Reading Inspires! with Eric Litwin, author of Pete the Cat

Erin: Welcome to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental. I'm your host, Dr. Erin Bailey. This podcast celebrates the power of books and the joy of reading. In each episode, we talk with educators, librarians, families, authors, and literacy champions to explore one big question: What does reading inspire for you?

Through stories, research, and real-world experiences from classrooms, libraries, and homes, we explore what literacy looks like and why it matters. Whether you're nurturing young readers, shaping learning spaces, or simply love a good book, we're glad you're here. Be sure to subscribe to get the latest episode.

Let's get inspired.

Welcome. Today on Reading Inspires, I'm joined by Eric Litwin, an award-winning author. You will recognize his books. I'll hold them up for you. Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, and The Poop Song. Eric's an award-winning children's author. He's also a musician and a former educator.

His books have inspired millions of children to sing, move, laugh, and fall in love with reading. So welcome, Eric. Thanks for joining us.

Eric: Yeah, Erin, happy to be

Erin: here

Uh, so let's begin with your journey. Before you became a bestselling children's author, you were a classroom teacher and a musician. I'd love to start by hearing about your background.

What role did music and reading play in your childhood, and how did these experiences shape, uh, who you are?

Eric: Well, yeah, they very much did shape, w- what I was interested in, uh, how the books created. Uh, the whole journey began really in the classroom. I was a teacher. I taught third grade, also fourth and fifth grade, I started becoming very, very concerned that many of my students no longer loved reading at third grade.

Mm-hmm.

And one day I walked past a kindergarten classroom on the way to my own classroom, and it was reading time, and y- I just saw that, the joy in the kids' faces as they picked up their favorite books. I think I remember one little girl, like, holding her favorite book almost like a baby. and then I went into my own classroom inspired by what I had just seen and said, you know, "Who wants to read a book?" And it, it was one of those things where about a third of the kids said sure, of them said nothing, and a third of them said nah. And I started to wonder, and become deeply concerned, with what happened between kindergarten and third grade. Where did the love of the reading go? And that's really what, this all began. the more I looked into it, the more I started to feel that the core problem, well, the, you know, everything's multifactorial, but that basically, uh, they didn't have a strong reading foundation. And so when they began to read first grade, approximately, frustrating for them, by the time they got to third grade, were no longer interested. I also started to become deeply concerned about how reading and learning to read was now competing electronic devices, right? And this is when videos were starting to get really good, video games, and when television was about to explode from 10 channels to 50 to 100, and it was deeply concerning to me, and I'm in now in a sh- sheer state of panic.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, it's, the problem has only gotten worse. so the question then becomes from this origin and, and How do we make reading and language acquisition more fun, engaging than any electronic device can ever hope to be? And the good news is we can, and that's what I was trying to do with the books. I was trying to add the elements that make the books fun, joyful, interactive, and engaging.

So this is things like call and response, repetition. many of your viewers may know the term dialectic reading, where you want to ask questions while you're reading. started thinking about it a little bit differently. It's difficult to teach every parent how to do dialectic reading, right? It's somewhat abstract as a concept. Why not build the questions into the book, right? So this is where, "Did Pete cry?

Oh

So it, it was inspired by a combination of, of understanding of dialectic reading as well as basic common, uh, call and response, you know, from old folk songs like, um, "Did you feed my cow? Yes, ma'am. Can you show me how? Yes, ma'am."

So I took these techniques, I put them in the books, that's really how, uh, it evolved.

Erin: I love that connection to call and response, which is a popular thing in elementary schools, um, and music. And I also attended, like, a hip hop session one time, and they said the same thing. They said call and response really originated in hip hop and R&B music

Eric: Oh, further. Further,

Erin: than that

Eric: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but the, the line, it, it's, it's, it's, it's a deeply American tradition, right? can go back, uh, further, and find call and response in, uh, folk songs, blues songs. it's just, um, just the way it is. Here, let's, let's, uh... What's the matter with the mill?

It done broke down. So here's one by Muddy Waters. Had a little corn mill, put it in a sack. Brought it to the mill, I had to bring it right back. What's the matter with the mill? You say, it done broke down. What's the matter with the mill?

Erin: It done broke down

Eric: get no grinding. What's the matter with the mill?

Erin: It done broke down

Eric: Right? So you have these, uh, res- you have this call and response built into all of these traditional music forms in Am- in American music.

So that's also, though, exciting, right? We can take traditions are American. Uh, and of course, the origins go back to Africa and to Europe, and the blending, I mean, it gets just really fascinating. But we can include these early literacy to the benefit of our students, because this is how we're going to make language acquisition and reading and writing fun. And the techniques are known, and they're traditional, they work. And teachers all over the country, uh, everywhere I go, I do a lot of performances at schools, at conferences, and parents and teachers come up with the stories about how something about the books I wrote, the original four Pete the Cat books. Oh, I should clarify that. I'm the author of the original four Pete the Cat books, and then also wrote the series Groovy Joe and The Nut Family, uh, The Poop Song, I can explain. then also a book for teachers, let's see if I can, I think I have a copy here, yeah, called The Power of Joyful Reading, which I wrote with Dr.

Gina Pepin. going over the same things we're talking about now. how do we engage joyfully with language and print in a way that helps build an early reading foundation that reading instruction just flows naturally, and by third and fourth grade, love reading. They're in, right?

They want to do it. And, uh, there's a lot that goes into it, but a lot of these answers are, are, kind of low-lying fruit. Call and response, repetition, movement. These are all at our fingertips, and they're all accessible to all of us, to teachers, to parents, to our communities. We, have these resources. They don't cost anything. And we can put them to work, and they work

Erin: Yeah, I appreciate that so much, the explaining of, like, how, you know, uh, I'm a parent too. When I'm reading to my kids, I'm reading in a different way because I have a reading specialist background, so I know to ask questions and s- and, uh, you know, engage in a conversation. But many, for many families, that doesn't come naturally, so your explanation of you take the call and response and you build it into the book, like your example, "Did Pete cry?

Goodness, no." Or if I'm thinking of I Love My White Shoes, the predictability of that, you know? He's going to jump into a pile of strawberries, and what sh- what color are his shoes going to turn? And then that's a built-in question there. It, it's such an incredible way that you did that

Eric: And it's also built in joy, right? Because you know he's about to step in something else, right? At a certain point, where this is going is quite clear. He's not looking where he's going, and that it, you know, it's just he is enjoying himself, and he is out there walking, and the kids start to anticipate. As soon as we start singing, "I love my white shoes," they know this is not gonna go well.

Well, at that point they don't know, but once you're in the blue shoes and the brown shoe. And that prediction creates engagement, right? 'Cause they anticipate what's coming. And this all is lighting up the different important networks in our children's minds and their brains. So one of the things I think you touched on that's really important is that there is a misconception about early reading, is we often equate it to the way grown-ups read But it's completely different. When you and I read, we are actually in a relationship. We are co-creating with the author because the way we express the words on paper changes the meaning. So like let's say there's the words, "I love you," you in your mind say it as, love you," verse, "I love you," totally changes the meaning. So as an adult, that's the magic.

You're co-creating, and that lights up all sorts of s- uh, networks in our mind. But with the children, it's slightly different. It's more about the human interactivity. is what's key. We are social beings. We are social creatures, and when we learn language, it is meant to be deeply human, and with children, this means deeply interactive. so the more we have back and forth going on, the better, my books were created to model this. this phenomena is true in everything that you do. If you're in, at dinner, talk about dinner, If you can write a song about what you're eating, even better, you know? clap your hands and blow your horn 'cause tonight we're having creamy corn. And it, and it's corny, and it doesn't ... The kid- your, your kids don't care, If you start doing it, will they, will they join in? Of course, right? Because of the repetition. So we can take these techniques. We can apply them in early literacy, we can also apply them throughout the entire day in our classrooms, uh, with routines. Uh, sit in your seat, hands in your lap, smile, crocodile, and clap, clap, clap, right? We can turn our routines, like our expectations, into chants and poems. We can put those words on the wall. We can immerse our students in the classroom and at home our children. In interactive, fun language and print, this is how we begin to build the reading foundation.

This is what's needed when you start into phonemes, sounds, phonics, which is the combination of sounds, right, and words and sentences. need all of these things. You need to have sung and danced to the music. You need chanting and an, an enormous amount of conversation. And there's no wasted time, and every moment of the day can be an opportunity to immerse students and our children in interactive language, and that is what we need to do, especially now with so many screens. we have to ask ourself, when we're on the screens and we're with children, or children are on the screens, it's not so much what are they learning on the screens or what are they doing on the screens, it's what they're not doing, and they're

Erin: Yeah

Eric: interacting with you, and that's, that's the problem. That's the catastrophe. It's not, oh, the things on the screens are not helpful. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're highly overstimulating, and that's a problem, too. even an enormous amount of time on very helpful applications or programs or whatever it is our children are doing online, it's still a problem because it's not deeply human and interactive, and that's what, that's what gets it all going. That's what we need. And so that's what my books were designed to do, to just add those elements, to make them highly interactive, highly engaging, and I think that's why people find them fun.

Erin: Oh yeah. I, I mean, I have one more book to hold up, and this is my personal copy of Pete the Cat that I've used with all three of my children. So typically on the show I'll hold up brand-new copies of the book, but I had to show this one because it has been riffed, it has been taped. There, there are juice spills on it.

but this is a beloved book in my household and, and in so many households, so I appreciate you for bringing this joy into my own children's life and so many children's lives. And I think, I hope that families listening, uh, to this, I mean, teachers and families, but families particularly will hear what you're saying about singing and chanting.

I think teachers probably do it more naturally than families do. Uh, you know, I'm a former educator, but we sing and chant everything in my house. You're actually making me feel very affirmed about my own singing and chanting, and I, it, I think it helps kids. You know, we have routines in my house, and we have songs and chants that go with them.

So, like, when we come in the house from school, we say, "Shoes in the basket, wash your hands," and it's, like, a helpful reminder for my kids to take off their shoes and wash their hands. It's something we have to do. Or I'll even, like, remix songs sometimes. So if you know the song from, uh, Snow White, "Whistle while you work."

So we had a is- challenge with my children that they would not be sitting down while they were eating. They were becoming grazers, taking a bite and walking around, so we changed it to, "Sit down when you eat, doo, da-doo, doo, doo, doo, doo." And, like, I think little things like that are so catchy for kids. It helps them

Eric: And, I mean, it helps them so much. They will participate in it. Maybe they'll change the words and think they got the better of you. But, uh, you know, now they're singing, and they're singing words, and you're interacting. It makes the, behavior modification, however you wanna call it, uh, redirection, makes it easier, makes it more fun. and it causes an astonishing amount of positive things to be happening inside of their minds. When they sing and connect words and reasoning, you have auditory networks You have visual networks if they're looking around, if they're singing about, like, words that have images associated with them, right? Uh, put them in the basket. We're seeing the basket in our minds, especially when we're reading. Pete the Cat Was Walking Down the Street, you see a cat. You're doing this work in your mind. This means all those networks are lighting up, then reasoning networks. And all, m- a lot of this is right here in the prefrontal cortex. They're all firing. They're all working together, and that matters. When you watch a video, it's providing the visual input for you. not doing the work. When you hear even something like a podcast like this, the work's being done for you. A lot of the meaning comes from the words you're hearing and the expressions to those words. But when you read or you talk, you're creating that meaning, and that fires it up, fires up those audio networks, uh, also fires up the reasoning. So this is all good, and routines are a perfect place to do it, 'Cause routines help us manage our day with children. I'm, I'm a dad myself. I have a six-year-old right now, and, uh, we have all sorts of routines.

When we're at eating and he wants to do other things, we have a poem. sometimes it's helpful to, sometimes it's helpful to focus our mind and try and do one thing at a time,

Erin: Oh, I'm gonna take that.

Eric: And, and then what he'll do is he'll say, "I can do that, Papa." And he'll get up and start dancing. And I'm like, "Nope, that's, nope.

We're not dancing." And he's, he, and he acts like he doesn't get it. And then he goes back to eating. it's our joke, it's our running joke. I say the poem. hearing the poem, then he pretends that he gets it and starts dancing. I explain to him, "No, that's not it." But it makes the redirection more loving, right, more fun, and, and, and that makes it easier to parent. the same time, you're making a point. and you're also engaging in joyful language. And, and there we go. And if you think about how many things during the day are repeated over and over and over again, you start to realize content creation's not gonna be that hard, right? You just come up with something, and then the kids love the repetition of it. So, so we can do this. can do this, and, and, and the more we do it, the more we are pushing back on the negative impact the reduction in human interactivity language and print that is happening of the unprecedented situation we're in with really unknown of these devices have entered into our lives, and have a lot of positives with.

This is a positive right now. You're in California, I'm in northern Virginia, and we're talking about early literacy and sharing it with people around the country. That's wonderful, right? But there are also negatives. This has to be managed, this new world, this new technology. And we can do it, but we just have to, we have to engage in this world, this new digital world, with our eyes open, and the realization that there's cause and effect, and that if we are on our screens more, if there is a reduction in this, then we can, number one, we can reduce that reduction, like we can be on the screens less. Second, we can optimize the time we have with them. something that might feel a little exaggerated, this much singing, this much around verbal engagement, it feels a little awkward at the moment, but that's just because it's new. It's not way that we have done things before, but we have to do things new right now, right?

The moment calls a change in how we're going to approach our day-to-day, especially as we see the results of reading scores across the country. there are some improvements as a result of science of reading, but science of reading is not a magic bullet.

Erin: Mm-hmm.

Eric: not going to deliver the outcomes that I think people are hoping it will alone. It will not do it alone. It is one component a multifaceted really response that is needed for the time that we're in, and part of that's going to be increasing joyful interactivity with print and with language

Erin: Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. We talk about it all the time. You know, reading is fundamental. We're really committed to bringing the joy of reading into the science of reading, which is, I believe, where, uh, you sit as well, uh, because I think just science of reading alone can't make you fall in love with reading the way that joy can.

And if I'm thinking, so I wanna think about one of your books for a minute here and use... I'm putting my parent on, hat on here. So I have options as a parent. I'm working on, let's say, potty training with my son. I can come up with a song on my own, I can play for him a YouTube video about potty training, or I can use your book, The Poop Song.

What, what would you say to a scenario like that?

Eric: ... So in that situation, and it, this is near and dear to my heart because my wife is a pediatric gastroenterologist, so that's,

That's where the poop song came from.

came from. Uh, so she said, you know, there were a lot of power struggles around, uh, learning the potty train, and then the children hold it in, and, and then they become patients of hers.

And she was like, "It would be great if there was a book that said, 'Look, poop wherever you want,' but the big boys and the big girls are pooping in the potty." And so this book is a response to that, and in this, we have, again, an answer that has a couple elements to it. Number one, we're gonna take a situation that can be stressful, right? Potty training doesn't have to be stressful, it can be when we're worried about making that, you know, the suggested timelines, which the kids have no interest in. And we're also doing a routine, right? So if we turn it into a joyful language situation where, you go back and forth. In this particular one you say, like, "Cats," and they say, "Poop."

Now, they think this is great. They're saying, "Poop." What could be better, right? So cats poop in their own little box. Mountain goats, they say, "Poop," as they climb over rocks. Fishes poop as they swim in the sea. A caterpillar poops at the top of a tree. And you're just normalizing, right? And the idea eventually in the chorus, the big boys and the big girls are pooping in the potty, but you're not forcing them to poop in the potty. just having fun, and the message is clear. you're ready, you poop in the potty. so keep it lighthearted. There's no benefit to force. None. It doesn't work. It doesn't work in your children learning to read. It doesn't work in potty training. but positive messaging, making things fun gonna be much more successful, and then it's also an example of how even here, in potty training, can turn this into an opportunity to engage in joyful language. And here's the key. The more we think about everything that happens during the day an opportunity for joyful language interactivity, we are preparing our children print and for reading and for writing. There is no wall between oral language and print and reading and writing. It's all the same brain. Writing obviously has some fine motor skills also, but you are um, of auditory networks, visual networks, cognitive reasoning networks, when you speak, those become words that you can recognize when you start to sound them out or see them as sight words. you read, you start to

You need those sounds, 'cause every time you chant, you're using sounds, right? Uh, y- the best way to develop phonemes is to sing and chant them without s- saying that's what you're doing. You're just singing and chanting because it's joyful, And, and then that's how they're gonna learn all these sounds. if you wish, there's nothing wrong with becoming familiar with the 44 phonemes and making sure your child, just casually listening, don't get carried away, right? Like, don't, don't panic. children develop on their own timeline, you can be aware the sounds, and you can change your fun engagement.

Let's say your child, um, is learning Rs, or you notice that the Rs and Ws are a little mixed

Erin: It's common

Eric: Uh, very common, but you could have a, a fun song. Red roses under our noses. Red roses in lovely lines. Red roses under our noses. Rocking red roses in the summertime. maybe they'll sing that with you, but more likely, if you leave a word out, they'll sing it with you.

So I'll say red, you say roses. Are you ready? Red-

Erin: Roses,

Eric: Under our

Erin: noses,

Eric: bed

Erin: roses

Eric: in lovely lines. know, but it became fun, didn't it? The moment it became interactive, it became fun. Now, asking a child to memorize that whole song is impossible, right? Uh, well, it depends. Maybe some it's fine. Um, but if you ask them to go back and forth with you, they'll do that, and maybe it's just one word, roses. But what you're doing is you're celebrating these sounds, and you can make up these songs on the fly. and the more you sing them, speak them back and forth, the more your children are developing the phonemes, the phonemic awareness. That is one of the foundations reading instruction, right? It's a building block, and it's just not gonna happen on a screen. Why? Because... And, and so then the question becomes why. Because there's no human interactivity

Erin: I was gonna, uh, you read my mind. I was about to ask you what is the difference between a child listening to that song and hearing it from you as a family member?

Eric: The difference is b- is everything, right? Without it being a loving caregiver, it could be, the parent, could be a grandparent, be a neighbor, could be community member, could be your teacher, parapro, person who works in the lunchroom It's human. Reading is a f- learning to read is a fundamentally human activity. Uh, an acronym to help people remember, and this is what Dr. Gina and I in the book. So we came up with this acronym HERO because we really want to become reading heroes for our children and for other children, too. uh, you can just use the H, the E, the R and the O to help you remember. So the H is for human, right?

That's how it begins. Uh, be a reading hero, uh, it has to be deeply human. The E is engaging, that could be all the things we spoke of from call and response, but also simple movements, right?

Mm-hmm

haven't talked about that very much, but when Pete the Cat is walking down the street, right, I have the kids start to walk. We want to connect words to movement. This also creates engagement. So you have simple movement. You have call and response. You have repetition. Those are the three primaries. There are others as well, and you just come up with your own combination of these, and it's very fun. the R is for recurring, and that we kind of touched on. The best way to think of recurring is routines, but you can also have recurring by just immersing them in certain, uh, engagement, interactive language that comes up in different circumstances, and these are best known as, like, running jokes.

Mm-hmm.

all of a sudden, the joke appears here and here. Now, sometimes jokes are consistent, like with my son and I, uh, when he's eating, and I-- we talk about gently returning our attention, and he's like, "I've got it," and gets up and starts dancing. So that is a situation joke, but there are also just recurring language plays that come up based on opportunity. But a lot of times R is routine. And then the O is objective driven. So, uh, you know, you're a former educator. Uh, so teachers, y-you know, they leave and live and breathe objectives, right? You, you do things for a reason, which can be measured, which can be assessed. um, we can be in-- another way of thinking of objective driven is intentional, right? We have all this fun with words and with print, we can be intentional about it, and this could be sim-as simple as understanding that there are phonemes, right? These are basic sounds, and we're just gonna play with sounds with our s- with our babies. Right? The minute that, in the womb even.

Erin: Yeah

Eric: You know? We play with these sounds. we sing songs to them, with them. with my, with Sammy, put him on my shoulder and, you know, he'd burp them and I like to walk around the house with you. I like to walk around the house with you. It's a super duper groovy thing to do. Walk around the house with you. And then you can just change. You wanna create songs where you can just change words out. So now as I like to, uh, shake around the house with you, or I like to... Well, don't shake your baby.

Erin: Yeah. I know what you meant. A gent- a gentle wiggle.

Eric: Yeah, or bounce around the house

Erin: Yeah

Eric: The idea is I can think about different sounds I want him to learn.

Erin: Mm-hmm

Eric: want him to learn the Z sound. I want to zip and zap around with you. And so you can be intentional. there, that's a nice way to remember it. Uh, we, we can be reading heroes for our students, for our children. We can be, we can understand it's deeply human, that it's engaging, that it's recurring, and that we can be objective given or maybe easier to remember intentional.

Erin: Yeah, I, I appreciate that so much, especially from a family perspective. I think it makes it, you know, more tangible for families, and especially the way you broke down, like, objective. We think of objectives as teachers, but something as simple as I'm gonna teach my baby different movements or use different, different voices with them i- in the example you gave is just great.

I'm gonna show one example from... Again, this is my home version of this. So when you talked about movement, this is predictive because every page Pete loses a button, right? And s- I think what my sons enjoyed most about this book was I came up with, I would go pop, and then I would trace this with my finger, and I'd go boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing.

And they just, like, loved that. Pop, boing, boing, boing, boing. And they expected it on each, page. And my sons are one, and th- 20 months, and, and three, so again, to your point about babies, even really young children can enjoy this. And one more thing that I definitely wanna hear your perspective of is I think in addition to the music and movement, the rhythm, there are social emotional learning opportunities in these books as well.

Certainly The Poop Song, you know, it's about normalizing poop. I've enjoyed normalizing it. I've gotten to say poop a bunch of times on this podcast episode. But even, like, built into Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, right? There's the, "But do we cry? Goodness, no. Buttons come and buttons go," and at the end there's this line of, "I think it just co- goes to show that stuff will come and stuff will go."

Like, what a great message for children

Eric: And adults,

Erin: And adults, yeah.

Eric: these,

Erin: those of us reading to children

Eric: um, resiliency and positivity, uh, awareness or mindfulness are wonderful qualities we practice, right? I mean, that's, the incredible thing is we can cultivate these characteristics in ourselves, and we can help our family members, and if we're teachers, we can help our students. But they're not natural, right? Our, our natural state is to panic, right? And we're, we're built to be fearful, right, because our ancestors that perceived the rock a lion survived because it's better to err on the side of it's a lion. So we're all walking around perceiving things as lions, and a lot of this also has to do with social engagement, where we're concerned about our social engagements, and we're afraid we may have people.

And so what do our minds do? We go over things and over things, and this is being a person, right? But so we have to learn how to cultivate, a spirit of resiliency, right? You keep going. keep trying, and because this is the key to success in many ways, adaptive resiliency. Positivity also is something we work on, is mindfulness, and I guess I would like to talk about that real quick in a mo- in a moment if that's okay because

Erin: Oh, yeah

Eric: creating a program, a mindfulness program for people.

Erin: Oh, amazing

Eric: yeah, so all of my books are designed to incorporate these messages in, so that it's the type of thing where we're always just, opportunity we use as an opportunity to, learn these characteristics. Uh, w- so when my son starts dancing, and I'm reminding him that we wanna focus on eating, doesn't end there. I will then say to him, I say, "You know, there's nothing wrong with our minds jumping here and there. What we have to learn to do is gently bring our attention back. We have to gently return it." So there's no shame, no force, he's, look at me, and then he'll bring his attention back. And this is, as you know, 'cause we're bringing up focusing at dinner and stuff, this is gonna happen, Every meal, every day, three meals, every time you eat together, here's an opportunity to teach an attention skill, but we need to teach it a manner that i- Will benefit them, right? Force doesn't work. People try and force themselves to pay attention, work so well, does it? we can gently return our attention, it's gonna drift again, and we can gently bring it back. these are the type of messages that w- I practice at home, m- my wife and I with our son, I try to build into the books, all of my books. And, um, I'm also recently become so interested in attention and resiliency and positivity that I've... new project is, and I've been on it, working on this for a few years now, taking the subject of mindfulness, which is a form of attention training that develops awareness, and I'm looking at it, and it can be so overwhelming and so complicated. And I'm taking my skills as an early childhood educator and an author of children's books and saying, "Can I simplify this? we make this easier? Can we make it as simple as listening to one meditation song a day?"

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So that's the program. It should be out, I hope, in a year, but I've been saying that for a while. And,

Erin: just let me know when it is out, and I'd love to have you back on, and we can talk about it and share about it with our audience because I'm, I, I am personally very interested in mindfulness for young children as, as well, as I have, uh, three children, and it's something that, that we practice. But I, I love hearing about that

Eric: Wonderful. And this approach is, it's har- we can't teach mindfulness to children unless we practice it ourselves, right? So it, it's actually something that the parents and children do together

Erin: Together. Yeah, and modeling it. You know, when you were talking, it brought back this memory for me. So I used to observe teachers in a practicum course that I taught at, uh, the George Washington University, and I was observing this teacher once, and he had a lesson, and he started rambling a little bit, got off topic, and then he did this thing.

And I don't, I can't tell you what his lesson was about, but I can remember this moment. He go- he put his head, ha- finger to his temple, and he said, "Train of thought, bring it back," and he made a circle and got back to the point. And I thought how powerful that was that he did that for the students that he was teaching the lesson to because it modeled for them.

And I don't think he knew he was doing this, but it modeled for them a technique of, look, to your point, it's okay if your mind wanders. Know how to, know when it's happening and how to bring it back, and it was su- such a powerful learning moment

Eric: It really is because so many of, of us, so many people use force. They use things like force your attention back or shame yourself for your mind wandering, doesn't... It, it's cruel, and it doesn't work. But the interesting thing is we can gently direct our attention back, and the even more exciting part of this is we can practice that

Erin: Mm-hmm.

Eric: and, and actually become quite skilled at it.

Erin: Yeah, and I think, yeah, for his students, they saw... He didn't even know he was doing that, but for them it, it modeled for them it's okay if your mind wanders. Note, recognize it, train of thought, bring it back

Eric: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And we can put those lessons into poems and into songs, including aspects that you practice in set-aside meditations, or just wherever you are, whatever you're doing, gently bringing your attention back, learning that skill. and this is needed now, of course, more than ever because electronic devices are designed to capture your attention, and we need skills deal the power these devices

Yeah.

Erin: So I wanna ask, you know, as an ending thought, if there's one takeaway that you want families and educators to hear from you today, what is it, and what kind of excites you and keeps you inspired to do this work?

Eric: I think my, my hope would be that an intuition that people already had, which is the more fun you have with language, the more you're talking and singing together, the more you are enjoying reading together, the more you are helping your students, that there is no ceiling here, right? You ... There is no, "Oh, that's too silly," or, "That's too much engagement," or, "That's too much talking." This is what they need. to realize something people have probably already intuitively starting to realize, like, we're going to start doing more of this, and we're, we're gonna get sillier, and we're gonna have more fun, this is gonna be the new normal, right? We're gonna optimize these moments of human interactivity.

So I hope that's, that is a takeaway, that there, it matters. The things we do in the Pete the Cat books, the goodness know, the movement, we can do this all the time, right? It's not meant to be isolated to one picture book. It's just meant to model what we can do. I also would add, uh, some of just the basic kind of, kind of the schemata, the thought that we can become reading heroes, right?

As we understand that learning to read and language acquisition for young children is deeply human, uh, engaging. It's recurring, so we can build it into our routines, we can do all this intentionally. And the outcome of this efforts day after day i- is joy, interaction, more connection between families. Uh, for teachers, it will, not only will it build a reading foundation and practice the skills that are being developed in reading curriculum, things like understanding phonemes and, and components of, uh, uh, phonetics and phonics, also make behavior management easier.

Mm-hmm.

You will go home with more energy, right?

The kids will come in singing your rule and expectation songs. It is just one positive after another, and it is all within our reach.

Erin: Yeah. Thank you, Eric. I, I hope for those listening, like here's the tagline that I take from that is joyful language activities. So, and, and to your point, there's no ceiling for it, and I think if you're not used to doing this, it might feel like effort in the beginning, but to your point, what I believe that what you will find if you go in with the mantra of joyful language activities, that all of the routines in your day can become more seamless and more fun

So thank you so much, Eric. I always end with this question. It's the hard one. What does reading inspire for you?

Eric: Reading, um, inspires ideas. inspires hopes. Um, it, it helps me connect different parts of my, my life and my imagination. Um, and it's also very deeply relaxing

Erin: Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much, Eric. It's been such a joy having you talk to us about the joy of reading and your books. And if you're listening and something resonated with you, please share this episode with someone you love. Thank you

Speaker 17: Thank you for listening to Reading Inspires by Reading Is Fundamental. I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, meaningful connections, and a renewed love of reading. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a fellow literacy champion, and join us next time as we continue exploring what reading inspires.