Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.

Moms don't have time to read books.

This week's sponsor is Book of the Month Club again.

Book of the Month Club is a service which I think is like the best thing ever,

where you get to pick from five books each month to get whichever one is your favorite.

Book of the Month Club is offering Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books listeners,

an exclusive offer of signing up for just $5 for your first book.

This is not to be missed, bookof the monthclub.com.

Go check it out, and many of the books on this be missed. Bookof the Monthclub.com. Go check it out. And many of the

books on this podcast have been Book of the Month Club picks. So go, just go buy them. Enter code

Zibb-B-Y for this exclusive offer. I just wanted to take this time to wish all of you a very, very,

very happy Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for all of you listeners out there. You have

no idea how much you have made my life happy by helping me spread the word about these amazing

authors and books and joining me in my book-loving life. So thanks for taking the time on your

walks while you're doing the dishes while you're at the gym or wherever you're listening to me. Thank you for putting me in your ears and listening to what I have to say. It really just warms my heart. And feel free any time to reach out to me. Let me know what you think of this podcast. Let me say something nice. I don't know, whatever. My email is zibi at zivi-O-Ns.com.

Z-I-B-B-Y at Zivie Owens.com. And again, have a really amazing Thanksgiving. And I hope

these episodes carry you through this wonderful week. I'm here today with Tori, Mal Donato,

who is a middle school teacher and the author of Tight and Secret Saturdays. He was voted a top 10 Latino author and best middle grade and young adult novelist for African Americans. His book, Secret Saturdays, was highlighted in the New York Times as a top book by and about Latinos. He currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn, where he was born and raised. So welcome, Tori. Thanks so much for coming on Mom's Don't have time to read books. Thank you for having me here. So I have to say, Tori and I were just commiserating because I spent the day chaperoning a field trip, and he spent the day as a teacher taking his kids on a field trip, and it's the end of the day. So we are going to try to pump up our energy for this podcast. Totally. I felt like a domino standing and teetering and almost about to fall at the end of the day. I know. I laid on the carpet in the living room just like I can't even get up. The kids know too, because one of my sixth graders came up to me and said, how are you still standing? So funny. I don't know why. I mean, all we did was like pick pumpkins.

I don't know. Just exhausting. Managing all those kids. So I just finished reading your book tight, which was so good. Thank you. I mean, really. I thought I was going to read it with my kids, but I ended up just reading it myself because I didn't want to wait for them. I read them the first chapter, which they liked. And I was like, no, no, I'm not waiting.

So it was great.

Wow, thank you.

So I'm excited to talk to you about it.

...