The Reading Culture

Three years strong, y’all! We’re back with our favorite tradition: The Reading Culture Yearbook.  As we close out 2025, we’ve gathered superlatives and stories that celebrate some of the memorable authors who joined us on the show this year.  This year’s edition features awards such as “Most Revolutionary,” “Grandma’s Hands,” “Scariest Story,” and, of course, “Best Reading Advice.”  I’m also sayin...

“When we are making books, we are making little homes for our readers that they can return to hopefully again and again and again, just as we return to books and find a sense of home, we return to the person we once were, when we were reading that book.” — Sophie Blackall Home. It’s something we spend our whole lives building and rebuilding. Sometimes it’s made of walls and windows. Others, it’s m...

“The library is where I felt, I'm safe here . I have friends in Encyclopedia Brown, Junie B. Jones, Amelia Bedelia, Stanley Yelnats, and all these various characters. I think that's the beauty. That's the sanctuary, the sacredness of that physical space.” – Mychal Threets Mychal Threets grew up among the stacks and, from a young age, experienced the magic and shelter of the library. Today, he is a...

“It's important that my perspective stays flexible because my perspective could need updating, it could need to be changed based on new information.” — Nic Stone Nic Stone isn’t interested in staying in her lane.  A #1 New York Times bestselling author, her young adult novels— Dear Martin , Chaos Theory , and Clean Getaway —explore nuances of racism, power, and mental illness with clarity and comp...

“It’s that old expression that I love, which is ‘wherever you go, there you are.’ So you never really get out of the limbo, because the limbo is you.” — Erin Entrada Kelly There are seasons when life slows down, even as our minds continue to race. When we find ourselves caught somewhere between motion and stillness, haunted by what came before and reaching for what’s next.  That tension has become...

“This is what awe always does: it’s the zoom out. All of a sudden, you can see how tiny and insignificant you are, and you plug into that bigger thing” - Kate DiCamillo When was the last time you were so captivated by the beauty of the world around you that it stopped you in your tracks? Kate DiCamillo intentionally has those moments daily. In a world that can feel dark and hopeless, she maintains...

"I don’t want to be whatever version of masculinity y’all keep telling me I have to be. Why are all the benchmarks violent and aggressive? I don’t wanna do it. I’m not interested” — Jason Reynolds We all inherit scripts about who we’re supposed to be. For boys, they often center on toughness, aggression, and hiding their emotions. Jason Reynolds has spent his life questioning those scripts, carvin...

“When you're a kid, you have so little control over things. To be the big entity controlling the smaller entity, whether it's dolls or [toy] soldiers or whatever it is, they do what you tell them to do. They become the story you are making.” — Brian Selznick We all want to feel in control, mold our lives and experiences, and shape the world into something we can hold. But control is slippery; one...

”Why are some people treated differently? Why are some people chosen ones for no particular reason? And why do some people get to have that extra shine?” — Victoria Aveyard Unfairness is a pervasive theme in a lot of fantasy fiction. With battles between good and evil dominating title after title, these tales appear to have a tight grasp on fairness and justice. But for Victoria Aveyard, the world...

“Whenever I think of people who have gone through something, I'm always like, but they were human before this. Before they were monsters, they were human. Before they were zombies, they were human.” — Tiffany D. Jackson Some of the most unsettling monsters don’t come from nightmares or ghost stories. They walk among us in daylight, smiling widely and blending in. They can be shaped by our environm...

“There were kind of always like two simultaneous stories happening with my coming out. One was the realization and breaking through some of that denial and repression, seeing kind of what was right there in front of me, and I gave that story to Imogen.” – Becky Albertalli What if there were two stories running through your life: the one you’re telling the world, and the one you haven’t even admitt...

This week, we revisit our episode with Kwame Alexander while we take a quick summer break! Kwame Alexander recently interviewed the esteemed and now former Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, for the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Philadelphia. They talked about the power of poetry, the role of libraries in creating access and imagination, how Dr. Hayden remains hopeful and p...

"We all need to have radical hope. I have my really hopeless days too, but… it’s such a privilege to get to live and to survive. Our job is to live, and I think that’s a really amazing thing.” - Jasmine Warga We all want to make the most of our time here. Not just survive, but dream big and live fully. For Jasmine Warga, that means carrying forward the strength of those before her while creating s...

“Those moments of connection when you can have them with people who seem so different from you on the outside, I really do think that it braids a level of connectiveness and empathy, and it is much harder to harden your heart.” — Gayle Forman What does it mean to rise to the occasion, not once, but over and over again? Sometimes it means reckoning with grief. Other times it means stumbling forward...

“As my own mother is aging, she's telling me … before I take this to my grave, here is something you should know. So the secrets are coming out. And as more and more secrets are revealed, I'm learning more about myself.” - Ibi Zoboi  Ibi Zoboi writes to remember—her own story, her family’s legacy, and the long history of migration, myth, and memory that shaped them both. For Ibi, storytelling is a...

“I tell kids that books are not there to torment you. The author has to get you in the first ten pages. If they do not, they fail, because a book is like a lawnmower—you pull it, and either it starts or it doesn't start.” –Soman Chainai Soman Chainani wants reading to feel irresistible. The bestselling author of "The School for Good and Evil," series and the recently released graphic novel, "Coven...

"I think all of us had the experience after reading the book of looking in maybe our grandparents' wardrobe, our parents' wardrobe, and like knocking on the back of the wardrobe and being like, maybe this is my time. Maybe they're gonna call me in here." — Mychal Threets For this week’s episode, we are testing out a slightly different format, something we have named a “Mixtape” episode. Rather tha...

“And I think that’s what reading is… It’s a personal interpretation of the story, and it may not be the same as somebody else's. That’s the whole idea of a good teacher. There should be different interpretations, and sometimes a student will come up with something that I never thought of.” —Sharon M. Draper   Give a story to twenty kids, and you might get twenty different takeaways. Some will catc...

"It's very rare for a person to just be one thing. Most issues, most things that matter, are not so black and white." – Debbie Levy We all want to believe in heroes and villains, right and wrong, and clear-cut answers. But history and life are rarely that simple. Debbie Levy has spent her career exploring the gray areas, challenging readers to see multiple perspectives and embrace complexity.  A f...

“I lean on my community. I lean on the power of the pen. I lean on remembering who my ancestors are and what they endured, the colonization that they survived in the Americas, I think, ‘we've been here before, and the lineage from which I come is one that is powerful and resistant.’ I would be dishonoring that legacy and that lineage if I didn't step up in this moment.” — Aida Salazar Aida Salazar...

“Their white classmates can read Harry Potter and relate to going to Hogwarts and flying on brooms. But a Black kid can't aspire to go to Paris, which can actually happen.” – Jerry Craft Growing up, Jerry Craft did not enjoy reading. He says he simply never encountered a children's book that intrigued him enough or felt right. But Jerry loves defying expectations, and so naturally, the boy who rar...

“For every child that thinks something is wrong with them, my books are saying, ‘be you, even if others can’t see you. The people who don’t see your beauty, see your glory–they have a problem. Something is wrong with their eyes, their soul.’” – Jewell Parker Rhodes Raised mainly by her grandmother on a steady diet of porch stories (and lots of bread), Jewell Parker Rhodes spent decades writing for...

“Every time I read “Big” at a school, obviously I’m there to speak to kids about the story, and I hope they’re all connecting with it, but at every single reading there is always an adult woman that comes to me and says, this is my story, I needed this when I was young. And I just wish we all knew that we were all going through the same thing.” -Vashti Harrison Vashti Harrison burst onto the child...

“Life is a wheel and humanity has been through countless cycles of ups and downs. The things that seem so dire now won't be this dire forever. Eventually, there is an upswing. I always needed that reminder, and it made me think that my young readers need that reminder as well.” - Yamile Saied Mendez With a storytelling style that radiates warmth and resilience, Yamile Saed Méndez’s work reflects t...

It’s official. Two years in a row makes it a tradition.  The Reading Culture Yearbook is here.  It’s the year-end celebratory episode where we look back and highlight some of our favorite moments in the form of awarding superlatives. Or, as we dubbed them last year and seemingly forgot, “The Readies.” This year’s edition features awards such as “Best [Not] Meet Cute,” the “Owning It Award,” the “M...