Season 5, Episode 4: Take a look, a picture book!

September 12, 2025

Daniel interviews local author Sarah Jane Crespo about her new children's picture book The Sloth Moth.

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[music: "Wichita Wind" by Shoeshine Blue]

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover Hello and welcome to another episode of Read Return Repeat. I'm inspiration librarian Daniel Pewewardy. We are at the end of summer. I want to give a big shoutout to youth services at Wichita Public Library. I was just told recently that this was the biggest turnout they've had for summer reading ever. And that's awesome. Shoutout to Erin and all the youth services librarians and everybody for making that a possibility.

We're wrapping up summer. We did adult reading. I actually completed it, Kyle. I did it. I did the reading challenge this year. It was pretty -- I read, like 2 or 3 books, but a lot of activities, so that was nice. I hope... I don't know who's going to win the grand prize. I don't know if I'm eligible for the LEGO set that they're giving away. I feel like I'm not. I feel like I'm not eligible. But be cool if I won still.

So to tie in with this episode, that's why the reason I bring it up is because we're interviewing I think this might be our first, like, youth, like, young fiction writer that we're interviewing, picture book writer. Today on this episode, we have Sarah Jane Crespo, author of The Sloth Moth. She is a local author. You might know her from KMUW. Now she works for the Kansas Health Foundation and does a lot of like writing for them. Really awesome interview. So let's go ahead and jump into it and we'll talk to Sarah about The Sloth Moth. Here we go.

Daniel Pewewardy Welcome. And I'm here today with Sarah Jane Crespo. She, you might know her from her days at KMUW, but now she's an author, and she's here to talk to us about The Sloth Moth.

Sarah Jane Crespo Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. Thanks for being on the show. Go ahead and tell us a little about yourself, and for those at home that might not know you.

Sarah Jane Crespo Well, I am a Wichitan, born and raised here. I've been here pretty much my whole life and went to Wichita State University. Always loved writing. And I, in college, pursued a communications print journalism degree because it was sort of like the safe route to go rather than just being like, I'm going to be an author.

So I decided to, to do journalism. Coming out of the Elliott School at Wichita State, I went to work at Wichita Magazine at the time. And worked there until with the recession the magazine folded, but that was a really fun time getting to write for the magazine.

Daniel Pewewardy That's really... we actually had, Laurie Dove, who was on this, who also wrote a book, and she was, when I went to work at F5 in college -- I worked for F5 for a bit, and I was like, I actually like doing that a lot. I was like the movie review guy.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. So, I kind of remember Wichita Magazine, though, yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, it was a good one, and it was bought by another publisher. So it sort of like... it was the Wichita Register. When I first worked there, it was the Wichita Register. Was bought by another publisher, it became Wichita Magazine, and then it fizzled out, and then someone else took it up, and I wrote the cover features for them for a period of a couple of years, and then it fizzled out. And so I've written for three different iterations of Wichita Magazine.

Daniel Pewewardy It's crazy how print publications move around.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy So, now, like, we just came out with The Sloth Moth and I guess my main question like, about it was like, what made you want to write a children's book?

Sarah Jane Crespo Well, having a child was probably the biggest reason. So I... I'll give you the slightly longer version of the story. I, for a period of time, worked on a project called One Small Step through StoryCorps, and we can talk more about that. But in the process of that project, I kept having all of this inspiration around bridging divides. And I had a friend encourage me to make that into a nonfiction book proposal and try to publish sort of like the how to... how to bridge divides, how to do civic healing. And so I did that and got a literary agent who was representing me to write this nonfiction book. She often sells picture books as well.

And so while she was representing me trying to get this nonfiction book sold, she was sort of... we ended up talking quite a bit about children's picture books, and I had these ideas that were coming to me, and I would, like, bounce them off of her. And she was only representing me for this one book proposal, not representing me as an author. It was just this book. And the book didn't sell. So that relationship dissolved. So then I was free. But I had all of this, like, learning from her about children's book writing.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And also kind of an idea that doing that through a traditional publisher might not be as fun. You know, never say never, but I don't think that I will try to go the traditional route with the children's picture books. You lose all of the control and you're just beholden to their timeline. And there are just so many reasons why it is. It depends on what you want. It ended up not being something that I wanted enough to even to try to, to pitch it.

Daniel Pewewardy So I didn't know that.

So like, let's talk about that for a second. And so you were like, I'm not going to get send this out to publishers. I want to do it myself. So like... and then at some point, like, was there like a mechanism for... there's like pathways for self-publishing I know a little bit about. And so like, you know, I think like, I don't think a lot of people know is like, this is just common now. And like, especially like it makes sense for the children's books. So like, I love the illustrations. And it was that kind of a fun process and how did you go about like finding an illustrator for them?

Sarah Jane Crespo Oh, that was so much fun. So I, when I determined that this was the book that I wanted to start off with, and I had written the, the book itself, then I just kind of went hunting for someone who would illustrate in the style that I kind of envisioned for the project. And so there are lots of, platforms online that you can find people to do contract work of different types, like Fiverr.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And that was actually where I initially ran into the woman who became my illustrator. And we talked and I kind of gave her the idea for my vision. And then we started working together on, like, character sketches and -- well, she sketched. I gave feedback, she sketched. And then it became the... she was able to, like, flesh out the characters and then page by page, she sort of it was a really, really fun process of like seeing how she blocked out the illustrations with each page of the story.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And then, really brought it to life, but it was really a very hands-on process of feedback between us and a lot of conversation.

Daniel Pewewardy That's really cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo It was fun.

Daniel Pewewardy And yeah, like, yeah, I'm actually, like, interested in that because I kind of want to write a comic book and I'm like, oh, how does this work? And so that's cool to hear that that's an avenue to go.

So like the book, it's like... I actually read it and this is really funny -- so I read the book and like, I, I've been, I read, I can't... K.C. something's How to Keep House While Drowning and, like, I actually liked the book because The Sloth Moth is kind of like about responsibility and helping teach kids responsibility and, like, kind of gamifying it. So I guess that was like, that was like my question about is kind of like, is this something like, like I recently started when I like, my whole problem was like when I have to hang up shirts, like my basket's full. So like, I start a timer and like, I go, ten minutes, let's see how many I can get done. And so like, it's like I have like, I guess I that's what I liked about your book was like, I like I felt like, oh, I could have probably used this as a kid. And so like The Sloth Moth, was this something that you use with your own kid or like?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, it is and it worked really well with him. And so it turned into a story. But where like the, the origin of the idea came from is that I, I read a book called Hunt, Gather, Parent, which I am just... I'm fairly obsessed with this book. It is essentially indigenous wisdom applied to parenting.

Daniel Pewewardy Oh, cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo It's a fantastic parenting book. It's like, it's the one, in my opinion. And a lot of it is about instead of demanding and like, bossing your kid around and like, being the authority, it's finding other ways to, like, to work together toward the things that the family needs. Because you're a member of the family just like me, you know, like we, we got to do this together. And like, in our, like, modern age, children get the idea that their job is to sit and watch TV or to play with their toys or to at least be out of mom and dad's hair, like that's their job.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo We tell them that in all the little ways of, like, you know, you're doing the chore wrong. Go, go away and play with your toys. You know, we the way that we communicate with them isn't, you know, we don't necessarily like, say it like that, but we communicate it to them in big and small ways when they're young and when what they want to do is help. And then later they don't want to help.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Like wonder why? So, so anyway, there are a lot of really actionable ideas in that book for how to, to get your child to feel like a member of the family that has a job to do and, and that, you know, they're a valuable part of getting whatever the family needs on a daily basis.

Daniel Pewewardy That, that yeah, I didn't yeah, that, that makes sense.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah, that's really... I have to check it out. Like you said, like I just kind of... you said like there's an indigenous component to this. And like, I grew up like, I'm Native on my dad's side, so I kind of, like, grew up with a little bit of that. And it's like my first thought is like, all I... we, we didn't have a Sloth Moth, but we have "that man." And I was like, if you don't stop acting up, that man's going to get you. And my auntie would just, like, point, like we'd be like, out in public.

Sarah Jane Crespo "That man."

Daniel Pewewardy That man. It's like, I got to act right. It was like Sloth Moth was way less traumatizing than that.

Sarah Jane Crespo So yeah, you know, that was kind of... so one of the things in that story is that, what parents often do nowadays in Western culture is they become the bad guy to their child.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo So like when, when daddy comes and yells at you, it's scary. You don't want daddy coming to yell at you.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo You know, like so, so that becomes like a fearful thing. And the alternative is that there's some other scary thing, but that we are always together. You and I are always a unit, you know?

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Kid and parents, they get to be good for always. So and the way they do that and actually in that book it talks about -- I think it's an Inuit community that tells like these spooky stories because how are you going to keep your child safe when like they can walk out the, the igloo and, like, fall in the ice and die? They come up with a story of like some a monster in the ice or whatever. And I mean, yes, they're, they're telling their kid a story, but they get to not be the bad guy then.

Daniel Pewewardy I yeah, I'm a very strong component of this because it's like, I know like the indigenous child-rearing concept for a lot of tribes is like, we spoil the kids and then we scare the... we scare, like we scare them.

Sarah Jane Crespo Scare the something out of them.

Daniel Pewewardy But the thing -- yeah, we scare that something out of them. And like, the whole idea is like, it's this imaginary thing is kind of representing the cruelty of the world that they face. So it's like and it's preparing them like and like this is like... whole TED Talks and articles about like indigenous child rearing being like, we probably should go back to this idea of like using ghost stories to help keep kids rather than like demyst... so that's like and so that's really cool. I didn't think of there's like an indigenous component to The Sloth Moth. And I was like, that's totally cool. That's really cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo So the Sloth Moth is like the monster, so to speak.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo That will come and make your mom move in slow motion --

[Daniel laughs]

Sarah Jane Crespo -- if you aren't being very helpful. So and also just the idea that things move quicker if we work together. Yes, literally can get more done and move on to the fun things in life if we work together. So it's a, it's both.

Daniel Pewewardy So, I don't know if you've had any critics, like if you've had anyone review the book, but I know you've done children's story times and I think, like when it comes to children's literature, who's the best critics for that? And so like, having read this to a few like groups of children now, like, what's been the response and like, yeah, I guess that's the question, how's...?

Sarah Jane Crespo Been really fun. I have really, really enjoyed doing story times. And I've done really small story times, and then I've done story times with 100 or more children. And what I've realized more than anything is that kids are fascinated by this, the slow motion kind of element to it.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And I'm a really animated storyteller. I read pretty dramatically. And I have realized that with the really little ones, I need to read a little, like a little less dramatically because it can be almost scary to them. But if they're a little older --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo You just go all in and, that's, those are kind of like the main takeaways that I have is to see how old the children are --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo -- and how much, how spooky The Sloth Moth can afford to be.

Daniel Pewewardy Because yeah, it could like honestly, like I can see The Sloth Moth being kind of terrifying depending on the age. It's like this, this imaginary creature is making my mom slow. Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo But it's also kind of fun, like kids like to play in slow motion, too. And one of the activities that I often have after a story time is I have little Sloth Moth cutouts that the kids can color.

Daniel Pewewardy Oh, cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo And then a hot glue gun, and I'll glue it onto a barrette and clip it to their head or to your head or whoever's head, and then whoever's got it on them has to move in slow motion, and it can become a really fun game.

Daniel Pewewardy Have any parents reached out about the book since then and like, thanked you or anything like that?

Sarah Jane Crespo I've had some really beautiful... yeah, I've had some really beautiful responses to the story and people who send me a picture of their child who had just like on their own, pulled it out to look at it, or who, like, I have someone who swears that The Sloth Moth is his daughter's favorite book, and they read it, like, every day. And I mean, that is...

Daniel Pewewardy That's awesome.

Sarah Jane Crespo There are no words for how, how affecting and beautiful that is as the person who wrote it, it's... yeah, no words. Next question.

Daniel Pewewardy So yeah. So you dedicated this book to your own little lion and I guess my next question is like, have you read the book to your son?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah. Yes, many times. And it was fun with him because we read it throughout the creation of the book. So like when it was illustrated, but just in black and white.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Even before that, when it was sort of like... my, so what I shared with the illustrator of like, I imagined, you know, like a close up of this and like, I tried to sort of draw them, which wasn't great. You know, like, so like...

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo But that paired with the words, he got it through all different versions of it.

Daniel Pewewardy Is like, how old or like, what's the age?

Sarah Jane Crespo He's eight now.

Daniel Pewewardy Okay, so he probably understands the concept that you wrote this and the thing that's...

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. And yeah, that's really cool. And, we'll go ahead and take a break here and we'll come back for act two. Thank you again for being with us today, Sarah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Thank you.

[music: "Wichita Wind" by Shoeshine Blue]

Voiceover Did you know you can check out more than just books and movies at your library? Over the past year, the Library of Things program has added many new and unique items for checkout. Keep your home safe with our radon detectors, or explore the night with our telescopes. For the little ones, STEAM to GO! activity kits are available in a wide variety of interests such as fossils, robotics, and engineering. All this and more can be found at wichitalibrary.org/things.

Daniel Pewewardy And we're back. And you're listening to Read Return Repeat. And I'm here with author of The Sloth Moth, Sarah Jane Crespo. So before the break, we kind of talked about your journey and publishing and I guess, like, talk about that a little bit more. So, like, from, like, you, like, decided to, like, go this route. So how does that happen from, like, writing until, like, getting the final package? If we can kind of elaborate a little bit more on that.

Sarah Jane Crespo Well, first of all, there are a lot of different paths that you could take, from, like the inception of the idea, which, you know, who knows how ideas come to people, to finding the time to sit down and write it, like that's a whole thing, just like creating it. But then I think what you're asking you about is, like, how to then make it --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Into a book.

Daniel Pewewardy But also, I guess, like the drafting of it. Like how many drafts did you write?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, a bunch.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And at the time, I still had my literary agent, so I showed her a bunch and she gave me feedback. And so I did have the advantage of getting to work with her in the really early days.

Daniel Pewewardy Was it always The Sloth Moth or was it...?

Sarah Jane Crespo It was always called The Sloth Moth.

Daniel Pewewardy Okay.

Sarah Jane Crespo I have other children's books that the titles have changed.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo That hopefully those will get to live in the future. But I think the biggest, like, light bulb moment for me with writing children's books -- because I've written lots of other formats and categories -- is that because it's a picture book, it's called a picture book, right? Like there are a lot there are pictures on every page.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo The pictures tell the story too. So you don't need as many words and you don't... you can afford for the picture to say the thing that your words would have said. So like my initial drafts had a lot more words in them because this is what's happening. But as I started to work with my illustrator, I was like, oh, I can actually eliminate this whole sentence because you see this happening right here. And so, like paring it down and paring it down because you let the, the illustrations kind of have their power and show the story wherever it is, and you have to like, just figure out where... like when a picture can say it better and when words can say it better.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. So I do have experience like writing screenplays and I know like when you write the action versus the dialog. And so like when you write a children's book, are you writing what the picture would be showing?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yes, originally I did. So originally it was this long -- I don't know how many words it was, but it was a lot longer because it described everything.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And then somewhere in the middle drafts, it was like a shorter, the word count actually wasn't shorter, but I had then separated and bracketed the things that were like going to be shown through the illustrations. That was just what I did. I'm not sure that's like best practice, but... and then eventually when there were illustrations, I could just delete those, those sentences and... and then even then, before I got to the final draft, I found I was able to just slice off a few more words here in a couple words here. And I do think the shorter....

Well, not always, but I think by and large the shorter the better with children's books.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo With picture books, at least because it just, it's able to just be a little punchier, almost like poetry, like it's more powerful when it is, just pared down to only the words that have to be there.

Daniel Pewewardy So I... yeah, I guess that's my next question is like, I've been on interview panels with, like, children's librarians. And I know that, like -- I don't work in children's services, but like, I know that there's all these literary, like, literacy like thresholds they have to meet and like requirements and stuff. So like when you write for children, are there like metrics that you have to like because you're not going to put like a five syllable word in there.

Sarah Jane Crespo Right.

Daniel Pewewardy And so it's like, is that like a, is there like some kind of standard of measure for that? Or like, is it just kind of like making sure you're writing at a certain grade level and stuff?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, I, I don't know if there's a standard measure for that. If there is, I --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo I would love to know. So, what I did was just I, I rolled it back and I do tend to like use the flowery language.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo So I did have to catch as I went through editing: "Oh, you know, this word that's, that's too advanced." And then think about communicating with my son and like, which words would he... which words would illustrate it best to him, whatever the thing is.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo He would use this word. Okay, I'm going to put that in here. You know, so I just kind of did it, sort of, sort of on the fly as I went through. But that probably, probably something exists because, you know, it is a science out there. I just kind of flew, flew around and did it.

Daniel Pewewardy And so like then we get to the distribution of the book. So like, did you like just go kind of through like this... I know there's like Amazon has a service and stuff. Did you like go through, like was it like, was there a company and people recommended or is it just kind of like --

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo You can do indie printing a variety of ways. The biggest one probably is Amazon KDP.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo But Ingram Spark has a print on demand, and it's the print on demand that has made everything possible for indie publishers.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo So Ingram can do hardcover. Amazon doesn't do hardcover books.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo So when I release the softcover, I'll probably use Amazon for that. But for hardcover I went through Ingram. And they're all different and they just kind of have their own little, little like hoops to jump through.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And requirements and things. But it's also not, it isn't like rocket science. It's not my favorite thing in the world.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo But you just kind of follow their format and in my case, I worked with my illustrator to get the right files --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo -- to where they needed to go.

Daniel Pewewardy I can't imagine, like, having to deal with like PDFs and stuff.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, I don't like it. It, it's the worst.

Daniel Pewewardy How many people worked on the book outside of you and the illustrator? Was there...?

Sarah Jane Crespo Counting my agent who gave me feedback initially, and then I also have a friend slash editor who has worked on it for me kind of here and there. Let's see, maybe under, under half a dozen, probably. Just a few people here and there.

Daniel Pewewardy That's so cool. Yeah. It's like, that's really cool because it's like, like I think about film and like how it's so hard to, like, make a movie, and it's like, I want, like, I keep writing films and I'm like, they're too long. I'm like, it's like, this is going to take a dozen people to make and stuff, and it's like, really cool when you can do like solo or at least a small group of people to make something happen. And I think it's yeah, I think it's really cool. I think we live in a democratized society where, like, things are more accessible and we could write our own books and we could make our own films and make our own music. And I think it's like, like this is like, you put this in the library. It's going to look like books that someone had to go through a rigorous, like publishing and like --

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy -- rejection and everything.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy So it's like at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how it got about. And it's, it's a very good quality. And so like, yeah. And I think that's really cool that you, you made it. And so like, I guess like, my next question would be like, so you have like this background working -- like you work in marketing now and then you worked at KMUW. So you've written a lot for adults. And like we've talked about it a little bit before, but like, do you like, do you want to do more writing or... you, you're, so like your next writing projects I think are children's picture books or are you looking at writing something more for like adults soon or anything?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, the next ones that you all will know about will continue to be children's picture books. Yes.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Other than maybe the odd short story here and there.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. Because you won an award for one of your short stories, like, like --

Sarah Jane Crespo A couple of years ago, yes. It was my first and last --

[both chuckle]

Sarah Jane Crespo -- because life has just been too crazy. I kept thinking, oh, I'll do some more of these. And then no, I haven't, but I'd still like to. It's really fun. I did not know how much I would enjoy writing a short story. I just thought, I don't know, I don't even know what possessed me, I was just like, I'm going to try this. And so I...

Daniel Pewewardy Because you're mostly reporting. So it's like, so is that your short story like your first foray into fiction?

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, it really was, yeah. Into writing a short story, yes. So the Kansas Authors Club has an annual award, like an annual contest, and, it just sort of... I don't even know, I can't remember where I even got the idea for The Spelling Bee, but I wrote a short story called The Spelling Bee, and just kind of threw it, threw it in there, and, but it's... I don't know, I don't know. It's was a fun process.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo I'd like to do more. I think the older I get, the more I am drawn to variety. And I just want to write all of the things.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo So I do write blogs for the Kansas Health Foundation website, and I, I enjoy, like essay writing. I'd like to write on culture. I have, you know, still that thought in the back of my head for this nonfiction about civic healing, which I think our country really needs.

Daniel Pewewardy I guess that would be my next question is like so working with One Small Step and like working at bridging divides and civic healing like, is that something you'd like to approach with children's literature? Like maybe --

Sarah Jane Crespo Oh. Yeah. You know what? I had this whole, idea for a children's series that would sort of be like, first reader-style books.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo That would help support, the notion of understanding others perspectives and empathy and just sort of building the... or like, helping children to acquire the tools for really good inter-relational conversation.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Through, it was going to be a little... well, maybe I'll do it someday and I could talk more about it then. But yeah, I mean the ideas are there. That's part of my problem is that ideas just are constantly hitting me and then I, I can't do them all.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah, that's, I'm in the same boat. So many good ideas, so many things I have plans and talked about and things. And like if I go to a party, I make so many like plans with people and like it's like, oh, I'm doing this now and stuff.

So like, you worked in public radio and, public radio, I guess my question about that is like having that experience, is there something that you brought from that into your writing?

Sarah Jane Crespo That's an interesting question. I think all of my, every day of life can be brought into your writing.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Just as long as you're open and learning, anything can become inspiration or fodder for whatever it is that you're going to do. I, I think I learned a lot of really good, I think I learned how to be discerning from my time at KMUW.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. [laughs]

Sarah Jane Crespo Just sort of like the way that they... and I didn't do reporting for them. I was like communications, engagement, other things. But, you know, you're kind of like, immersed in this, like, mentality.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo You're, you're sort of trained to take a thing and then look at it again and then look at it again and look at it again and decide whether or not it's, like, ready and worthy and the best that it can be. Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy Because of the like, because I feel like public radio listeners are kind of probably stauncher critics than like B98.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah. Yeah, probably.

Daniel Pewewardy And I guess like that was like a softball question because the follow-up is to ask you about what, like, we're kind of in this, like, I guess I don't... I think since we've written this, like, funding has been cut.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy From, public...

Sarah Jane Crespo Broadcasting.

Daniel Pewewardy Broadcasting. Which like coming back to the book like, children's literature and public broadcasting kind of have the same, like, component of, like, building these, like early, like building blocks for children as far as, like interactions go, like from literacy to like every emotional development and things and I guess like, this is kind of a heavy question but like, as a now someone that's been writing a books for children, like what do you think the country needs right now as far as like what how can we like with this, like with like the role public media or broadcasting has? Like how like what can we do like as a society to kind of help pick it up and stuff like if, if you have any opinions on that.

Sarah Jane Crespo I do. I think that what we have seen nationally for a couple of decades now is the like consolidation of power. And I'm not talking governmentally, although there's, that's a whole thing. But publishing houses that are, that are consolidating and like merging and then, you know, like --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo -- you end up with a situation where the path to the top is so, so narrow that the things that are chosen are, they're, they're great books or things that end up out there traditionally published.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo But there's so much left unsaid culturally.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And I think that that's kind of the same thing with, with like a situation like this where we are left without the, like, big resources to do the thing.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And so in the same way that an author who might want to, you know, publish a book but might not be able to or willing to go the traditional publishing route, they can do it themselves now because of the tools that are available to us. I think it's the same with this --

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo -- that now funding is being cut. People are like scattered. People are losing their jobs. There's a lot that's going down now. And at the same time, it can be an opportunity for us to create something new.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And to create something authentic that is not then like manipulated and driven by the, like, fat cats at the top of whatever we're talking about.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo No one made me go with a different illustrator. No one made me change the course of this story.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo No one did anything to this thing because no one else had anything to do with it. And that's the power that I had as an indie author.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And I think with public broadcasting, you know, funding being cut, it's a dangerous place to be. People may be losing their jobs in the future. Like hopefully not, hopefully we can prevent that.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo But we at the same time can see it as an opportunity to do more ourselves. I think people a lot of times feel like it's not on them to get up and act in the same way that a child feels like it's not on them to contribute to the family.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And what if we changed our attitudes about that? What if we all did something, the thing that we're drawn to, the thing that we're passionate about? I think we could hold it all if everyone was standing up and doing the thing that they feel, felt drawn to do and passionate about. Does this answer your question?

Daniel Pewewardy And that makes sense. Yeah, that's... my follow-up to that is like, are you are you are you a YouTube parent or like, are you like --

Sarah Jane Crespo A YouTube parent?

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. Like, is your child allowed to watch YouTube?

Sarah Jane Crespo He does sometimes.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. Okay. And so yeah, I guess because that's what I was thinking is like because a lot of like, what I'm seeing is like YouTube is picking up from like children's broadcasting and stuff and like... like Ms. Rachel, like, I'm not a parent, so I don't have... but I have friends that are parents and like, yeah, I'm like... and my understanding is like Ms. Rachel is wholesome. And then like, you have someone like Blippi and then you have like... and so like, I just was curious about your thoughts on that as like...

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, it's like the, the Wild West.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Like YouTube is just like indie publishing, you know, anybody can put stuff out there.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo And there's a lot of bad stuff out there in the sense of like, not high quality stuff. And there's stuff that is out there that is maybe not conducive to your child growing up with, like the way of looking at the world that is hopeful or compassionate and empathetic, like you have to really sift.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. So and I think like, yeah, it's like a lot more parental control because it's like with like PBS, you can control it. It's like...

Sarah Jane Crespo You can trust it.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo You can trust that it's like the this... because it is like the, it exists to serve the public. And that's not the case with, you know, all of YouTube. It's, they exist to try to turn their own profits, all of these independent people putting things out there.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah. Sorry, I did ramble about that.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah, no. It's a weird world we live in. But yeah, as much as it is scary, I think it's also an opportunity.

Daniel Pewewardy So, like, as, like... I guess my next question is like, how like, as a parent, like, how do you find, like, working and writing, like, where's your... how do you balance everything?

Sarah Jane Crespo I don't. I think, I think the idea of balance is really beautiful. People talk about it all the time. But honestly, that's just one more thing to fail at, in my opinion. And like, as a parent, I am, I'm a single mom. I have a full-time job. I have, you know, I have a lot of things pulling at me from different directions. I don't balance at all.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo What I do is what I have to do that day, and then when there's room, I can pursue something. And when there's not room, I don't. And there have been weeks and months where I wasn't able to promote this, and I wasn't able to work on the next one. And, you know, like you just do for me, that's what it has turned into.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo I, you know, like, it sounds good to pursue balance. It doesn't work for me, at least at this, in this season. I do daily the thing I've got to do. And sometimes it has nothing at all to do with my own art. It has to do with my son or whatever, whatever needs to be done that day. And life does make room. I think I, rather than thinking of it as a, as a daily balance, maybe the way to think of it is more like, a larger-scale balance of like the seasons of the year.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo This season I can work on this more, you know?

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah, I'm in the same boat. It's like there's stuff I want to get done, and it's like, I keep, I'll put it off and put it off. And then like, one day I'll just, like, hammer everything out.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy That's like then I just go back to just, like, existing.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy It's like and like, I don't need to I, I've come to terms with, like, I don't need to improve this because I'm succeeding in my life. I'm not letting anyone down, I'm not letting myself down.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy And so it's like, I think that's just like surrendering to the chaos of the world.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy Is there, so I'm assuming we're going to see more little lion adventures in the future?

Sarah Jane Crespo That's the plan.

Daniel Pewewardy Oh, cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy But no rush. [laughs]

Sarah Jane Crespo No, I'm not announcing anything yet.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah, but... and, we're going to wrap it up here. Normally when we wrap up, we just asked the, like, the person we're interviewing what they're reading. And if you have any, like, inspirations, recommendations? Three books.

Sarah Jane Crespo Sure.

Daniel Pewewardy Yeah, go ahead.

Sarah Jane Crespo Well, I could talk about three parenting books.

Daniel Pewewardy That's great. Yeah. Because it's like, yeah, I'm sure our listeners would love to hear that. So.

Sarah Jane Crespo Well, the one that I am reading now, I'm almost finished with is called The Whole-Brain Child. It was really good. I can't think of the author off the top of my head. But that one. And then The Anxious Generation.

Daniel Pewewardy I heard, we've had people come to the library for that one. That's, yeah.

Sarah Jane Crespo It's great. I mean, it's terrifying. It's horrible. But it's also really, really good information. And it, it gives you a good plan. So the idea essentially with that one is that we overprotect children physically and we under-protect them digitally.

Daniel Pewewardy Yes.

Sarah Jane Crespo And so we should flip it a little bit. And it gives you a lot of really good actionable ideas for that.

Daniel Pewewardy That's, that's cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo And that one's Jonathan Haidt.

Daniel Pewewardy Awesome.

Sarah Jane Crespo And then, Michaeleen Doucleff: Hunt, Gather, Parent.

Daniel Pewewardy Cool.

Sarah Jane Crespo I always have to mention that one.

Daniel Pewewardy That, those are sounds like some solid parenting reads. And definitely come check them out at the Library if you get a chance, because I think we have a few, but we have all three of those, I believe, so. And we also have The Sloth Moth by Sarah Jane Crespo. So come check it out. And yeah. And check it out at the Library. I think Watermark sells it, and it's available online. And so thank you for joining us on Read Return Repeat. It was a pleasure interviewing you. And good luck with all that you're doing and balancing and not balancing.

Sarah Jane Crespo [laughs] Thank you.

Daniel Pewewardy Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Jane Crespo Appreciate it.

[music: "Wichita Wind" by Shoeshine Blue]

Voiceover Looking for an easy way to keep track of your ReadICT challenge progress? Check out the Beanstack app. With Beanstack, you can participate in library reading challenges, log reading activities, and even win prizes. You can access the app either through the Apple or Google Play stores or on a desktop computer by visiting wichitalibrary.beanstack.org. If you are participating in the ReadICT challenge, every month you log a book, you will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a cool bookish-themed prize. For more information on Beanstack, visit wichitalibrary.org/beanstack.

[music: "Wichita Wind" by Shoeshine Blue]

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover Awesome. That was so awesome interviewing Sarah. Definitely she had some good reading recommendations. Even though I'm not a parent, I kind of want to read the, Hunt Gather Parent book that she mentioned. And make sure that, like, read The Sloth Moth. It's available at bookstores, you can get it at the Library. You can actually check out a copy here. And that was really, again, awesome. I like doing in-person interviews and hopefully we can do some more.

I was talking to Kyle, I was talking to you earlier about, like, I want to do the next one. I can't announce who we're having on the next show, but it's a big name and I'm, like, almost tempted to drive to Colorado so we can interview that person. I can't wait, I don't know if I can announce it. There's probably no rule, but just until it happens, I'm not going to announce it. But check out the next episode. But again, like this was a fun episode.

Thank you everyone for listening. Make sure that you check the show notes. We'll have those reading recommendations in there and check us out. Like, if you liked this podcast, you can continue to listen. You can subscribe to us on Spotify or YouTube or Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like it, give us a review and let us know. And also tell your friends.

This has been a Wichita Public Library production. Big shoutout to Sarah Jane Crespo for being our guest today. Shoutout to the podcast team: Greg, Jenny, Ian and Kyle, of course, who has helped painstakingly put the show together. All the, everyone does a great job. Check us out wherever you listen to podcasts. And thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Read Return Repeat.

[music: "Wichita Wind" by Shoeshine Blue]