Nikole Hannah Jones and Adam Rubin work to make kids' books more approachable

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's interviews center on children's books with wildly different topics, but they both aim to make reading more accessible for kids. Nikole Hannah Jones, working with Renee Watson, turned the 1619 Project into a picture book called Born On The Water. They told NPR their goal was "to say to young people - to young Black Americans, you belong here." Next, Adam Rubin has on his collection of short stories that are all different but share the same title: The Ice Cream Machine. Rubin told NPR's Rachel Martin that there are so many ways to tell a story. This is an encore episode from March 2022.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Naino Rau here, producer of NPR's Book of the Day. It's August, and we're taking a little time off. While we do, we're sharing some of our favorite episodes from this past year. This one is for March. And we're back with new episodes next week.
0:17.7	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong.
0:21.7	I hated reading as a kid.
0:24.3	I thought it was stupid and boring, and why read when you could watch TV?
0:28.5	You know, why waste time on The Phantom Tooth when it didn't have anything to do with Power Rangers?
0:35.1	Today, we've got two kids' books that really hammer home the
0:38.9	importance of kids' reading, and what it can do for them. In a bit, we'll hear from Adam Rubin,
0:44.5	whose story collection about ice cream invites young readers to add a story of their own.
0:49.8	But first, you've probably heard of the 1619 project, the collection of essays and poetry and scholarship
0:55.6	that has really reframed the centrality of the Black experience to America. Important work,
1:01.7	but it's dense. So, author Nicole Hannah-Jones got together with Renee Watson to turn it into
1:07.7	a picture book and the folks at all things considered put together this piece of the two of them talking about how important it is to give black kids away, a language to talk about.
1:19.3	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
1:24.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show,
1:29.5	Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:34.4	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:38.2	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:43.1	Their history.
1:47.7	Born on the Water puts Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicole Hannah Jones's 1619 project in the hands of young readers. It's a picture book. She
1:54.4	wrote in collaboration with Renee Watson. The book starts off with a young black girl receiving a
2:00.1	homework assignment where she is asked to trace her roots and draw a flag that represents her ancestral land.
2:06.5	At first, the little girl feels ashamed. She doesn't know where her family came from.
	...

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