Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast produced by the American Psychological Association.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna. I'm joined today by Dr. Marianne Chalano, co-author of Something Happened in Our Town,

a children's book about racial injustice from Imagination Press, which is APA's children's books imprint.

The story written with fellow psychologists and colleagues, Dr. Marietta Collins and Dr. Anhazard,

follows a white family and a black family as they discuss the police shooting of a black man in their town.

The purpose of the book is to spark important discussions within families about racial injustice.

Dr. Cholano is the director of Emory University's Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Program,

as well as a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Chilano.

Thanks for inviting.

So first I want to talk about what sparked your interest in this topic, you and your co-authors.

I would say a couple of years ago my co-authors and I became increasingly concerned about

the disproportionate police shootings of unarmed African American individuals, particularly

boys and men.

And we wondered how kids reacted to that.

If kids heard about it, how they would react,

what questions they would have.

So we decided to write a book that would sort of be a platform

for parents to discuss these events with their children

and begin to discuss patterns of racial bias and injustice in our country.

So on the topic of that, I'm sure it's very tough for many parents to try to imagine

telling their children about these complex issues, like race issues in America today.

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