Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Ordinary People Change the World with Brad Meltzer

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

What makes a real hero? From Amelia Earhart, to Abraham Lincoln, to Jane Goodall, there are some names we all know – and with good reason. When today’s guest, author Brad Meltzer, became a father, his writing career took a turn. In a world of TikTok stars and YouTube influencers, he wanted a book series for children that set apart the character of true heroes, from those who are out for fame. Join us as we step inside the creative process of how Brad begins to write a children’s book, the collaboration with gifted illustrator, Christopher Eliopoulos, and how they choose the heroes they will bring to life next. Special thanks to our guest, Brad Meltzer, for joining us today.  Host/ Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder  Production Coordinator: Andrea Champoux   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome. So delighted you're with me today. I am joined by my friend Brad Meltzer. He has been on the podcast before we talked about one of his books that he co-wrote called The Nazi Conspiracy. And you may know Brad from his work in comics. You may know him from his work in historic thrillers, but what you may not know is about his children's book series. And the series is called I Am. And I think you will really enjoy hearing more about this series related to incredible people like Fred Rogers, one of my favorite humans of all time, and more about what goes into writing a children's book series, how he chose the subjects of each of his books, and it's always just great to hear from him again. So let's dive in.

I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. So excited to have Brad Meltzer back with me today. Thanks for being here. Oh, so good to be back. The last time you were here, we talked about the Nazi conspiracy. And today we're veering hard left, hard left into Mr. Rogers' territory. I just love that you just, that's the single greatest transition I've ever heard is, let's mention the Nazis and then Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers.

There's no better transition to children's books than saying the word Nazi. That's right. Yeah. What do you think of when you think of children's books? Nazis. That's right. I mean, you are a writer with obviously like an incredible breadth of skill because you are fantastic at writing historical thriller books, like the Nazi conspiracy and your other conspiracy books, such page turners. They're just like, I got to find out what happens. And it's not easy.

We've talked about this before. It's not easy to write true books, truthful books that are absolute page turners. It's very easy to get bogged down and then he wore his mohair overcoat. Right. The weather was 34 degrees. The clouds were in such and such. It was a, you know, oh boy, you can get lost so quickly. And then you've written an encyclopedia entry. So the books that you write for adults are so just well-researched and really brilliantly written, but you also have an insanely good series for children. And listen, there are not very many authors that can say they have both. I appreciate that.

You know, the only reason I have these kind of two different parts of my brain is because I have these two different parts of my life is I eventually had kids. So here I was, you know, writing my thrillers and murdering people. I had this love of history as a history major. And so I started writing real historical stories that no one had seen before and doing research, you know, 50 pages, Josh and I doing research, you know, 50 pages, Josh and I had written, you know, 50 pages of footnotes in the back to prove every single detail. But along the way, I had kids and I just said, you know what? My kids were looking at reality TV show stars and people who were famous for being famous on Instagram and thinking that's a hero. And I said to my kids, you know, that that's fame and being famous is very different

than being a hero. And, and I told my daughter, this is true. I told my daughter, I'm like, I'm going to give her a better hero to look up to. I said, sorry. I said, Lila, here is Amelia Earhart. She's so amazing. She flew across the Atlantic ocean. And my daughter at eight years old said to me, big deal, dad, everyone flies across the Atlantic Ocean. She was so not impressed. And then I told her this true story that when Amelia Earhart was seven years old, she built a homemade roller coaster in her backyard. She took a wooden crate, she took roller skating wheels in the bottom of it, she shoved it to the roof of her tool shed, she put two giant pieces of wood there and came flying down the side off the roof, flies through

the air and crashes. And, you know, she says she, that feeling of her stomach bottoming out from under her, she loved that. And she wanted that feeling back again. And my daughter heard about that and the crash and her getting up and saying how amazing it was or whatever she says. And my daughter was like, tell me that again. And that's when I was like, oh, I have a story I can tell my kids to make them realize how amazing these people are. We started this whole line of children's books.

We started with I Am Amelia Earhart, I Am Abraham Lincoln. We did I Am Rosa Parks and Albert Einstein. My son loves sports. We did I Am Jackie Robinson. We did I Am Jim Henson. You name it, we've done it. We're now 32 books in, but it only came about because I had kids and I just said, I want to give them better heroes to look up to in their lives. I love that. And I love your, you know,

your sort of tagline, ordinary people change the world. And these are picture books. Tell everybody a little bit more about like, who's the intended audience of like, I am Mr. Rogers, or I am Temple Grandin. Who is reading these? Yeah. So we started the books when my kids were five and eight years old. And that's what the age really is. We get kids at about four or five years old. We have them until about 12 years old. And when they start, they start with, I'm Amelia Earhart and I am Abraham Lincoln. And our secret sauce, I got to tell you, is Chris Eliopoulos is our artist. He's the guy who draws them. And he has a style that's like Charlie Brown meets

Calvin and Hobbes. What Chris can do with his art is he can show heart. And we wanted people to look at these characters and feel like how we feel. When I say the names, Amelia Earhart, when I say Rosa Parks, you feel something that makes you go like, wow. And kids fell in love with his art style and we draw the hero always like a little kid. So you see Amelia Earhart when she's seven years old. You see Abraham Lincoln at seven years old, even though he's got a little beard and a top hat. You see them in their iconic versions.

And it's a very conscious choice because what we want to do is show people and show kids, little kids, that these people are no different than you. And these aren't the stories of famous people. This is what we're all capable of on our very best days. I love that because I think you're right that so often we look at these people who have achieved greatness and we think that they have been some kind of Greek God

since their birth, that they came out of their mother fearless and intelligent and able to solve every problem in their path. And sometimes viewing people that way makes it impossible to imagine that for ourselves. You and I have talked about this last time. We're a country founded on legends and myths. And the legends and myths we love most in this country are our own. And so we do with our heroes too. We make it like, as you said, they're these lowercase g gods. You know, Mr. Rogers, one of my favorite stories in there that I found about him is when he's little, his mother,

when he's growing up in Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. They have money. And his mother found out about all these kids in his school who didn't have money. So there was a kid who couldn't afford shoes. So the mother buys sneakers, gives them to the school nurse, and the nurse gives them to the kids. And the kid says, oh, where'd you get these? Never takes credit for it. Then the nurse starts sending her lists of people who need shoes and shirts and furniture.

And Mr. Rogers' mother keeps sending in all these items and never, ever takes credit for any of the donations. But what does Mr. Rogers as a little boy see? He sees how to be a good neighbor. And that's where he learns it. He's not born Mr. Rogers. He's born scared. He's born angry. He's born like all of us. And

then he sees something better and seizes his better side. And not only do my kids need that lesson, I need that lesson every day, right? I need that. And it's his mother who says to him, when he's scared, he's reading the news and he's scared of what he sees in the news. And his mother gives him the best advice he gets in his whole life, says, look for the helpers. Always be helpers, look for the helpers. Now, think of where the news is right now as you and I are talking, what our kids are seeing. And I need my kids to know that lesson still, especially to this moment. Our kids right now, they're scrolling on TikTok, they're scrolling on Instagram. We're all scrolling on everything. We're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on everything else. We're all scrolling at full speed. The news is like a

fire hose that's hitting us. And Mr. Rogers stands for that idea that, boy, sometimes you just need to slow down. And these lessons are as vital today as they've ever been. And so when I said, okay, I want to do a new kids book, we always look at what's going on in the world. I Am Mr. Rogers became the obvious choice. Thinking about your series, which you mentioned is now more than 30 titles deep. How do you choose who to write about? Because there's a few options out there. You could go in a million different directions. What is your internal criteria for choosing who will be your next subject? Yeah. In the beginning, it was really easy. If I said to you, you're writing a book of heroes, you're going to do a whole series of them, and people are going to build libraries

of real heroes based on them. Pick the best ones. Most people would start with Amelia Hart, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Dr. King. They're just obvious choices, Jackie Robinson. And then you start getting into, okay, well now who's next? And what Chris and I have tried to do is really look at what our own kids need and where the world is. And it's amazing how it keeps providing itself, sadly. I mean, in the beginning, it was just what my own kids needed. My daughter loves our dog. You and I were talking offline before we started about our dogs. My daughter is obsessed with our dog. So when she was a little girl, I was like, I'm going to show her what the power of something you love, that if you admit what you love in life, the power you can unlock. And so I said, I'm going to, I wrote, I am Jane Goodall because Jane Goodall

loved animals. And she used that love of animals to truly change the world. I wanted my daughter to see that. So I am Jane Goodall came from that. My son, who's like my scattered, you know, like creative brain, like me, you know, loves Lego, loves drawing, doesn't pay attention. He's so like my brain, but I did. I am Jim Henson for him. I am Walt Disney for him. I was like, I'm going to show you what creativity can do. And my son who loves sports, I'm like, forget a millionaire overpaid athlete. Here's, I am Jackie Robinson. Here's Muhammad Ali. Like, here's what great heroes look like. But the world started changing around us.

And then we started getting letters. I mean, the number one letter we used to get was, what are you going to do a Latina hero? Everyone wanted to want a Hispanic hero. And so we did, I am Frida Kahlo. We did, I am Sonia Sotomayor. We were just like people asking. Then we started getting all these kids were like, these Asian kids out there were like, I see you did a Native American. You did Sacagawea. You did an Indian. You did Gandhi. You did Hispanic. Where's our hero? Where's our Asian hero? So we did I am Pei, the great architect who

designed the Louvre and other buildings. And so we had kids, they don't ask you, they just demand, they demand their book. Like, where's my hero? So whatever your hero is, you get it. And sometimes it's just the universe. Like when I saw the Muslims were being targeted, that's where we started doing, I am Malala. I was like, this is crazy. I mean, I have to do Muslim heroes so kids can see out there, because it's really hard to change adults' minds. But give me an army of kids that we show what an army of do-gooders can do and you can really move the world. And so that's part of it. For Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which is the newest one, there were two things that happened. One,

it was the most requested hero. She just was. And I can't take any credit for it. Kids were just writing us, what are you doing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg? And then the other part of it was, is I saw the rise of anti-Semitism. That's why I did Iron Man Frank, and it got worse. And I was like, it's time to do Ginsburg. So we did Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And so each time it's just, it's just looking around and oddly the universe tells you what it needs. And that's how heroes always are, right? They don't, they don't, you don't choose them. They kind of find themselves in the moment. And so that's probably a longer answer than you, than you were anticipating, but it's like, that's, that's just how we built the series.

And I love the fact that people now use our books to build these libraries of real heroes for their kids and their grandkids and their nieces and their nephews. And like, they don't cherry pick and say, I'll just take the white ones or I'll just take the black ones or I'll just take this back. Like they just are like, we need to show our kids this full spectrum of people. And I love the fact that people do it. I love that. Give us a little peek behind the scenes of what it is like to write a children's book. Because so often we hear about writers, like toiling away at their laptops and like, I got to make my 500 words today, or I have my writing

schedule or, you know, whatever, every writer, especially people who have written many books have to have their own rituals and their own superstitions or their own beliefs about what makes them productive. Is it the same for writing children's books Or do you have a completely different methodology for working on projects for kids? Yeah, you know, the funny thing is, I don't think there's much difference in writing for adults and writing for kids. Of course, there's a difference in different use of metaphors or being subtle in ways that are, you know, you have to have less inferences, obviously, for kids, you have to be more on the nose and explain the big words and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, a good story is a good story. So there's a line in I Am George Washington that says leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge. That's in I Am George Washington. It's also in The First Conspiracy. I put so many stories in the I Am Abraham Lincoln book that are in my Lincoln Conspiracy book. And I've used them over and over because it's just a good story. You know, here's the story about how Lincoln lost his, you know, this amazing election. That's good for adults. It's good for kids. And kids have great taste. They're not stupid. When you write down to them, you do them a disservice. When I was doing I Am Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

I mean, there's all these stories about all these people when they're young, but I found this story that when she was little, her mother on her birthday used to take her to an orphanage. Instead of having a party at home, she'd go to the orphanage and they would have an ice cream party where they gave ice cream to the orphans.

And it meant she didn't have a party for herself and it meant that she was giving away ice cream rather than getting her own ice cream. But it taught young Ruth Bader Ginsburg what charity was about and what it was to help those who are less fortunate than you are. And I'm just like, that's a freaking amazing story. I would put that in an adult book about her. I'd put that in a kid's book about her. That's just a key granite moment. And so I just kind of look for them and then slowly knit them together. And then inevitably, I've overwritten the book by about half and then I got to pull it out. And then truth is,

I use my own kids. I tell them stories at dinner and I'm like, what do you think of this story? And they're like, boring. I'm like, okay, I'll cut that one. And I'm like, what about this? Like, that's awesome. Like, oh, I didn't even think that was that cool. Like, are you kidding? She made a roller coaster in her backyard. You got to put that in. So I didn't have children for a free focus groups, but I do use them. That would be a little bit of a nefarious. We need a focus group.

Honey, I have an idea. You need to grow me some offspring. Just grow some more children. Yeah. Yeah. So when you conceptualize, you look around, you feel like the universe tells you what it needs. We need lessons about being good neighbors. We need lessons to combat the rise of Islamophobia, antisemitism, whatever it is that you feel in the moment is needed. Take us through the process. How does it work from there? Do you just like email your editor and you're like,

hello, I have another book. I have chosen. I have come down from the mountain and God has given me these tablets and has said the next one shall be. No, I mean, you know, all these things. So in the beginning, Chris Eliopoulos and I literally just spoke to each other

and said, what do you want to do? And we were like, it was almost like, you know, when you play like evens and odds, you go one, twice, we shoot or like playing rock, paper, scissors. We were just like, I'm going to say who I'm going to say. You're going to say, you're going to say, and if they match, we're going to do it. And both of us were like, Amelia Harden, Abraham Lincoln. We were like, we got it. Now the actual process is, it's three people. It's myself, it's Chris Eliopoulos, and Lori Hornick is our amazing editor and publisher. And one of us will start the email thread and we'll be like, okay, who's next? We usually do like the next three books because we want to, you also want to see like, I know it

sounds silly, but you can't just pick a moment in time. You got to kind of balance them out. So if you just did Ben Franklin, you're not going to George Washington right after. You want to space those apart. You don't want to do Jim Henson right next to Walt Disney or Mr. Rogers. So we tend to do like three at a time and we'll just send a list and it's usually, you know, we'll pick our top five men, our top five women, and then we see where we overlap. And then the funny part is I think I used to drive it much more than anyone. I was like, I know who the next hero shall be and it shall be this person. And what I slowly noticed is that Chris Eliopoulos' picks did so much better than my picks. So I've decided to, and it's rare for me, but I've learned to

not pick as hard. And I'm like, Chris, what do you got? And then we see where it is. And a lot of times what we do, in fact, we see where it is. And a lot of times what we do, in fact, we've done this now for the past two books that are coming out, is we vote. When we get down to two and we can't decide, I go on my Facebook page, Instagram page, anyone who follows me on social media, and I literally say, here are the two we're down to, America, everyone vote. And it's so interesting. It's not a popularity contest. It said in the comments of the vote, and we'll get thousands of people to vote on our site. You'll see why it's what we need right now. We knew we wanted to do a book for the Olympics. We were like,

the Olympics are coming. That was when we were like, we want to do an Olympic hero. So we were like Simone Biles or Jesse Owens. And I love both of them. I think they're both amazing. They both have, I like Simone Biles because it could be something that's also about mental health, which we haven't really tackled mental health, and that seems like right in the moment. And Jesse Owens is Jesse Owens, literally fought the Nazis. Come on, right? With sport and showed what sport can be, not a competition, but something about character. And I could have done either one, and we put it out there on our pages, and everyone voted, and it was actually the closest vote we've had. It was like 48% to 52%. So it

wasn't like some big landslide. But in the comments, you could see like Simone Biles story, they kept saying, it's just not written yet. And like her story still being written. And if you just wait a little longer, you're going to get an even better story. And Jesse Owens right now, like with the rise of Nazis, and again, this is two years ago, so forget even where we are right now. But like with the rise of like, of kind of, you know, authoritarianism and where the Nazis are coming back now, I was like, that's the answer. That's the winner. And so it's three of us who are choosing, but we do open it up and we let people weigh in. And then I know it sounds so we've never voted. We always reach consensus. We're always like, yes, that seems right. And so when Lori and Chris and

I agree, that's when we're like, that's the next hero. How do you work collaboratively with an illustrator? Do you write all the text, send it to him? And then he's like, okay, this is going to be the first drawing. Here's my concept sketch. Here's what I'm thinking before he then spends all the time finishing out all the drawings. Or do you have some other process? Like how does it work with the illustrations? Yeah. So I'm what they call in the industry, a complete pain in the ass.

So, you know, I came up in comic books. So I've written Superman and Batman and Spider-Man. And when you write those books, that's how I write these books. Some people just are like, do exactly what you say. They write a story and then the artist is like, give it to me and I will take it from here. I literally do the layout of every page. I'll say, here's a page. It's two panels that are both horizontal because I want to make it feel like it's a film. So we're close up on Mr. Rogers on just the iconography, just the zipper as it's coming up and we can just see the zipper. And then you can just see the sneakers in panel two real close in time. We don't even see him yet and then pull out and I direct my own movie. What's really smart about Chris Eliopoulos

is he's like, oh, okay, Mr. Smarty Pants, and he knows exactly when to ignore everything I say. So, you know, we just, we've been doing this, this is now 10 years that we've been doing this together. I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Mr. Rogers are the 10 year anniversary of the series. And at this point, we just, we know each other so well that he knows when I have it wrong, but I still lay out every single page. I still tell him how to draw it. I say, you know, camera on the ground, looking up so we can see what they're seeing when they look in the sky and the sky is purple and orange. And this is the greatest, most inspiring day. And then he'll be like, nope, that's the wrong shot. Let's do it the opposite way. And

let's let the sun hit their face and we'll get something much more emotional. And every time, like in the very beginning, he would say, can we try it my way? I'm like, and if you don't like it, we'll do it your way. And then he would send it to me and I'd always be like, your way is better. And so at this point now, he just knows when to ignore me and he just goes. How long does this process take? I mean, most people don't have any idea. How long does it take to write and illustrate and publish a children's book? It takes between the two of us, probably four months, elite minimum. That's without proofing, without anything. It'll take me, you know, it's a month of research and writing. And Chris, it's, you know, he has to do more passes because there's the penciling and then

he's got to ink it and then he has someone color it and then we got to proof it and then put it all together. And then, you know, I'm over his shoulder and we're all looking at things saying, I remember, you know, there's a thing in the Jesse Owens book that's coming with a crowd right after Jesse Owens win is all cheering, but it's such a big crowd. I was like, you know, you look at the art sometimes I'm like, we don't know if they're cheering or booing. You got to put a, like a woohoo or a yay or something over it, a big sound effect. Like There's things you just don't even see until you see them on the page. Every book is also different because I'm not an expert in all these people. When we did I Am Martin Luther King Jr., I go to the experts in the field. Congressman John Lewis liked our books and had said on TV he liked our books, our Rosa Parks

books. I said, Congressman Lewis, can you proof our book on Dr. King? So he was the one who proofed it for Billie Jean King. Billie Jean King spent two hours on the phone with me, looking at Chris's art and walking through my dialogue and telling me this is right, this is wrong. You know, she said at one point, we're like an hour and a half in, she says, oh, in this part here, I wasn't in this spot when I heard this news, I was in another place. And I said to her, you know, I don't mean to be rude. I know you're Billie Jean King, but I got that from your autobiography. And she said, yeah, but I was so busy back then, I never proved my autobiography. So our kids book at the time is now, I am Billie Jean King is now more authoritative than her own original biography, although she just wrote a new

biography, which is really great, and all correct. But sometimes that's changing as we're going. And so each book that always adds weeks of stuff to find that expert and work with them to say, what's the subtlety here we're missing? And we did, I am Neil Armstrong. We had to send it to NASA and we sent it to a guy who used to work at NASA. And he, and Chris is a, our artist is a crazy NASA nerd. He's like crazy nerdy about this stuff. Drew like every rivet on every rocket. And the guy who used to work at NASA literally said to me, Brad, I'm going to just be honest with you. You guys are so nerdy.

And when NASA calls you a nerd, you are like on the rush more of it. So we get a little lost in it sometimes. But to me, that's the fun of the process. Having Dolly Parton, you know, get an email pop up one day that says like, can you change this because her daddy really liked this guy? And you're just like, wow, it's Dolly Parton telling you who her dad liked. And can you give him a bigger part in the book? I love that. That's so fun. And what a thrill to be able to consult with so many of these incredible people to be like, Dolly Parton read my book. Right. I mean, that's the thing is I'm like, she has people, she has a team, she has everything.

So all the time I'm like, okay, whatever, you know, they know how to do this. But then a comment would come that would say like, it would be like a memory from when she's three years old. And she's like, you know, can you fix this for my daddy? And I'm like, oh boy, like this is now doing something that like you don't realize. And like, again, when you're on the phone with Billie Jean King, Billie Jean King corrected the color sneakers that she wore in every single match we put in the book. She knew what color her sneakers were. And like this one, they were blue. This one, they were white.

And that's where you just don't want to mess up. You don't want to mess up for those people. You want to get every detail right. And not that any kid's going to recognize it, but you got to do them justice. Yeah. You want them to be proud of the book. You don't want them to be like, yeah, they got a lot wrong. That's not the takeaway. You want them to be like, this was a really great project. Thanks for doing this. When we did I Am Jim Henson, we had all these people that do the Muppets writing letters to us, thanking us for the accuracy and acknowledging that it wasn't just Jim Henson who invented Sesame Street, but Joan Ganz Cooney was his mother, woman, and these other incredible people that were amazing puppeteers

and giving full credit where it was. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is, you know, whether it's like you played Elmo, you played this, you play, I mean, pick the, pick the puppet of your choice, the muppet of your choice. And I'm just like trying to be as cool as I can, but I'm like, oh my gosh, this book is going around Sesame street right now. Like this is bananas. So that's, I mean, I know it's fun when, when we have, and we write them for kids, but sometimes the, the, the feedback that comes back is even, in fact,

I got from Mr. Rogers. I haven't told him the story yet anywhere, but I just got a text from the guy who plays Speedy Delivery, the mailman on the show, Mr. McFeely, named after his grandfather. Mr. McFeely himself texted me. He's like, thanks for the book. I'm like, you're Mr. McFeely. You're in the book. Thank you. You were in my childhood, those, those things that show up. In fact, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I remember when my first book came out, she was still alive. It was about the Supreme court. We invited every Supreme court justice to this book party we were having. And it was a joke because we were like, they're never going to come, but whatever. I'm an unknown author. I have no one's going to show up, I'm going to invite all the Supreme court justice. And my phone ring rings one day

and it's Ruth Bader Ginsburg. All it says is Supreme court. It didn't say what it was. And it picks up. They said, hold for justice Ginsburg. And I'm like, what? And I hear this, that voice, we all know that like slow voice. And she's like, Brad, I got your invitation. Thank you for inviting me. I'm like, so sorry, I can't attend. And I'm like, oh, you weren't meant to see that. Like, I can't believe you got that. Like, and she's calling me up. And so when your creativity like hits that reality, you're just like, oh my gosh, what have I done? So I had the funny thing about her when she's, she's the only hero we've written about that I knew before the book series. And I knew her well, because her daughter was a

mentor of mine in law school. She and I were one of her clerks was one of my best friends. And we and Justice Ginsburg and I were witnesses at our friend's wedding. We were the two witnesses. And I'm like, even my wife is like, I wouldn't take you if I had Justice Ginsburg, like, they don't even need to, they just need her. And I'm like, I understand, but I'm going to sign under her like, and so we're sitting there signing our names. And the thing that was so interesting about her is when you spoke to her in person, like when she was in the courtroom, the best thing I can say is it's like a walrus. Like when you see them on land, they're kind of like these lumbering and they're like whatever.

But the moment they jump in the water, it's like whoosh. And they're just perfect. whatever. But the moment they jump in the water, it's like, whoosh, and they just perfect, you know, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when you had her in the one on one, you asked her a question. My friend warned me and said, you know, she's going to speak your the answer is going to come very slowly. And she's not trying to torture you. but she just wants to be very careful with every word that she utters because she knows that each one of them can make the news. I'm like, thank you for telling me, but when she got in the courtroom, it was whoosh. She was like the walrus in waters. She just would come at you and be able to like, and her best friend there was Scalia. I said, she's the only

person that we've written about where even if she was never a Supreme Court justice, she still deserves her own I am book. Like she was so amazing at fighting for women's rights. Like she did, you know, when the first people to study, um, you know, when she's a little girl and I love this, this is the detail I put in for my own daughter is like, she loves to read, but all the books she has has like girls cooking and boys get to run around and have adventures and she's like i want to run around and have adventures you know she used to climb to the rooftops with her cousin she want to take like the home economics class and cook she want to take the woodworking class and they'd be like no girls do this and boys do this and she's the one who's like no no that's not how we're gonna do it it. We're not doing it that way. And what I love is

everyone called, this is a line from the book, but it says, you know, everyone calls her a trailblazer. But the best thing about blazing a trail is leaving tracks and those tracks that help other people. And that's the lesson I want to, for my daughter here is like, leave tracks with your life. I always like to say that she was an intellectual giant in a tiny body. It was almost like she had been miniaturized. Small but mighty. I mean, the definition. And again, if you saw her, anytime you saw her against standing with Bill Clinton or someone who was over six foot, it was like another species because she was so little, but never frail. so little, but never frail. Well, I just love these books. And I love the idea that you are really thinking carefully about like, what does the world need? And what is the real lesson that

children and adults should be taking away from this story? Because sometimes it's not what you think it is. And I love that you give us a different way of looking at some of these people in ways that humanizes them and makes it seem like these are things that you can do too. These are not people who did not have mythological status upon their birth. You can be these people too. And I think that's such an important, important lesson for today. Yeah. And I love, you know what I love? I never really talk about this, but you just put it in my head for the first time. It's like, I just, how many of these people are from nothing? They come from nothing. It's not, you know,

they may get to the best, Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets to the best schools, but you know, her mother doesn't go to school at all. In fact, she doesn't, they don't even choose to go to college. They're like, she's not going to go. Her brother's going to go. She fights for everything she gets. And I love the fact that there are so many kids out there who are going to read this and like me, you know, that's what I am. I mean, I was the first in my family to go to a four-year college in my immediate family. My parents didn't go. My dad was like, if you get C's, you'll still do better than any grade I ever got in school. Like my parents didn't care about school. My dad barely graduated. But I love the fact that greatness can be anywhere, anywhere.

It's not just bestowed upon you because your dad has a nice checkbook or your mom comes from money. Like I love that it can come from anywhere. Where can people find these? Yeah, you can find, I mean, any bookstore. Yeah, you can go to, listen, they're of course in your local independent bookstore and on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and any of them, they're always there. And, you know,

you can even buy a subscription on our website. So like one comes to your, you know, someone you love's house, one book, it's delivered every month. That's how, because people are like, we want them all. How do we buy them? You can even go on Amazon and put in full set and the full set they'll sell you. But, you know, I love the fact again, that people are building these libraries, they buy them and they donate them to their church and their synagogue and to their grandkids and their nieces and nephews. And I never thought this series, you know, I wrote them just for my kids. And as I said before, I'm not that special. I felt like if I wanted these for my kids, hopefully others will want them for theirs. And to be able to do this for 10 years now, I think they told me we had 7 million books in

print doing it. I never realized that this was going to be a gift that we were giving ourselves. It just was something I was doing for my kids very selfishly and was like, I'm going to do this, and I have access to this amazing artist, and let's see what happens. And I just love all the people who try to see the world like we see it, which is giving our kids something, heroes of perseverance and of kindness and of humility and of just being a good person, being a good neighbor. Thank you, Brad. Thanks for your work. And thanks for being here again. Love being back and love what you're doing. Thanks for rooting for us, whether we're talking about the good stuff or, you know, the hard stuff. It is always vital conversation.

the good stuff or, you know, the hard stuff. It is always vital conversation. Thanks, Brad. You can find Brad Meltzer's I Am series and buy books like I Am Dolly Parton, I Am Fred Rogers, I'm Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and more wherever you buy your books. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you could leave us a review or share this episode on social media, those things help podcasters out so much. Thanks for being here today.