Student Ecoliteracy: The Author

00:00:06 Michelle

Welcome to the Farm to School podcast, where you hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, crop and eat delicious, nutritious local foods in school across the country and the world.

00:00:18 Rick

We’re your hosts, I’m Rick Sherman

00:00:19 Michelle

and I'm Michelle Markesteyn, and we are farmers school coordinators in the state of Oregon.

00:00:25 Rick

OK, today everybody, we are really happy to.. well.. Say this when we do this farm to school podcast, we always think about what haven't we talked about like how can the kids get the message of where their food comes from, and so we we've done master food preserver episodes like we've done, pollinators. Anything that relates in the farm to school world, well, now we have this bad idea to have this, what we're calling student ecoliteracy, like teaching kids through print and books. So we're doing a two-part series with of the part with a publisher and our very first author, our first children's book author. We just had an author of the history of farm to school a couple weeks ago, but… Katherine Pryor. Hello. Welcome to the show.

00:01:20 Katherine Pryor

Thank you so much for inviting me. I have been listening to your podcast since you launched it, so it's pretty fun to be on this side of the earbuds.

00:01:29 Rick

Thank you so much. I'm glad we have 1 listener out there!

00:01:33 Katherine Pryor

Anyone else listening?

00:01:37 Rick

So we go way back. I've seen you in a lot of farm to school conferences and it seems like you're always at a conference getting an award for one of your books. We have on my kitchen table, all your books spread out in front of us, some autographed and some not. I picked them up at the conferences. Matter of fact, true story. Your latest one “home is calling.” I read that to my granddaughter the other day. Hey, Brinley if you're listening! She's 3. But I said “home is calling” and I like... I know the person that wrote this book. And so I go “home is calling.. the journey of the monarch butterfly.” She goes, oh, Papa. Homes don't talk, so, she said. Taking it literally. And I'm like no…

00:02:29 Katherine Pryor

I love that.

00:02:29 Rick

So I had to kind of explain to her three-year old mind that home is calling meant and then we read it. So I read her one of your stories. And Peyton, her sister. Whenever we have a sleep over. They’re so very well, very well written.

00:02:45 Katherine Pryor

It's such a special thing to get to be part of anyone's childhood, really. I thank you for that.

00:02:50 Michelle

Oh, I’ve seen Sylvia’s Spinach in so many classrooms.

00:03:00 Katherine Pryor

Yeah, she's had a really great run with schools and in school gardens. I know.. I just still can't believe it's been over a decade since that that came out and it remains my best selling books.

00:03:13 Rick

Wasn't that your one that.. I think 12 years ago. Yeah, that's where I met you when you have that.. that matter of fact. That's my autograph copy there.

00:03:21 Michelle

How did you get into this topic of books?

00:03:25 Rick

Children's books specifically, yeah.

00:03:30 Katherine Pryor

Yeah, it's been a bit of a journey, of course, when I do book readings, I often tell the kid that I've been a writer since I was seven years old and my second grade teacher had a creative writing exercise and it was the most fun I'd ever had in school, so I decided then chasing after feeling ever since, and then the way I got into children's books is I spent a good portion of my 20’s trying to make it as a novelist, and I wrote several books that no one wanted to publish and finally got tired of reading tables and bartending and all the other odd jobs. You work trying to make it in the arts and I decided to go to grad school to study sustainable food and furniture. And I loved it. I felt like I finally, found my place and I graduated into this really cool job once you embed healthy food, healthcare campaign in Washington state, where I was working to get hospitals to buy more local and sustainable foods for cafeterias and patients. And one of the things I got to do with that a lot of time was I would work with the family school people because we had the purchasing requirements that were really quite similar between hospitals and schools, so I got to know them a lot and there was one day, I had kind of hitched a ride with them and was advocating for farm to school funding in our state capital. When the dad told the story of how his daughter wouldn't eat spinach until she tried it in her school garden. And then she ended up falling in love with spinach and wanted to eat it with every meal. And all of the very smart food advocates of the room with me were saying, like, we should do a story about that, or we should write a book on that and for whatever reason, all I can think about was that would make a great children's book and I didn't know the first thing about writing for kids. The idea is stuck with me. And you know, after a lot of trial and error, would become my first picture book Sylvia's Spinach. I'll see my 10th book published in 2025, which is sort of unbelievable, but I literally trace it all back to that time.

00:05:57 Rick

Well, and I'm glad you said that about like.. That was my next question is like, OK, there's kids books, but you specifically tie into teaching kids where their food comes from gardens. Not necessarily school gardens, but home gardens or whatever. And then even kind of did a little… delve to the pollination aspect with your with your monarch butterfly book, which was.. I mean, I learned things in that book and I know that adult reading to my grandkids and Like I didn't know 3rd generations fly down to Mexico, and one generation flies back. You know that that whole thing. And it's just I knew about the milkweed and all that thing. But anyway so, I'm glad I found that glimpse into your past. What motivated you to write specifically about that stuff? That's really great.

00:06:57 Michelle

Yeah, it's so fun.

00:06:58 Katherine Pryor

I always joke that I write nonfiction because I'm drawing to this real world concepts like the monarch migration or you know when they're being declined or food. They're pretty seasonality.. I mean, I tend to… They're happy to.. They sort of fictionalize it and use story as a way to draw kids into the subject. And it's. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

00:07:25 Rick

And is there any specific way when you choose an illustrator like I notice you had? Anna Raff for your first couple. And then I saw your video with Ellie you just did.

00:07:40 Michelle

Allie Peterson.

00:07:42 Rick

I love that how she walked you through the steps on how to draw your own monarch butterfly, and it was really cool.

00:07:49 Katherine Pryor

Yeah. So actually, some people might like that. We got an award for Home Is Calling and part of the award was producing a free school visit. We did a 20 minute virtual visit. That went all over the place, but I've been so lucky to work with these amazing illustrators, and Allie was just, you know, a brilliant stroke of luck. Philip Lee, actually the editor of an owner of Readers to Eaters you, my friend, my mentor. And he found... And if we had gone to a bookstore, I mean, Sylvia's finished with something like the third book that we're publishing these. And we went to a bookstore and he just had me pulling books off the shelf. What style do you like? I really like great colors and simple things. And I just wanted it to feel really joyful and fun. And so you went out and found that person. And then with these views I thought was like a different publisher and we had a few different people in mind for the illustrations. I saw Allie's work and it just felt like something about it just felt so right. And so we ended up selecting her to do the work on these views and then they were finishing these views. Somebody was like, well, you ever thought about monarchs? And I live in one of the few regions of the country where we don't have monarchs like just too soggy for milkweeds, whatever the reason. And so I started digging into the monarch story and just was absolutely captivated by it. And Allie and I were going.. we ended up becoming friends. You know, 35 minutes away from each other and that far apart. And I told her about the book I was working on, and she was like, oh, I wanna illustrate that. And so I called very unusual experiences like maybe you would add dishes driving the contents, illustrator most of time you don't know them at all. Right now I have a book in the works where the illustrator is in Brazil, and I've never met him. Work is fantastic and funny, but I haven't really.. You know, we don't have a relationship, but I have had that with several of my illustrators and it is just fun making a book with someone you know and working well.

00:10:19 Michelle

And you mentioned you're new to writing for youth. What have you learned specifically in writing to youth?

00:10:26 Katherine Pryor

So those things, yeah, really... The first thing that I really had to learn is how much kids books have changed since we were kids. You know, just the industry has changed. The length has... The books used to be much longer. They are now really like 600 words with a picture. And if you can do less than that, it's better.. There’s language that we use that you wouldn't use in a picture book and then like.. there was, like, my hardest lesson was in Sylvia’s spinach. There's a line where Sylvia says “stupid spinach” and she said that kind of under her breath. And I have had children audibly gasp when I read that out loud. Because “stupid” is a bad word and I didn't know that. So now when I read it out loud and it's not like…

00:11:22 Rick

Silly, silly Spanish.

00:11:24 Katherine Pryor

Something like that, So I changed the line because. You have the languages changed and I would say I know one of the other things that has is just… so many books about food coming at me, which has been really fun. But it's funny because when we started doing these books like there was almost no books about food and garden, which is really it's an interesting place to be, where we're now. We went from in Sylvia’s time we went from not having enough books about food and gardens to having like so many to choose from. Yeah. So that's something that I've learned about. It too is just the way that it takes the industry about a decade to catch up to what the kinds of things we need. They do catch up.

00:12:21 Rick

Well, what about this, Katherine . Talking about change, I mean there used to be tons of Barnes and nobles and bookstores, and then a table at a Costco used to go for miles. Now I heard they're only going to bring out their books once or twice a year, around Christmas time and like when I see a book. I'll just get out my app and order it from my library and go check it out. But like, you know, there's audible books and Kindles. And does that equate to children's books too? When we talk to our publisher, we can ask that question too. What's your take on things have changed for print?

00:13:02 Katherine Pryor

That's a good question. I want to believe that if a kid wants a book, it's still pretty easy to get your hands on one. There are certainly more ways that we access books than there ever have been before. Even with Ed books and audio books, and you know, videos and all of these, there's so many ways to access a book now that there didn't used to be, but I think what the trend that we have seen has been having these bigger publishing houses sort of buying up the smaller regional publishers. And so you are seeing what I think of more as like a loss of diversity and the types of books that are being published and so, you know, you worry when it's like you've got the table across.. there's just only so many books are shown. They probably don't have local interest. They may not have anything to do with the types of issues that people are dealing with in that particular part of the country and so I normally I don't worry about there not being enough books because we are so lucky to have all these books. But I really think there are definitely voices that are not heard because there's more and more of a focus of like something has to appeal to a national audience. So yeah, I do worry about that a bit.

00:14:25 Michelle

Can you say more about that?

00:14:27 Katherine Pryor

Yeah, you know, I've been very lucky to work with three different publishers. Two of the three publishers have been family owned, so Readers to Eater is a brilliant family owned publisher focusing on food literacy. And they do great books about gardens and interesting food heroes that you wouldn't hear about. Also have worked with a third generation family owned publishing house, started in Pennsylvania farmlands, where literally the people who used to work at the publishing house advertise. They would advertise publishing and light farm duties because every so often people would have to leave the office and go and help move cows between the fields. Now they went out the fields and they don't move. That it's this beautiful family owned publisher that tells stories that a larger publisher just doesn't want to take a risk on a batch of books, like they'll do like a 5000 print run. And if it's a flop, they can kind of afford it. But with these 3 little publishers, I think unfortunately a lot of the times like they're gonna do a huge print run and they might not want to take a risk on deck like I actually don't think a big publisher would have done a book like Sylvia's Spinach. I don't think they would have seen the market potential for it. I think they would have had the patience to wait for the book to sell. It took several years for that book to take off, and they wouldn't have had the patience to keep promoting it, or perhaps even keep it in print for those numbers to catch up, and so there's just things that the smaller family owned publishers will do that large publishers just don't mean. If honestly, if you think about it, it's not unlike big farms buying up small family farms and getting bigger and bigger and bigger, we're seeing something very similar with publishing and just like with farming, it means that unfortunately there are things that lost that.

00:16:36 Rick

I was looking towards the future with you. What do you see? Like, are there more titles for especially like in farm to school? Would there be a school garden book coming In your repertoire? or more stuff about spinach.. and you've done zucchinis, I think I joked with you, Once you have to hit all the letters, you have Bee’s bees, Sylvia’s Spinach. You got to do all the letters still.

00:16:58 Katherine Pryor

I know I would love to do that.

00:17:07 Rick

I know you went to the pollinator rabbit hole with a moment but ...

00:17:15 Katherine Pryor

Yeah. One of these days, you know. Yeah, I promise I will.

00:17:26 Rick

No, that's fine.

00:17:26 Katherine Pryor

And no, I make plans. My kids are so little. I took a little foray into books for younger ones. So I've been the past few years, been working on a series of books that started with Hello Garden. We decided Hello Rain and I'll have the two books of that series launching next in 2025 for Instance. That will be fun, so I'll be Hello Beach and Hello Snow. Then I promise I'm getting back to Ed Gardens and nature. Because next fall I have new picture book with… Which is an infant of hashed called Attack of the Hangrys, which is going to be a humorous scientific look at why humans get hungry and give him some tips to avoid the hangry’s before they attack.

00:18:13 Michelle

I didn't know that.

00:18:14 Katherine Pryor

So yeah, I am kind of getting back to my roots that I took a little slower into younger kids books because we were reading so many of them, but I kind of had to try my hand...

00:18:25 Michelle

Yes, we call my youngest son, Hangry Henry.

00:18:31 Rick

I don't call him that.

00:18:33 Michelle

At about 4:00 every day. But in general me, you know thinking of family, school and school garden programming and local, state and national levels like books has been a very important piece to educators and people. In a meeting with our state librarian, he was like we need more place specifically. That's what we're… This was one from your perspective and your kind of in 1000 foot view. Like where do you see a potential or some potential features for children's book publishing and I know audiences can be specific so…

00:19:17 Katherine Pryor

Well, I mean, I would say I don't think I have heard that people in the market have said that the market is saturated. But I actually think that there is still so many stories to be told. And I think you're absolutely right. I think we do need more original books. And you know, one of the things that I have been so happy to see when I volunteer every week in the garden at my son's school and when the garden teacher tells a story when he starts a class with a story, I've noticed that those kids have a focus and a purpose that they don't always otherwise have like imagination and then they put that concept into. And so, you know, I think that's really where books can help school guidance find to school all of those things because early on, you know, I could see that my books were helping their kids, counting kids wrap their heads around their heads around school in a new… like I would read philosophy and then do a spinach tasting with the kids using the steps in the book. These kids are excited about eating raw spinach, which I did not expect. You know, I've seen kids say the beans or dogs want to plant a pollinator garden after we read these deeds or homeless and you know, I think there's so many things you can do with garden education, with farm to school, because we can read these books and then complete seeds. You can harvest, you can make a smoothie, and you can do something that really ties into what you're reading about and I am personally so tired of the crocheting that kids don't like vegetables. I think it is so overdone in children's literature and in media. I really want to counter that and I hope to get more books to counter that to provide images of kids loving and seeking out fruits and vegetables because that's what I see. You know, when I was working on springing for strawberries, I really wanted to show those kids celebrating every harvest because that's what we do at my house. And zucchini, we see the entire family, you know, cooking and eating and enjoying vegetables together. Kids came and do well vegetables, vegetables, made better marketing. I think I can work and then school food service professionals and garden educators can.

00:21:55 Rick

And I think that's exactly it. If you listen to our podcast, that's what we try to handle home that you know, if you just put veggies out in front of kids, they may or may not eat them, probably won't feel bad if you teach them about, and it could be something as simple as like today we're going to read Sylvia spinach and then afterwards we're going to have spinach there going to be so much more interested to try and spinach if they just read a story about that, it's all about learning where their food comes from. And so, like, that's what farm to school is. That's exactly what I've seen.

00:22:32 Katherine Pryor

Like people in school, kitchens can get super creative. So like I've seen school kitchens incorporate foods like if they knew that that a certain class was meeting the books that week, they could incorporate the books into either their weekly, or they call it out on their bars and I did some new pictures of like a little Sylvia. They just, they just printed it out and copied it out some cardboard. Did you get so creative? And I love seeing people in different departments experience, collaborate to help drive these messages home. I think I think we can use these books to just help make food more fun. Because that's what we talk about, we talk about first, terms farm to school of three C’s. The cafeteria, the classroom and the community. And we do have those food service directors that are motivated. They don't just put out food there, but they do something like that is a little extra thing about, oh, today we're going to serve that you're learning about in your school garden harvest this week or do like the book example that you said and stuff. There are those out there. It's just that those are the Super motivated individuals, so.

00:23:52 Katherine Pryor

One of the things that surprised me the most, is that we know there is such a direct link between access to food and access to books, and I know like a lot of your listeners are so passionate about food access. But we actually know there's a report from the Children's Literacy Foundation that my numbers may be a little bit dated, but unfortunately, I think the trend holds true that it's something like kids from middle income books per child. But there were.. there was only one book for every 300 children with low income. And something like 61% of low income families had no age appropriate books into their in their homes. And so one of the things that I have been so happy, I'm just proud to be part of is working with organizations that are trying to bridge both gaps by connecting kids with books about food while also addressing food insecurity and food inequity. And so I just would encourage listeners to think about that. Like when you're thinking about access to food, how can we also be thinking about access to books? I've been really lucky to have my books picked up by Rick Wick and Snap, Ed and agony classroom things like that, where they're doing book giveaways. But then I've also done things like. I went to this amazing school garden in Olympia, went to where unfortunately the kids were experiencing high rates of homelessness and so, a lot of… you know, if you're moving a lot, you probably are going to lose some of your deranged and so every week at this school garden, a volunteer would come by and she would lay out a table full of used books, youth kids’ books and kids every kid would come and pick out a book that they would take home for the weekend and it was like their book? They loved it. And I've just been so blown away by the way, that people who are working in food access can also start, including book access into their work, partnering with the library, partnering with a nonprofit. There's so many ways to do this work and there's so many ways to engage a child.

00:26:14 Rick

Have you heard about the Dolly Parton foundation thing?

00:26:18 Katherine Pryor

I have, I love that.

00:26:20 Rick

And like for those of you that don't know, you can just Google it. Dolly Parton. Free books. She gives a free book every month from your to your kid. That's newborn through I think.. four years old or something every month, and it's free. Take advantage of that. You should get your books signed up. To do that. I wonder how that works.

00:26:41 Katherine Pryor

I would love that. I don't know how that works either. If anybody does, let us know.

00:26:47 Rick

Yeah.

00:26:48 Katherine Pryor

No, it's it's just an honor to get to be part of this. Like I was saying earlier with Anybody’s childhood and but especially these kids where we know that they don't have enough access to books in the home. And so, you know, if you can like, double the number of books.. Just like adding one it. It's an amazing… So yeah, that would just be something that, you know, I hope that as this movement keeps evolving and people keep dreaming up new good ideas. It's like, let's keep thinking about access to food and access to books and about food.

00:27:25 Rick

We are lucky enough to have a library next to us. So we're able that the kids section and they could just read all all day long and we can check out 20 books and you know and then just bring them back. And I think that's going to be a dying thing too People just realize, that that might be an option for people.

00:27:43 Katherine Pryor

To oh, absolutely.

00:27:46 Michelle

Do you have summer lunch in Washington too?

00:27:54 Katherine Pryor

Some places do. It's not statewide.

00:27:58 Michelle

It is pocketed, but summer lunches are free and libraries are great partners in that. And you know, delivering activities and access to books, and free meals for kids during the summer months.

00:28:13 Katherine Pryor

They can be of such an important partner. When people are thinking about like how to, you know, one of my favorite things is to be like doing an event at a farmers market and the library is there. You know they have books. They have ways to like sign people up for library cards and you know, I mean, there's just so many options for helping kids get these books in their hands.

00:28:38 Michelle

This is absolutely great. Thank you, Katherine, for taking time to talk with us.

00:28:43 Katherine Pryor

Thank you so much. It's really fun to talk to you and thank you too. For the farm to school work you're doing, I have when I listened to your show. I sort of think about who else is listening and like how they might be taking the stuff into their lives. So it's inspiring to me and I was hearing about what everybody's doing to keep the work moving forward.

00:29:08 Rick

Well, thanks again, Katherine Pryor, for being a guest on our show and talking about student ecoliteracy.

00:29:16 Michelle

Farm to school was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, with production support from Lean Locher as made possible by Grant from United States Department of Agriculture.

00:29:28 Rick

The content and ideas from the Farm to School podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University or the Department of Education, or the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:29:46 Michelle

Do you want to learn more about farm to school? Check out other episodes, show notes and contact information for us and so much more by Googling farm to school podcast OSU and you'll find us.

00:29:57 Rick

We would love to hear from you. Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned to say hello. Or just given us an idea for a future podcast. And we'd love to hear from everybody.

00:30:08 Michelle

Thank you, Katherine again for joining.

00:30:11 Katherine Pryor

Thank you.