The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mary Had a Little Lamb by Adrian M Hurtado

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Mary Had a Little Lamb by Adrian M Hurtado https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Little-Lamb-Adrian-Hurtado/dp/1647498600 The celebration of Christmas has nothing to do with a fictional character in a red suit, or flying reindeer. It is about the birth and life of Jesus Christ. He is the true reason for the season. Now you can read about His life in an illustrated and poetic form that touches on many of the important aspects of His life. Parents will want to share this story with their children and with their friends.About the author Adrian M. Hurtado was born in Berkeley, CA and raised in the East Bay area. He is a former teacher and principal, having served more than 25 years in schools in Orange County, Los Angeles County, and Santa Barbara County, California. He always enjoyed working with students and in finding ways to make learning interesting and fun. Now he seeks to carry on that delight through books that students can enjoy and their parents can enjoy reading to them and with them. Adrian also served in the Marine Corps and Air Force Reserve, retiring at the rank of Major. He and his wife, Jean, a former kindergarten teacher and his biggest encourager, have retired to the little beach town of Cayucos, CA where he is actively involved in community service.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss i'm folks voss here from the christmas show dot gone ladies and gentlemen there are ladies things that makes official welcome to 16 years 2500 episodes of the chris voss show and goodre's just named us the top 53rd podcast uh top 100 podcast and management for uh so there there there we're getting awards eh we've already like gotten awards before. But anyway, it's just kind of fun. Today we have an amazing young man on the show we're going to be talked to. But in the meantime, I need you to, uh, I need to guilt and shame you to refer your family, friends and relatives. Go to Goodrease.com for chest, Chris Foss,

LinkedIn.com, for just Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. He's the author of nine different books, There's a few different variations there, I think, with translations. But I believe it's nine, if I recall rightly. We're going to get into it with him and find out more about his works and what he's up to, how he's doing it. The first book we'll be talking about today is called Mary Had a Little Lamb out November 25th, 2022 by Adrian M. Hurtado.

We're going to get into it with him, his books, and all that good stuff there. Adrian was born in Berkeley, California and raised in the East Bay Area. He is a former teacher and principal and he served more than 25 years in schools in Orange County, L.A. County and Santa Barbara County, California. He also enjoys working with students and finding ways to make learning interesting and fun. And now he seeks to carry on that delight through books that students can enjoy and their parents can enjoy reading to them and with them. He also served in the Marine Corps and the Air Force Reserve, retiring at the rank of May. Major, him and his wife, Gene, a former kindergarten teacher. His biggest encourager has retired to their little beach town of Keokos, California.

Cayucos. Cayucos, where he is actively involved in community service. Where is that located? I grew up in California. That's 20 miles north of San Luis Obispo. If you know where Moro Bay, California is. Okay. It's right.

Just north of Moro Bay. See, I'm a SoCal kid, so. But good stuff. there, Adrian. Welcome the show. Give us to your dot-coms. How can people find out more about you? Thank you. I'm getting my website put up pretty soon. It's not ready yet, but I will have a website fairly soon. As I said, or as you said, excuse me, I am a former educator. I got into education after working in business for a while and didn't like business because it was too cutthroat, and I thought I want to do something more productive. So I got into education,

working with kids, started off as an elementary school teacher for some 20 years and then finally got into administration and became a middle school principal. And that's the position I was in when I retired. Huh. Well, that's very nice. You know, teachers are the backbone of our society, the backbone of our kids. They have such influence on shaping children. You know, I mean, I think all of us as children remember, you know, the best teachers we had,

the people who really touched our hearts and minds and made us inspired us to be better and learn more and enjoy learning for that matter. I think that's true. And thanks to Facebook, I'm able to keep in touch with quite a few of my students who are in their 40s and older now, but I do still keep in touch with them. And it's a joy to be able to know what they're doing in their lives now. That is awesome. And full disclosure, my mom's a teacher, or she was a teacher for 20.

years, 25, 25 years, and so was my sister. So I'm kind of impartial and imbalanced when it comes to celebrating teachers and education. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this book? Mary had a little lamb. Well, Mary had a little lamb is the story of Jesus. It's a poem. It's written in poetic form from his birth to his ascension. And basically, the reason I wrote it was, as I mentioned, And I was an elementary school teacher, and I was a fifth grade teacher back in the 80s. And back then, we could still celebrate Christmas in the classroom. And I had all these things up on the board for Christmas. And I remember asking my students whose birthday we celebrated at Christmas.

And quite a few of them responded, Santa Claus. And that threw me for a loop. And so I went home that night, and I actually sat down and wrote that poem that night. Wow. And I came back the next day. I read it to my kids, and I explained to them whose birthday we celebrated. And it sat on my computer for many years until I finally – it's not the first book I published, but it's the first book I wrote. Wow. Now, is it a poem, or is it like a fictional historical fiction book?

Well, it's written in poetic form, but it follows the Bible, as I said, from his birth to his ascension. Okay. Because, you know, you can kind of rely on their Bible to tell you some of the historical – aspects of it. But do you find you needed to put it in a format that kind of kids can enjoy or kids can understand? You know, it doesn't have those big scientific words sort of thing. Yeah, I thought about writing it just as a brief story, but I thought the Bible already does that. So I took certain passages, but the timeline is what was important to me. So I took certain passages from the Bible in the life of Christ, and I put them into a poem, and then that's the way I presented it. If I remember correctly, it's only about 36 stanzas.

Oh, wow. Okay. So easy to read, you know, kids, you know, they're not, you get those words too big and those science manuals. I still can't understand half the thing, have them science manuals. I can barely read Dr. Seuss, so I'm at that level. Well, you know, I originally self-published the book and I had quite a few copies made and I gave some to friends and actually I had people that bought some, but I've had several

families told me that that's become their Christmas reading every year with the families together. Wasn't that nice? A transition. Yes, I love it. I mean, that's the great thing about inspiring the world, uplifting the world, making the world better, you know, sharing joy and teaching other people. Now, tell us about some of the other books you read. Did I get the number right?

Wasn't a nine, I believe? It's nine, including two that are in Spanish. I have children's books, Acrobat and Toad's Tools. Acrobat was actually the first book I published. And I wrote that one after I retired. I was getting bored doing nothing. So I thought, well, I've always loved writing. When I was in school, I won several writing contests in school in junior high.

It had certain writings published in local newspapers and things like that. And I always enjoyed it. So I thought, well, I'm going to sit down and write a children's book. So I wrote the book Acrobat, which is about a bat that wants to participate in the annual Owllympics. Owl. They were named after wise owl who put the games together.

And so they call them the Owl Olympics. But because bats are nocturnal and the games are held during the day, he has to come up with a way to be able to be out in the sunlight for a period of time in order to be able to compete. And so the book goes through how he does this and the process that he puts himself through in order to be able to stay out in the sun for at least an hour

so that he can compete. the Olympics and then what goes on through that. But it's a very positive book, and it's a family-oriented book with his parents actually finding out, I don't want to tell you too much, but they found out what he was doing, and they didn't tell him, and they show up at the meet, and he doesn't know it.

But that turns out to be the greatest thing that happens for him is that his parents were there to watch him. Yeah, it's always good to have your parents involved and stuff. My parents never showed out to my games, They did. They cheered for the other players. They were like, yeah, beat him. Beat that kid.

Beat his team. They cheer for the other team. Well, I know the feeling. My dad worked a lot. You had four kids and my mom to feed, and he didn't, you know, he worked a lot of overtime, so he didn't get to make a lot of my games. I played baseball when I was a kid. And he only made maybe one or two games the entire time.

But whenever he did, I was always glad that he was there. Oh, yeah. That's always good. Yeah, the, you know, as long as they don't troll you from the, from the bleachers, like my parents, they're like, you suck, swing harder, you know, that sort of thing. I was like, oh, this is, I need better parents. Anyway, I'm just, I'm just making stuff up, folks. Don't write my parents. Anyway, what are there some of the other books we want to profile here today?

Well, the other children's book that I wrote is called Toad's Tools. You know, it's like Toad's Stools, but instead it's Toad's Tools. He inherits his dad's tool bag. His dad has passed away. And again, this relates to my dad. My dad was a very hands-on person, like to help other people do things. He was very good at that. Not like me at all.

I'm very different in that way. I'm not really good with my hands and with tools, but my dad was very good with it. And so he has passed away and he leaves his tools toad. and he always told his son Toad that nothing felt as good as helping others and he always went around the forest doing odd jobs for others and now Toad has carried on that part of his father

in doing that same thing in going out and helping others with things that they need done and he has that same mantra of always saying nothing feels as good as helping others that's true that is true isn't it though? Yep, I've always enjoyed that And that's a great lesson to teach kids.

Well, as I said, I'm not really good with tools and stuff, but I'm very good with other things. I am very active in my community. I do a lot that doesn't require me to pick up a tool, which is good. Yeah. Yeah. Those two books, Acrobat and Toge Tools, have currently been released in Spanish. I did the translation myself, because I'm of a Hispanic background. But just to be on the safe side, my next door name.

works at the local junior college, and I had him put me in touch with someone from the Spanish department, and I had him proof all my writing, and I've made sure that he got credit in the book because he did an outstanding job of proofing it. My Spanish is very, very formal. I wanted something more colloquial, which he provided for me, and I'm very happy with the outcome, and as I said, both books have currently been released in Spanish. Oh, well, that's awesome, sauce. Tell us about some of the other books. Well, I have four other books that are poems. They're called The Patrol, The Dawn, Inside Me, and the Tennis Jock. And they're all stages of my life. And I did them in poetic form. I actually wrote those for various English classes that I took in college at different times. And then I was going to submit them as one book and call it the poetic stages of my life. But when I presented it to my rep, he suggested that I put them out separate. The patrol has to do with a group of men that are called on to do a patrol in the middle of the night.

They're called it originally starting off as the night patrol. And that's based on stories. I'm a Vietnam veteran. As you mentioned earlier, I was in the Marines for six years, spent 25 years in the Air Force Reserves after that. But my time in the Marines, I did a tour in Vietnam. And we always heard stories about units that went out, patrols that went out and didn't come back or came back, disheveled. and so i sat down and uh wrote a poem about it in it for a college class and um i remember the teacher of that class the professor told me that she was um dating a colonel out at camp

penelton i was living in orange county at the time and she wanted to present it to him and she told me that he sent it off to stars and stripes periodical to have it published i don't know if it ever did or not because i never saw it but that's how much she enjoyed it uh later on i I got into playing tennis. I never was as good as I'd like to be. But I had a lot of fun doing it. I would show up at tennis courts and challenge people if I couldn't find one of my friends to play.

Most of my friends are golfers, not tennis players. And so I would just show up at tennis courts. And the tennis jock is just a parody of my life playing tennis. He's kind of a klutz on the tennis court. I don't think I was too much of a club. but I was never as proficient as I'd like to be, but I just enjoyed playing the game. And then the dawn was for another class that I wrote. We were to write something that we really enjoyed, and to me, living life as long as I have,

I don't think I mentioned to you. I'm currently 77. I'll be 78 next month. I enjoy the dawn. Every day waking up to a new dawn is very enjoyable to me. And so I wrote this poem about the dawn because that was something that I really enjoy every single day. And then the last book I wrote was just for a class that I went to a seminar in my school district, the last school district that I worked in.

And at that seminar, they asked us to write a poem and title it Inside Me. And so that just goes through my entire life of parts of me that were good, parts of me that were bad. for every stanza that starts off with something in my life that is that was bad i come back with something that was good that offsets the bad and so those four poems together as i said i was originally going to call them the poetic stages of my life but my rep suggested i i published them separately so i did sometimes separately is better you know one one more than the other and all that sort of good stuff so and these are all children's books that are targeted to course, children, inspiring them, help them learn, giving parents something to read to their kids.

Why is that important to be able to spend intimate time, you know, reading to quality time, as it were, reading to your children and making that a part of your interaction with them? Well, you know, I always loved learning. I always loved reading as a child. I always had a book in my hand no matter where I went. and I do remember I did mention that my dad worked a lot but my mom would sit down with this and sometimes she'd read with this sometimes she just played board games with us but she spent a lot of time with us and I thought that was really important in growing up to be able to have

that connection with my parents you know I don't blame I don't blame my dad for having to work as hard as he did because he was the breadwinner and you know my mom didn't work outside the home I did it when I was young eventually go out and get a paper out to help so that my dad could spend some more time at home, but that didn't offset a lot. But I just enjoyed the time that I did spend with my parents. And I think it's really important that children and parents have a bond that's, you know, not just parent and child, but friends to a certain point.

And I mean that not friends that you let them get away with something like you let some of your friends do, because you do have to have a certain amount of order in the household. but you don't have to, you know, I always told my students, whether they did something right or wrong, there were always consequences. I said, and consequence does not mean something bad. It could mean something good. It just means the outcome or the result of what you're doing. And so I would always ask them, are you willing to accept the consequences of what you're about to do? Kind of some self-accountability there.

Exactly, exactly. I wanted them to take control of their own lives. Mm-hmm. Well, that's important because, you know, self-accountability teaches you to grow, teach you to learn, and everything else. And you become a better person when you take self-accountability for something. So when did you first know that you were good at writing and that you had this sort of skill set? What was the first light bulb that maybe went on? Well, when I was in fifth grade, I wrote a poem about being a good student. And my teacher liked it so much, she called it. the principal in and he read it. And he asked me if I would be okay with them submitting it to the local newspaper, which at that time was called the Richmond Independent. I grew up in Richmond, California. And it was submitted to the newspaper and it was posted in the newspaper. And that was the first time I ever wrote anything like that and had it published. And then in junior high,

as I said, I wrote, I won a writing contest and I won another one in high school. And so I just always enjoyed writing because and I think it was because I read so much I love the things that I read that it led me to wanting to write and I think that was the the what I want to say I can't think of the word I want to use right there isn't that funny all these words I use I can't think of the one it happens to the best of us so and so you've written ever since I imagine you wrote a lot of reports and different things being, you know, a principal and a teacher and stuff like that. And a military officer. I had to write reports there as well.

So, yes, I did a lot of writing from that respect. It's good practice. Yes. It's good practice. No, I think books are so important, you know, they have some of these kids nowadays, they have these, you know, they have all the electronics and the social media that they're exposed to and all that stuff. and the, you know, reading books is better, and I think grows your brain, better than just watching videos mindlessly, mind-numbing videos. I don't know, that's my opinion, because it teaches you to create your own world of imagination

and your own world of, you know, thinking about things and having a vision about things. Instead of just sitting there drilling down the side of your mouth going, you know what like i do when i watch tic-tok videos and doom scroll and that's something i was going to say that that's one of the reason i loved reading so much when i was a kid because it opened up my imagination to things yeah i could put myself in place of the character okay this is me doing this not the person in the book that i'm reading about yeah so it it really is an avenue to do things like that it kind of personalizes it If you will. It does. Yeah. So anything more you want to tease out to us or talk to us about some of these books that you've written? And are any of these like in a series at all? Do they, is there a continuum of any of them?

Not yet. As I said, though, the four books that I put out as this, there were going to be stages, the poetic stages of my life, they follow in order. The patrol being first, of course, followed by the tennis job, followed by the dawn and then inside me. I mean, if you read them in that, order, that's the way I wrote them in my life. So those are different aspects of my life. But I have other books on my computer, but I'm hoping to, I'm going to the Miami Book Fair this month. I'll be there on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of November. And I'm hoping to pick up a traditional publisher. And if that happens, then I'll start putting out some of my other books. Well, hopefully you do and hopefully it works out. We're rooting for you. I hope so. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you.

So anything further you want to pitch out to us as we go? I just want to thank my wife for always being there to encourage me with my writing. She knows how much I love it, and she's always been there to back me. And as I said, I want to thank my parents for being so supportive when I was growing up. They're both gone now, but my three sisters, they're also very supportive, and I want to thank them as well. And all my friends out there that have my books that let me know. how much their children or grandchildren are enjoying them. That always makes me really feel good when I hear that. Oh, yeah. I mean, totally. So give people a final pitch out as we go out

on how they can order up your books and find out more about you. Well, all my books are currently available on Amazon. I think they're on other book sites as well. I'm not sure about Barnes & Noble, but I know for sure they're on Amazon. And it's under Adrian M. Hurtado, and I've always used my middle initial to distinguish from my dad. He was Adrian A. Hurtado. And so I have always used my middle initial. And actually, that helps a lot because I didn't realize how many Adrian Hurtadoes there are until I just typed in my name without the M. Oh, wow. So there's a lot of them, huh? They come up. Well, there you go. You got to make yourself unique. Well, thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it. It's been fun to have you. And you're doing a great job.

job. Keep it up. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate that. And thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. Order up his book. Mary had a little lamb that we let off with today and all of his other books you can find under Amazon and all that good stuff. Thanks for us for us for us Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschus, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have a set.