She Moved to Ukraine and Brought Books

How one woman is sharing children's literature during a war

Today’s episode began as a conversation for More to Say, but the story is so extraordinary we wanted more people to hear it. Gwyn Ridenhour, like many of us, watched in horror as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turned into a full-scale land war. She decided to act in a very specific way: by getting books in the hands of teachers and children who are living through this war.

Gwyn moved to Ukraine and talked with Beth from Lviv about her experience, her project, and how we can all help.

Our More to Say listeners generously responded to this episode. We hope that the broader Pantsuit Politics community can be part of helping Gwyn make a Ukrainian bookmobile a reality.

Topics Discussed

• What drew Gwyn to Ukraine — and why she moved there during the war

• How Vinok Libraries works: sourcing books, shipping them to Ukraine, distributing to schools

• The language politics of children's books in Ukraine (Ukrainian, English, and the gap)

• Delivering books near the front line and what that looked like in person

• What $500 means to a school that's been bombed

• The bookmobile dream and how to support it

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Episode Resources

Matchbook Marketing

Vinok Libraries

Donate

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:02] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:18] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. This conversation started as an episode of More to Say just for our premium members, but we wanted more people to find Gwyn Ridenhour’s work, so here it is. You’ve probably felt that particular kind of helplessness that comes from caring about something enormous and not knowing what to do. Gwyn felt that, too, and then she moved to Ukraine to put books in the hands of children living through war. Her project, Vinok Libraries-- Vinok is the traditional Ukrainian flower wreath, is small and specific and quite extraordinary. She’s a former child librarian who now does marketing for independent bookstores, and one of her clients is our beloved executive producer, Lisa, who owns The Bookshelf on Church. Lisa connected Beth with Gwyn, and we are so glad she did. If this conversation moves you, there’s a link in the show notes to donate towards the bookmobile. And Outside of Politics on the theme, we’re going to talk about our favorite children’s books.

[00:01:09] Beth: Before we get started, if you’re not able to join us live in Minneapolis but still want to be part of our only live show this year on August 29th, we really want you to be there. A virtual ticket lets you watch live or any time after when you can settle in with your favorite snacks and take it all in. We want you to come so much that we’re running a special right now. Just buy one virtual ticket you’ll get a second at half price to share with a friend. All the links that you need are in the show notes.

[00:01:32] Sarah: Here’s Beth’s conversation with Gwyn.

[00:01:47] Beth: Gwyn Ridenhour, welcome to More to Say. I’m so excited to be connected to you through one of our executive producers, Lisa, and she knows you because you do so much work with independent bookstores. Will you start out by telling us about that, and then we’ll get to your international reach?

[00:02:04] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yes. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Lisa was such a huge fan and so encouraging and excited to make this connection, so I’m glad to be here. Lisa is one of my bookstore clients. I do marketing for independent bookstores in the States, and my company is called Matchbook Marketing, so matching books to their customers. And I publish a newspaper. It’s a bimonthly newspaper that Lisa’s store, Bookshelf on Church, is one of their participants. And it’s basically an old-fashioned newspaper that covers the news of the bookstore, of each individual bookstore, and also gives people sneak peeks on new and forthcoming books that the indie bookstores are really excited about. So that’s what I do, and I do some email marketing too, again, for indie bookstores. So that is my job, and I started that business in late 2014. So been around for about 11 years and it’s been a joy to get to meet and work with all of these booksellers. I knew I wanted to connect my work with Matchbook. I was a librarian for 10 years before that, a children’s librarian. So I’ve always been with books. I’ve worked with kids, and I did some education with my own kids, have two kids of my own. Two grown-up kids now. And I love connecting children’s books with both reluctant readers and also gifted readers because both of them are challenging in their own ways, and it just hits such good notes for me. And working with bookstores allowed me to help them make those connections. But I always wanted to have some kind of way that my company, Matchbook, could give back to the community in some ways. And so I’ve tried this in different ways, but when the full-scale invasion of the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, I personally was very drawn to that because I was here in Ukraine back in ‘19. And from then I have always had this connection with Ukraine since. I loved it. It was such a transformative experience for me then.

[00:04:05] And when this full-scale invasion broke out, I knew I needed to be involved in some way. I needed to help in some way. And what I know is books, and what I know is kids, and I know that there’s a lot of kids in Ukraine who are going to school and living under a just extraordinarily difficult situation, and I wanted to be a part of that to support them. So I moved to Ukraine back in December, in Lviv, and I do my work from here. I just work remotely. I just do a lot of... it’s 9:00 PM in my time right now, and I think it’s probably early afternoon for you. It works out fine. I just have to shift my schedule a little bit sometimes. And so I do my work here, and I’ve been using our company profits and then also raising money to buy children’s books, and I ordered a huge order from the United States from a wholesaler there and had it shipped to Lviv. I’ve gotten some donations of really lovely used books from the UK. Making partnerships with other organizations that are doing similar work. And then I meet schools and libraries all over the country and ask them who they serve, what are their age groups that they serve, what reading levels they serve, what kind of interest they have. And then I basically go shopping for them from my collection and send them or deliver-- depending on the situation-- the books to them. And it’s been a real joy, honestly, to meet some astounding people who are just being there every day for these kids and in war. It’s amazing.

[00:05:43] Beth: Gwyn, you moved to Ukraine during the war. So I have a lot of questions about this. What took you to Ukraine, can I ask, back in the ‘90s that made this connection for you and that made you feel so committed to being part of this effort?

[00:05:59] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. So it was 1993, just a couple years after the fall of the Soviet Union. I was in college, and it was a college social exchange. So we came as a group. There were only about six of us, I think, and then a couple of chaperones, and we stayed with host families and for three weeks. We didn’t have the internet then. There was not a lot of media coming out of Ukraine to represent Ukraine or that part of the world. It was like going to another planet for us then. I loved the community feeling. It was just so green. There was just the farmland and the way of life. All of our dinners were together and these huge groups of people and with Ukrainians, with our hosts, with people from the village, they would all just come and be with us. And we met a group of teenagers our age, and we played charades and tried... I had a little bit of Russian at the time and had a friend who met a friend there who had a little bit of English, and we tried to communicate for our respective groups. And it’s probably the age, it was the time, it was the fact that Ukrainians had never met Americans and Americans had never met Ukrainians.

[00:07:03] Beth: Yeah.

[00:07:03] Gwyn Ridenhour: It created that kind of attachment that has just always stuck with me.

[00:07:08] Beth: So how long were you there?

[00:07:10] Gwyn Ridenhour: Three weeks.

[00:07:12] Beth: Three weeks.

[00:07:12] Gwyn Ridenhour: Three weeks that felt it could’ve been a lifetime, it felt.

[00:07:15] Beth: No, I understand.

[00:07:16] Gwyn Ridenhour: As far as how it changed me.

[00:07:17] Beth: I was in Helsinki very soon after 9/11, and I was in college at the time. I was there for two days, but the way that they interacted with us as Americans on the other side of 9/11 really touched my heart. So I can imagine if you’re there for three weeks at such a formative moment in their history and such a formative moment in your life, I see it, for sure. And so where were you in the process of putting this nonprofit together when you decided to move to Ukraine?

[00:07:49] Gwyn Ridenhour: So I first came to Ukraine in August of last year, of 2025, for a month. I was just coming for a month just to check it out and there’s a really vibrant international volunteer community in Lviv. People come all the time, and they come for a week or three weeks or three months or some people then stay long term. And so I was just coming for a month just to volunteer in the places that were here and just to ask people what they were doing. I knew I wanted to do something with books, but I didn’t know what that was. And I figured I wanted to be here to kind of see what the need was. So those three weeks the volunteers at the end of the day, they get together and they eat dinner every night. And curfew is at midnight. There’s a curfew here because of the war. And they stay out and talk until midnight, every night. And so I was exhausted because I’m not young anymore, but I knew I only had a month, and so I went every single night and just asked people, “What are you doing? What’s the need here?” And I very quickly met some Ukrainians who were running summer programs in schools, and there’s refugee like internally displaced people. There’s the IDP, internally displaced people who are fleeing from the east and relocating to the west where it’s safer.

[00:09:02] And these are shelters with families and kids, and they’ve been uprooted from their schools, and there’s just so much need. There’s so much need there. And in Ukraine too there is a need for two things. There’s a need for books in Ukrainian because there’s the huge discussion of language and the oppression of the Russian language and them trying to recapture their Ukrainian language. And there’s also a very strong need for books in English and teaching English because they want to be they want their kids to be able to work in the European marketplace, in the Western marketplace. They want to open up these opportunities for them to be able to communicate outside of Ukraine. And so there is a huge effort towards that. And there are books that are published in Ukraine. They have a wonderful publishing industry here in Ukraine that does beautiful books in Ukrainian and some bilingual books and books for adults, instructional books for children. But I was touring all the bookstores too while I was here, and I was noticing there was a big gap in just books in English for young children and YA. Those were the pieces that were missing. So I was able to buy a lot of the books that we need here, but those are the categories that I wanted to be able to bring in, and it’s easiest to bring them in from England and the States for me. So that’s where I’m pulling them from. And so this kind of idea, just the more I talked about it, I found I didn’t want to start a nonprofit because I’ve done that before and it’s just a lot of extra administrative work. So I met another American who is running one of these refugee shelters, and we had a great conversation, and he was like, “Talk to my host nonprofit in the States. This would make real sense to be in one of their sub-programs.” And so I connected with them, and they adopted me. So I am in partnership.

[00:10:57] Beth: That’s very smart.

[00:10:59] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, it was great. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I wanted to spend my time with the books--

[00:11:03] Beth: Doing the thing.

[00:11:03] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. So I work with an amazing organization called Hope and Actions, and they’re based in the States, and they support Ukraine. And so I’m one of their programs. And so they provide administrative oversight. I run all of my money through them, so there’s accounting, double checks and balances. And then any donations that are made are now tax deductible. So that’s how the nonprofit was born, and my program is called Vinok Libraries, and Vinok is the flower wreath, the traditional Ukrainian flower wreath that you see a lot of the women wear. And I got a Ukrainian woman that I met here to design the logo. She did just an outstanding job. She did an outstanding job. So yeah, that’s how it was born. It’s been small. I’ve just been basically purchasing books out of my company’s pocket, and then out of the donations that have been made through our website, but we’re relatively new. So you can see in the background...

[00:11:57] Beth: I’m looking at books stacked against Gwyn’s wall, for those of you listening. Tell me about some of the titles that are requested.

[00:12:04] Gwyn Ridenhour: I get a lot of graphic novel requests. Because those are so easily accessible, and there are great graphic novels really, truly for all ages. So you can get them for the very beginner readers all the way up through adults.

[00:12:16] Beth: And there’s a real Wings of Fire moment happening in my house right now. I have a 10-year-old daughter.

[00:12:19] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, exactly. I get a lot of requests for the younger readers, for sure, and I’m noticing that those are ones that I need to buy more of, like the very beginning readers for the youngest of children. And there are more requests for nonfiction books than I anticipated too. So that’s another thing I’m adding to my mental list to be adding to that collection to send out. And then I get a lot of requests for notebooks and pencils and art supplies because all of these things are in short supply. So I just go shopping here, and I just clear them out of notebooks and pencils and all sorts of things, and just keep a bag here and tuck those in as people request.

[00:12:57] Beth: Nonfiction seems complicated to me when you’re working internationally like this. What are people looking for?

[00:13:02] Gwyn Ridenhour: The things that I’ve been sending there’s a great series called Who Was, and they’re biographies. And so they’re more for like eight-year-olds in that range.

[00:13:12] Beth: Yeah, those are so fun.

[00:13:12] Gwyn Ridenhour: When I was a children’s librarian, I actually learned so much about people just by ... because I would read that biography really quick. And I was educating myself through these children’s books. So I picked a bunch of books, the biographies that I felt would be relevant to people here. Scientists, artists.

[00:13:27] Beth: That’s what I was thinking about, the complexity of highlighting people who are relevant to their history, not just American history.

[00:13:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: So I skipped the American history part, and I went for more world famous artists and peacemakers and those kind of people, scientists, those kind of things. I have sent out some books on science and health, some math games. I collected some books on poetry and concrete poetry. Concrete poetry being poetry made by shapes. So you take the words and if you write a poem about a tree, then you write the poem, the words are about the tree, but you also write it in the shape of a tree. And it’s just activities like that can help actually writers of all age practice their words but also make it just a little bit different, a little bit more fun. Get them thinking, get them engaged with a different part of their brain. I also bought workbooks on writing prompts for kids, writing prompts for middle schoolers. Things like that which I was trying to add, yeah.

[00:14:24] Beth: Tell me about how this works logistically. I’m just trying to think through the infrastructure challenges of getting books in the hands of the people who are requesting them

[00:14:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. I made one really large order from a wholesaler, it’s a wonderful shipping company called Meest, and they’re in New Jersey, and they provide a humanitarian shipping rate to Ukraine. So I have to get the books to New Jersey. And then I had a whole pallet sent over $5,000 worth of books. And it has to be 200 pounds. That’s the limit. It has to be 200 pounds, and they shipped that entire pallet over to me for $200. It took six weeks because it goes on the boat, and it takes a while. But it’s a really affordable way to get them here. So I have a coworker in the States who is my receiver. But it’s if somebody wants to donate books that they have at home, it doesn’t have to just be a huge shipment. If you’re looking there and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got these great books that my kid really loved. They’re really in really good shape-- I want them to be in really good shape. But these are some of our favorites. They’re beautiful. They’re almost brand new, but I only have five,” I have somebody in the States that you can mail them to, and she’s collecting them.

[00:15:34] Beth: Wow, okay.

[00:15:36] Gwyn Ridenhour: And then once we have 200 pounds, then she will get them to New Jersey, and then they’ll go from there.

[00:15:41] Beth: Okay. And then what about within Ukraine? Once you have the books how are you sharing them?

[00:15:48] Gwyn Ridenhour: One way is that when-- So some of that is just I’m talking to people through social media apps and email. They tell me what they need. They do a little application. It’s very short, basically just telling me that they’re a school, they’re in Ukraine. That this is who they serve and this is their need. And then I box up. I pick out what I feel like would meet those needs. And in Ukraine, their postage system here is called Nova Poshta. And Nova Poshta has been-- it’s like UPS or FedEx, but here. And they have stepped up during this war in absolutely amazing ways. They get things across the country in two days. It’s a big country, too. Ukraine’s not a small country.

[00:16:30] Beth: It’s about the size of Texas. Is that right?

[00:16:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: A little bigger, probably. Yeah, I think maybe a little bigger. So I have a little Nova Poshta branch just down the street, and I bring my books in. Not even boxed. I just bring them. I wrap them in plastic or paper or whatever, and bring them to Nova Poshta, and I give them the Nova Poshta branch on the other side, and they charge me $3.00 and it’s there practically the next day.

[00:16:57] Beth: That’s awesome.

[00:16:58] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, so I always photograph everything before I send it, and then the teachers usually they photograph it too when they get it. They let me know it’s there, and sometimes they send me pictures with the kids having them. And some of the stories that the teachers will tell me too about how excited the kids are about getting these books. And some of the pictures that got sent to me I actually teased the teacher. I was like, “You staged this. There’s no way that they were that excited.” She was like, “No, I did not stage that. They were actually that excited.” They were just like, “Which one to read first?” Cause it’s not things they can get here. These are the books that they can’t get here.

[00:17:30] Beth: It’s exotic almost. Yeah.

[00:17:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, especially American ones. They can get more probably if they go to their local bookstore, they have a wonderful bookstore community here too. Probably, they could get books that are published in Europe or in England, but it’s going to be so much harder to get a book that’s published in the States. And so yeah, that piece of it is a little more exotic for sure. And I have delivered some as well. There was another volunteer who was donating a vehicle to the military. People do this. This is another regular volunteer-- I don’t want to say program, but effort because there’s a lot of people doing this. They’ll buy a car in Europe, and they’ll drive it all the way to the front and donate it to the military. And they catch a train back. And so my friend John was coming through and bringing a car from the UK, and I said, “ John, what if I hopped in the car with you, and I hooked up with some schools along the way? Would you be willing to, for us to make some pit stops?” And he said, “Sure.” So I lined up three schools on the way, and I put a bunch of books in his car, in the car that we were donating, and we drove across the country and there was one language school near Kyiv, and then there was one school outside of Kharkiv just further east, and that school was of 700 kids. And a lot of those kids, even though they’re very much further east, a lot of those kids were also refugees from even further east. And then there was another tiny school really close to the front and that school was 45 kids, and it was just such a small town and right on the edge. And their school had been bombed, their school building, and nobody was in it, but they moved to a smaller facility that was now serving as their school. And they had very little. They had desks. They have the basic stuff, but they had very little because it was all destroyed in the school. And so I brought her some books and just a couple bags because that’s all I had with me at the time, and I posted a picture of her and told the story on social media. And a Ukrainian friend of mine donated $500 towards her school, and $500 in Ukraine is the average monthly salary.

[00:19:49] Beth: Wow.

[00:19:50] Gwyn Ridenhour: So it was a huge gift. And I said, “ Since you were inspired by that particular school, what if I just use that to buy whatever they needed and not just books?” And he was like, “Yes, please. That would be great.” So I texted her and I said, “We have $500. You’ve got $500 to spend. How do you want to spend it?” And she said, “ That’s so wonderful. Could I have some modeling clay and some paper for the printer?” And I was like, “Yes, you can, and you can have more than that.” So we worked together for probably three weeks, and I was like, “Send me a link to something that you would like to buy, and I will order it and have it sent to you.” And so it took a lot of logistical work because these sites were in Ukrainian, and I had to end up opening a Ukrainian bank account because some of these sites wouldn’t take my credit card. It was a lot. That took a while, but I learned a lot. I learned a lot, and we spent the whole $500, and we bought things like sports equipment and a flip chart. Sports equipment being bouncy balls. I’m talking basic stuff. Just a bouncy ball the kids could kick and a flip chart and some Lego knockoffs and modeling clay. And then when she still had money left she was like we have these workbooks that the parents can’t really afford, could we buy 10 of these for the kids?” And these were just writing workbooks, and it was not expensive at all, but they’ve lost everything. It’s really hard edged out there. And I was like, “Yeah, of course. You can have all of these things.” So she and I had really worked together for weeks very intentionally to make sure that we were getting exactly what the kids needed. And then when we finished, I sent her another huge box of books. I was like, “Here’s some more.”

[00:21:45] Beth: I love that. Wow.

[00:21:47] Gwyn Ridenhour: So connecting with them, connecting with people online is great, but connecting with them in person it’s entirely different scenario. So I want to do that more. I want to meet more people in person and really just be in their space, and yeah.

[00:22:02] Beth: Do you feel safe?

[00:22:05] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yes. Do I feel safe?

[00:22:07] Beth: I get that’s kind of a does anyone feel safe? There are dimensions to that question. But just as you’re out, when I think about you in that car driving towards the front line making these pit stops, what does that feel like to you?

[00:22:18] Gwyn Ridenhour: One, I would not have done it without going with someone experienced. I definitely know that there is some risk there, but I’m trying to mitigate the risk as much as I can because there’s no reason to take unnecessary risks. And so my driver he had done this trip dozens of times over years. He knew exactly where to go. He knew the risks. He knew exactly where to stop, who to talk to. He had such a network of support, of people who would buy him train tickets and bus tickets, and there was no getting stuck anywhere without a whole network of people. And so that’s the only reason. I wouldn’t have gone with anybody else.

[00:22:52] Beth: Okay.

[00:22:52] Gwyn Ridenhour: And so, yeah, I built that in for sure. And we also didn’t stay long because there’s no reason to stay long. We needed to go. We needed to see people in person. We needed to hug them and say, “We’re here for you. We’re here with you. We haven’t forgotten you.” And then we left. Yeah. So we drove, it was like, I don’t know, 11-hour trip probably to get all the way there. We’d left on Friday, and we returned on Monday. It was like we were knocking it out. So yes, I never felt unsafe for that whole trip, and part of that is because of the infrastructure and support around me. Part of it is because we happened to be fine. But I know there is risk everywhere. And as far as living in Lviv, that’s far west. That is almost as far away that you can get from the front line as possible, and that gives me a lot of comfort and gives me the confidence and motivation to keep doing this work. And all these kids are living in worse situation, right? They’re just there. They don’t get to choose. I get to choose. If it gets too bad, I can go.

[00:23:55] Beth: Yeah.

[00:23:56] Gwyn Ridenhour: And these kids can’t.

[00:23:58] Beth: So I hear not fearful but vigilant and aware and in a range of risk that’s acceptable to you, and I think that’s very inspiring and brave, and I feel really lucky that I got to talk with you. So thank you so much for telling me about this incredible thing that you’re doing.

[00:24:13] Gwyn Ridenhour: Thank you. One of my dreams is I’m working towards a bookmobile.

[00:24:19] Beth: That would be very cool.

[00:24:20] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. And I’ve been starting to talk about it with a couple other people doing this kind of work. It’s still very much in the idea stage right now, but the idea being when we’re making these deliveries to schools, we bring them the box, but then we have the bookmobile set up so that the kids can come and take a book for their very own. And do some programming around it and just really give them a point of celebration. So we’re in that beginning stage, but I’m really hopeful to raise the funds to make this happen.

[00:24:49] Beth: I was going to ask, is that mostly a matter of dollars?

[00:24:52] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah.

[00:24:53] Beth: And how many dollars are we talking about?

[00:24:55] Gwyn Ridenhour: I started my business plan for this last week, so I don’t even really know how many dollars yet. But I could get you that information. I have that network of people in Europe to help me find a vehicle that’s used, but in really good condition. But I want it to be really nice, too. I want the kids to see something that really excites them and lights them up. So I could get you that number.

[00:25:16] Beth: When you know, I would love to know. And I would love to share the link to donate far and wide because I feel like this will really touch a lot of people in our community. It touches me deeply, and that would be a very cool dream to have some small part in. So yeah, please let us know.

[00:25:30] Gwyn Ridenhour: Okay. I will. Thank you, Beth. I appreciate it.

[00:25:33] Beth: It was really cool to meet you. Thanks for what you’re doing. Thanks for talking to me at 9:30 at night.

[00:25:37] Gwyn Ridenhour: No problem. Thanks, Beth.

[00:25:53] Sarah: Beth, I’ve been thinking about this a lot with my new bookshop, Meander Bookshop, which books to have.

[00:25:57] Beth: I bet you have.

[00:25:57] Sarah: First Beth Shaw was on the Caldecott, so she had me order all the brand new Caldecott winners, and they are extraordinary. But I had to get the classics, our family’s classics. Pete the Cat. Tyrannosaurus Trip. Don’t be mad, I skipped Goodnight Moon. I’ve read it enough. I could recite it. I’m good. I even skipped Where the Wild Things Are.

[00:26:20] Beth: I get that.

[00:26:21] Sarah: I was looking for my new classics. But I did get Pete the Cat, Tyrannosaurus Trip, and Olivia. Those were, like, big hits in our house.

[00:26:32] Beth: Those are fun. We read a whole lot of Dr. Seuss here. Just so much Dr. Seuss. They love the rhyming. They love Go, Dog Go! by P.D. Eastman. I’ve read that so many times I could recite it. We love to say to each other, “Do you like my hat?” “I do not like your hat.”

[00:26:44] Sarah: I do not like your hat. Yeah, we do that too.

[00:26:46] Beth: And then there is a book from when I was a kid that my girls picked up at my parents’ house and loved called Once Upon a Meadow. Have you read this book?

[00:26:55] Sarah: No.

[00:26:55] Beth: It is a beautiful little story about sisters living alone. Doesn’t tell us the tragic circumstances that led to them living alone, but they are sisters and cousins. And the oldest of them is named Kate, and Kate is trying to put together a picnic, and so she’s instructing them on how to get everything together for the picnic. And then they get an idea to go up into the attic, and they dress up in all these old clothes, and they have a parade. And anyway, they’re out having this idyllic afternoon when they find an injured bunny, who they take care of until the bunny is nursed back to health. And it’s just a really sweet book with beautiful illustrations that I loved as a kid. You can tell how much I loved the book by the condition it’s in. And both of my daughters really loved it too, so that’s a classic here.

[00:27:41] Sarah: When you said bunny, I remembered The Rabbit Listened.

[00:27:43] Beth: Yeah, The Rabbit Listened is beautiful.

[00:27:44] Sarah: So good. And then another one that we love in our house is Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. So recently I had all the boys pick their favorite children’s books that they remember the most from their kids, and we had a story time, which I highly recommend as your kids get older. And it was hilarious when we were reading Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. We were like, “Griffin, how much of your personality did you get from this book, son?” It’s just very on brand. You understand what I’m saying? And Amos’s was The Hug Machine. That was his favorite, The Hug Machine. So it’s fun to go see which ones they pick, which ones they remember, and to read them all together. Ugh, God, it was the best. I kind of want to make them do it more..

[00:28:21] Beth: We should try to do that when we go to see my sister this summer because my sister has all my kids’ books now. We were big Sandra Boynton people here too.

[00:28:30] Sarah: Yeah, we were too.

[00:28:31] Beth: I have a feeling that the girls might choose from those books.

[00:28:35] Speaker: All the Hippos Go Berserk.

[00:28:36] Beth: Yes.

[00:28:37] Sarah: We did that one. We did Deer Zoo. That was a very popular--

[00:28:41] Beth: Yes.

[00:28:42] Sarah: Dear Zoo is a board book. And I think I probably could recite Brown Bear if I thought about it long and hard enough. We read a lot of Brown Bear.

[00:28:50] Beth: Dear Zoo is a controversial one here because my kids absolutely loved it, and Chad thinks that it is a very whiny entitled book. He’s like “Really? The snake was too slithering or something. What’s wrong with you?”

[00:29:04] Sarah: You gave all your books to your sister? See, I gave some away. I didn’t keep all of them, but my classics, the ones that are, like, our family standards, I’m keeping them. First of all, I have little kids come to my house. I like to have them, and I’m keeping them for my grandkids. I’m keeping my books.

[00:29:18] Beth: They’re her books, too because a lot of the books came from my parents’ house. They were my books, and which meant they were her books, too. And I had kids first, and so yeah, of course. And it’s really fun to see them with her kids in pictures and when we visit them. So yeah.

[00:29:33] Sarah: Aw. I love it.

[00:29:34] Beth: I love the idea of story night; that’s a great idea.

[00:29:38] Sarah: I got a hot new one off the presses that Felix and I read in the bookstore the other day. It’s called Don’t Trust Fish, and it’s really funny. It’s birds have feathers, mammals have fur. Super easy. Don’t trust a fish. Anything can be a fish, and it’s really... it’s a cute book. It’s a cute book. Don’t Trust Fish. Highly recommend.

[00:29:53] Beth: Okay. I know we’re going to get great lists and recommendations for days for your shop.

[00:29:56] Sarah: Bring them on.

[00:29:58] Beth: Thank you. I was like, what phrase do I want here? Bring them on. It’s the phrase.

[00:30:01] Sarah: Bring them on. I’m ready. And I’ll put links to all these in the show notes too for sure.

[00:30:05] Beth: Thank you so much for joining us. We will be back with you next week with new episodes of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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