy to have us there.

Alison: Let's take some questions from the audience. Hi.

Speaker: Hello. I just wanted to-- I'm a first-time author and Books Are Magic is the first bookstore that my book was ever in, which is pretty exciting.

[applause]

Speaker: I have a separate question though. You were talking a lot-- Obviously, your point of view is very political in which you had to fight in earlier. Saying writing is political, and I found myself in conflict with presses about values. I was wondering, do you have a situation you can speak to where you had to stand up for your beliefs in your career, in the face of your publisher, or your press or other business collaborators?

Emma: Thank you. That's a really good question. I think that I am so lucky. I feel really lucky that I never hesitate. I never hesitate to share my political positions. My publisher was totally supportive of me. I think that I have occasionally been coached by publishers or publicists or things to maybe we could answer the question this way or that way. They love to do that. Part of it is like owning a bookstore in Brooklyn. I'm in this bubble. I'm in this little liberal bubble.

I think that's actually why it was really shocking to me when I got to Texas and people had this feeling because all of the elementary schools and all the parents who I know in Brooklyn are so supportive. At Books Are Magic, we've done so many fundraisers for every town for gun safety. We've raised like, I think probably at this point $30,000, $35,000. When I got uninvited, I started a new campaign and immediately raised $6,000. It's surprising. It's surprising when you stick a toe somewhere not everybody agrees with you. I don't know how people do it in other places. It just made me feel really happy to live in New York City. Did that answer your question? I don't know. Maybe a little bit.

Alison: I want to just point out that at the bookstore you have a I Read Black Authors Challenge. You're also selling handcrafted bracelets for Valentine's Day with all the proceeds going to New York Abortion Access Funds. We can just channel my point.

Emma: Yes.

[applause]

Alison: What are you working on? What's next?

Emma: [chuckles] God, Alison, do I have to do anything else?

Alison: No, you do not.

Emma: [laughs] I'm working on the screenplay adaptation of This Time Tomorrow, my most recent novel.

Alison: Awesome.

Emma: I'm doing that, and I'm making little notes in a notebook for a new novel that I will have time to write someday.

Alison: Emma Straub, thank you for making time to come and be with us. It

s such a pleasure.

[applause]

Emma: Thank you.

Alison: Yo La Tengo, who have a new album out today, and they're here with us live in The Greene Space to perform.

[applause]

Alison: [unintelligible 00:21:00] Talk to you soon.

[applause]

 

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