S3 EP 123: S.B. Goncarova, Author of The Adventures with Abba Series

Hello Happy People,

Today Dianne brings you her interview with the incredible children's book author and educational platform creator, Sarah Beth Goncarova (writing as S.B. Goncarova). Sarah has not only created a fun collection of books for young readers, she has built an entertainment business around her amazing Adventures with Abba Series. 

Besides writing the books, Sarah is also the writer/producer of an animated web series and her companion read-aloud videos in which she also stars. The videos not only feature word for word reading of the books so children can follow along at home in their own text, but they also have text on the screen if they do not have a copy of the book. 

The episodes all feature original music, sound effects, and Sarah shows off her talent for extremely engaging theatrical storytelling. With voice changes for different characters and exaggerated facial expressions, it is easy to be captivated with Sarah’s performances no matter what your age.

The Adventures with Abba series follow the lives of So-So and Lina, two precious sisters who are at the center of the adventures they take with their lovable (and slightly wacky) aunt Abba, and her handsome (and perpetually grumpy) cat, Caruso. 

The main cast of characters is supported by other fascinating family members who add both humorous interactions as well as providing examples of strength, resilience, and bring a strong sense of individuality to the character list. Go listen now to get the full story from the author and creator herself.

Sarah's Website
Sarah's Linktree
Read Aloud With Abba -YouTube
Sarah on Instagram
Sarah's Books on Amazon

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to BookBanter with me, your host, Diane Burkhart. I hope you will join me every Wednesday as we explore all things to do with, well, books. Let's get on with our show today. Hello, my happy people. Today is June 19th, 2024, and I'm not quite as peppy as I usually am today. I'm sitting on the second day of a migraine, so we're just gonna go right to the interview today because I am just not thinking clearly enough to give you any kind of coherent witty banter today. And besides, my guest is way more entertaining, and she has some very interesting things to tell you about her work, which is just incredible. If you have young ones who are learning to read or just trying to get into some more creative ways to explore literature, this is the guest for you. So please welcome to Book Banter with Diane Burkhart, S.B. Gonkarova. Thank you so much for joining me today. Why don't you go ahead and tell our audience who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Thank you, Diane. My name is Sarah Beth Gunkarova. My author name is S. B. Gunkarova. I'm an author of seven, oh, we'll be eight books soon, but my last three books have been children's books, and I'm concentrating on those. Also, each children's book that I've made, I've created a read aloud video or series of videos to go with that follow the books word for word, and I get to do the character voices and all the sound effects, which is my favorite, and the music. And it's a lot of fun for kids. I really love doing this, and I hope to be doing more of both the writing and the uh producing of the read alouds.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

I was watching some of the read aloud videos this morning, and I have to tell you, my favorite part is your facial expressions. You do some great faces to go along with the story. It is so much fun to watch you do that. I do like to make people laugh.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

And in real life, I'm a very stone-faced and have a very robotic, monotonous voice. And so to be able to discover this part of myself with you know the eyebrow waggling and all different characters and all different types of voices that I can do, it's it's actually been quite liberating.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

It will it makes it just fun to watch, not only listen to the story, but just to watch you present it.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

It's a lot of fun to do for the latest one. I I think I recorded it and then rewrote it about five times the whole thing through. So it's about an hour and a half. I mean, and that's just the finished running time, right? So it's like hours. And then I'll oh, this is horrible. I'm gonna try it another way. So I got a lot of practice with you know, what sounds good, what not so great. So it yeah, that was it's good practice for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

So now let's explain what the different books are that you have in your read aloud series because you actually have these for different age groups for four to seven, six to eight, and seven to eleven.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah. So I wrote these for my nieces and nephew, and I've been trying to follow them as they grow up. So my nieces are eight and six, and my nephew just turned five. And I'm trying to make things that are age appropriate for them, although I am making things purposeful a little bit more challenging, but it's very purposeful. And that is, you know, to push kids a little bit. And it really does seem to work. So with the read alouds, like kids, emerging readers are you know not quite there reading yet. I mean, they can just listen and laugh along and laugh with their siblings and watch the eyebrow wiggling, waggling and stuff like that, whatever, and listen to the music and get into the story. And then as they get older, they can start to cite words. And what often happens is that kids will find a chapter or a part of a scene that makes them just laugh like crazy and they want to play it over and over and over and just giggle and giggle. And sometimes they'll even like play act it themselves. And that actually I have found has a lot of benefits because they'll memorize the words and then they'll go back to the books and they'll see or they'll hear the words in the head and read the books, and puzzle pieces will come together and it's actually really effective. So I'm happy to do both. And so for I'm just trying to provide like wherever kids are in their reading journey. For the book that is for four to seven, it really is a four-year-old could laugh along and a seven-year-old could practice sight words and kind of probably read the whole thing to themselves. So it it works well. It works well. That the kids get to age with the books, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yeah. And one thing that I thought was really cool, not only do you have the chapter by chapter read-along, but you have these like supplemental kind of learning and creative videos too. You have the sing along with ABBA, Beyond the Books, Activity Ideas. And that one, was that your niece who is in there with the video?

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Yeah, I do have a video of her reading the book, and it's just so funny. I do listen to her voice a lot. I listen to their voices a lot, and I probably take on a lot of you know the ins and outs of how they say things. But I do want to do more of the activities, the creative activity suggestions, ideas, maybe even like lists and stuff, because I've have found that in places that I am spending a lot of time in Facebook groups and things, like homeschooling resources, homeschool moms, teachers, they're they're looking for ideas of creative things for kids to do after school, sometimes teachers even in school. But what I'm also finding, which is it's an interesting economy, actually, from what I'm hearing from other places, it's obvious. Like parents want there's too much screen time already. They want things that are off-screen. And if it's book-based, then all the better. If it's play-oriented, play-based activities, all the better, like to get kids off of screens. So there's so many different parts of the writing process and then the the recording and the editing, the illustrating, the animating, you know, the sound effects, the music, like there's so many different parts that we could draw on for these creative activities, depending on where the kids are in their interests, you know, of the moment, even like interests change all constantly, as they should. But yeah, so in the books, I've transcribed the music, the theme songs or the the incidental music sometimes. So, I mean, if anybody wants to kind of pick at keyboard or whatever, like the music is there, you know, they can do it by ear, maybe kind of, you know, it's just it's the same kind of process with like hearing, knowing what it sounds like and then kind of eking it out, you know, on the keyboard. So things like making your own illustrations of the characters and then cutting them out and then making them them into puppets. And then we can kind of do mini animations, even. I would have thought that was super cool as as a kid to do. Um I mean, and that's essentially how the animations that I do, that's essentially how they are, it's just digital. But the concepts are the same. Yeah, so coloring, making puppets, could do little basic animation, make dioramas, play acting, act out your favorite scene, you know, don't forget costumes and props, make your own theme song, things like that. There's so many angles. And actually, like I would love to see what parents show me, like what kids are doing based on the books or like the ideas that they have. So far, I have seen a little girl, she was seven at the time. She had just read the curious case of the creepy cave, and she just watched the animation for super sleuth. And in Super Sleuth, they're they're creating a banjo out of stuff from made from around the house. And so she took that idea and ran with it. She got an empty tissue box, or maybe she emptied the tissue box, whatever, got the rubber bands, and she started like plucking it. And we were like plucking, you know, the rubber bands together and like kind of testing out the physics behind like pinching the rubber band and making the the different pitches, you know. So there's a little bit of the math and the physics, you know, behind that. It's a very just intuitive play. I've seen kids starting to write their own children's book and and illustrate it. I mean, all of these just, you know, this is the reason why I'm writing them. Like this is it. Like this is because I want to inspire kids to to love reading and to to be curious and and to be creative. Yeah, that's my joy as an author, is to be able to bring that to kids.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Well, you know, and it seems like you were just so adept at doing this kind of work. Have you always done this, or did you do something else to start out?

SPEAKER_02 9:24

I performed as a musician very young. I started playing piano and then I was performing since I was six or seven on stage. Wow. Which is it's a bit of an outlier, probably because I have a bit of an obsessive personality about things. So it's like my mom never had to ask me to practice. Like I always was doing it very regularly. And that I have realized it's very uncommon. So the performance aspect, I think, but then I became very shy, especially with words. I have aphasia, and it's actually becoming worse these days, which I've I'm trying to combat by reading aloud, just like a half hour hour every day at least. You might want to explain what that is. I just I lose words completely. Like in the middle of a sentence, I can't even think of what the next word is. And it will take me 10 minutes, an hour, a few hours. I don't know if it's memory-based. I'm not sure what it's about. It I've had it for a long time. It seems to come and go. It might have some sort of physiological issue going on, but it does seem to be coming worse past few months, I've noticed. And so it'll take me longer. It takes me longer to write, but performing and or just even being in conversation with people, like I get quite embarrassed by it. So so it increases the shyness. The art, I started my own studio, like working studio artist after grad school. So about 2000, it was more like during grad school, like 2002, 2003, because I needed a a break in my head from the intensity of of what grad school was asking me to do. Um, I just started painting and just trying to turn my mind off and things like that. So, but it was very consistent with it. I was very prolific. And I think that has helped me grow, like the sheer just being able to create a composition on a canvas has helped me design compositions and the animation. So, like all these things they helped. I might be seeming like I'm all over the place, and I am sure. But yeah, but it I guess all of this has kind of been become a bit of training, a bit of preparation. But this it does seem very natural what I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Um, one thing that I was checking out your Instagram and I saw a lot of the artwork that you have on there. And I love there's it looks like it's almost a series of people, but there's a lot of color to it, and it's a lot of like painting over the painting. Do you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Yeah, this was early work. I didn't have much money at all, but what I did have was I had large pieces of paper and I had glue and I had magazines and I had watercolors and some brushes. And so I was able to make kind of huge paintings by gluing the magazines down and ripping them off, doing it again, ripping it off, and like creating layers, and then within that, after that, creating this gorgeous texture, and then kind of seeing what the images were and just going at it with watercolors and some ink. And it's amazing what you can do with very little, actually. You don't need expensive materials to create absolutely gorgeous things.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Well, I love this whole series. There's like six paintings that look like they're all about the same style. Yeah, I just I love that style that I think that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

It was very intuitive, and it was really about kind of seeing faces that were in the texture already. Yeah, which seems kind of a bit spooky, but I think normally like we're able to do that as humans, like we see faces and things.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

But I love doing it because it was a surprise each time. It was a bit like automatic painting. I wasn't coming at it with a plan. Yeah, uh, I was just kind of going with whatever I saw and then just letting it take me.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

One thing that I love about this too, a lot of the artwork that you have up here, not just your illustrations for your books, but you have so many different styles going on. It's like you're showcasing different artists, but it's all you.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Yeah. I have done a lot of different things. I would say painting, sculpture, experiential sculpture, goodness, garden design, but the animation. So I think like the common threads through them is this delicate kind of nature to them. There's a lot of textures overlapping, which makes things kind of like a fractal beauty to the way things are. There's also like a lot of pieces. Like I said, like I have like this very kind of obsessive kind of personality when it comes to like doing the same thing over and over again. So like I'm okay with the boredom of doing the same thing over and over again. And so it doesn't phase me to say, take every single leaf from a tree that has fallen in October and then seal it and then thread it together. And like it's like, oh, it's like you know, 50,000 leaves. Oh, that's no problem. That'll take me like a few weeks. Like, oh yeah, okay. So, like just doing the same thing over and over again. There, there's a lot of that, there's this common thread I find. But yeah, it does seem very different. It does seem kind of all over the place. I have tried a lot of different things. I think my most success as a painter were actually these landscapes. And I actually kind of started to get bored with it because it became too easy. And I just went on to something else that wasn't nearly as successful. And I was actually, it was a decision I made and I was okay with it. Like I would rather be constantly exploring and experimenting and pushing myself to learn something new rather than be doing the same thing over and over again. That's just my own personality.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Well, one of the things that I really liked about your series that you do with your video books and everything is that you focus on trying to help kids to learn math and science and so many of the basic subjects in school that there may be a little bit of struggle, but whenever you do it in a more relaxed creative way, it makes more sense.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Kids learn very intuitively. And when they can explore and make those discoveries for themselves, I feel like it means more to them, like the light bulbs go on. And there's also that fun of discovery as well, might propel them even further than they would have gone if it's say, like this is something you have to memorize. So I do like the overlap of being able to teach concepts of math through music, for instance, or some physics through music, like we were talking about with the uh the banjo with the rubber bands, and then kind of like figuring out oh, if you divide it in half, it goes up by an octave, you know, things like that. So that aspect of discovery, I think, is really important. It puts the fun back into learning.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

And I like to incorporate the concepts in a very like backdoor way. So if kids pick up on it, that's fantastic. If they don't, then pick up on something else that you know excites them just as much, if not more. And there's a lot of like little avenues kids can maybe explore in the stories.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Well, whenever I see stuff like this, I always go back. I have always been horrible at math in school, like junior high, high school. I failed so many math classes, it's ridiculous. I'm surprised I even graduated because of that. And I was really nervous going into college because I knew I would have to take at least one basic algebra class while I was there for my degree. And I went in and I just went right up to the teacher. I'm like, look, I'm horrible at math. I'm not gonna get it. So if there's somebody who can tutor, you know, let's just go ahead and set that up now. Because it's gonna be a necessity for me to get through this class. And this teacher's like, Don't worry, I got you. And everybody that had ever taught me math before was always just repeating the rules to me, just again and again and again. I'm like, look, I don't get it. Why do you keep telling me the same things? This guy showed me how to take math problems and turn them into pictures so that I could see them. Yes. And suddenly I understood it and I got the highest grade in my college algebra class. Oh my gosh. Where I love it, where I had always failed before because I couldn't, my brain did not understand the concepts the way that they were teaching them. He found the way to teach me the way that my brain needed. And then it suddenly all made sense. So whenever I see people coming at math and science and all of these other concepts from a different, more creative point, I think this is great. This is gonna catch kids that the standard classroom practices are gonna miss.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Absolutely. Absolutely. Having a teacher that gets you like that, it makes all the difference in the world. All the difference. I mean, it's really hard to see how teachers, especially in the public schools, are so hamstrung by teaching to the tests and things like that. And they and it's been, it seems like it's just been getting worse and worse and worse for, I mean, I don't even know how long since I was in school. I remember hearing teachers in my family talk about it even back then. And I think if we can provide more avenues for kids to find their little pockets of curiosity and little ways to search for it themselves, then then all the better.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

This seems like a good point to mention that you have a how to create a video book school workshop.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Yes. So I've been putting this together to pitch to teachers, and I've been kind of dividing it up into different realms. Like I have how to create an audio play for like music teachers, and then it can be collaborations with you know English and theater departments as well, and art, obviously. Like there's so many different aspects to it. So I've been putting together this pitch for workshop for teachers, and I'm going to be launching it next month, actually.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

And there's a music teacher conference uh about half hour away. I'll be there and I'll be bringing all the equipment that I use for creating the audio and just showing like this is what you can do. So, for instance, to create the story, you know, we have to learn like a little bit of story structure. We could work on world building and character development. And so there's all this like wonderful conversations, uh, things we can have with the kids about creating these worlds and then figuring out a little bit of story structure. So there's that that can be done in English, they can move on to performing. And that's kind of when things get really fun. I mean, I was able to discover all my expressions and things in the performance, and actually that informed the writing again. So it's kind of going a lot back and forth. And then once we're happy with the performances, you know, those are set. The the audio editing or the video and audio editing, if it's video books uh versus audio play, then like it gets even more fun because then we're putting in sound effects and we can create music. And so this part of what I'm gonna be working on with teachers next month is the just the music part itself. So this learning scoring and and teaching kids the scoring, playing instruments or synth or or keyboard, if we can hook it up either by a mic or through focus right a digital analog converter into the computer. And just you play as the performance is happening on the screen. It's actually very simple. And with I'm using free software basically. So it's totally possible, you know, if we have the time to do it and the inclination, if if you know, if kids are interested in learning about that. And actually, when I was doing it myself. That became my favorite part was actually like the sound effects and the music. Yeah. So you have like all these different pieces that kids can I prefer just working with the tech. Oh, I really like the music. Oh, I'm really into performing. Oh, I really like the writing. And so anywhere kids are, they can have a part in this. To be able to create something that is class-wide or even several classes collaborating. I mean, it might be a um a nightmare logistically for some teachers as well, but I think we can make it work. You know, like any challenge that we come across, like I think we can make it work.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

I think it sounds like an amazing project and would be so fun. If they'd had this kind of thing when I was a kid, I would have loved that.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

I really want to get a radio broadcaster involved, something like a PBS local, like if the kids in the school, local school, like maybe if they even if they like it, if it works, if they really are proud of it, like let's get it on the radio so they can like hear themselves on the radio. Like that would be amazing. What if if it were an actual like a full book? Um, if each chapter were like five to ten minutes, say, like we could play like one chapter a day in the morning, like a cereal with your cereal or something like that. That's cool. I like that. And it becomes part of their day. Kids are proud of it, they hear themselves, it tell their friends and family and teachers. You know, I think it's it'll have a ripple effect, a positive ripple effect, and it will inspire, it'll inspire more creativity. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

So what is gonna be next for you? Next is because I can't imagine that you just stop at this. I would imagine you're the kind of person that you're always thinking of the next thing.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

The very next thing is I do want to animate the second little episode that I have. Like the first episode, I I've kind of created proof of concept. It's about five and a half minutes. I don't know if you saw it. It was like the animation for Super Sleuth, but it's five and a half minutes, you know, it's it's good. The second episode that I have, the animatic that I've already created, like makes kids roll like on the floor laughing. So just the animatic, and I haven't even animated it yet. So I do want to get that together. So the first animation, it was five and a half minutes. It took me about four and a half months.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

I I was gonna ask how long it takes you to actually animate this stuff because it looks like it's rather intensive.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

If I had known, I I made a lot of mistakes that I had to go back and completely redo. So it knowing now what I know then, like it probably would have taken me half the time for sure. So two and a quarter months to do five minutes. Okay. And maybe that's a little bit too long. So maybe I need to kind of build up an animation team to help. That would be amazing. People who actually uh knew a whole lot more than what I do can I can, you know, entrust with I think that would work. We could pick up the pace a little bit. So I don't think waiting, you know, kids are not gonna wait four and a half months for five-minute episode. Like, no, it has to happen pretty quickly as it needs to be a quick turnaround for animation.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Now, I did see a bit of the animation that you did. I think it's of Caruso. Is that the cat? Yeah, yeah. I saw that little bit of animation where it was just like a clip was running in a loop, and that is so cute. I love the colors, I love the like texture in the images. It is such great animation.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

You remember when we were just talking about the uh the paper puppet, yeah, like moving. So that's that's essentially what I'm doing there, but it's a digital puppet, but it's a 2D kind of like paper, but you're moving these all the limbs around. In my case, like I didn't have the technical skills to actually attach, they call it like spining the limbs together. Like, I didn't have the the program that would help me do that, so I had to do that all myself. Um that's why it's no like if you move this, then you have to, you know, you pick up this arm and you know so it doesn't automatically move like a doesn't automatically no, I had to do each limb separately.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

It's almost like the old claymation.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Yes, exactly. It's stop motion, it's stop motion, but with a a little bit of help because if one movement didn't work, then I could kind of adjust it in the program rather than having to do the whole thing over from scratch, which is what you would have to do with something like claymation. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's it's brutal like that. But I found a way to make things actually to go by faster. So I hope that that might be enough that if I have a team behind me, then that we could really kind of I could then concentrate on perhaps more of the writing. I wouldn't even mind like if voice actors could take over some of these characters, like that would be amazing too. Because I don't have the range to be able to do like man's voices, for instance. Like there's a character in the books, Random Pirate. He's in the animations in the episodes he's written in. And first of all, like I can't do the British accent. No, because all I it would be offensive, I think. Like, really, like I I wouldn't be able to pull it off.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

I understand completely because I made a beta version of the first book of my series as an audiobook, and the main character is Irish, and I had just interviewed an Irish author, and I was asking her is like, please tell me if I need to just delete this whole thing because I'm doing an Irish accent. Please tell me it's not a bad one. And she's like, Yeah, you're fine. Really, really okay. She's like, Yeah, we can tell that it's you know not authentic, but it's not bad. You're okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

I did a trailer for Super Sleuth and the narrator I had based on David Attenborough. Oh, yeah. So, like, I mean, he had a lower voice and it was very kind of slow and extremely posh, and I was tripping over myself. Like, I could not do it. I was so embarrassed, but I ended up showing it to some friends in the UK, and I thought they were gonna just be like, no, just no, like just delete, okay, no, they're like, Oh yeah, no, that's cute. I don't know, maybe they're humoring it.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Well, you know, and there's so many tutorials that you can find online anymore with dialect coaches. And that's actually what I did was I listened to a dialect coach for like two or three weeks and practiced before I ever did that.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah, that's actually that's super ingenious. Oh, I might take that idea.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

It was so helpful because if I hadn't done that, yeah, I probably would have been getting a lot different reviews than I have.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you want to be like kind of respect as authentic and respectful. And I mean, I lived in the UK for a few months, uh, a few years back before COVID. No, no, no. It was after the the borders were opened again. And I realized how hyperlocal the accents are. I didn't realize that before. I really didn't. I had no idea. But this is like one of the first things that I found people were asking each other was what town are you from? Yeah. And they're trying to match that with the doing like a mental map in their head of what the other person sounds like and where they are on the map, where they grew up on the map, and like where their parents are from. And so, like, it was really interesting how this is constant. So, in the case of my random pirate, like I would think that maybe he would be from Liverpool, maybe Manchester. I don't know. Like, I but but would I be able to do either one of those? No, absolutely not. I would not, I wouldn't. I my wildest dreams, I would never be able to pull that off without offending like millions of people. So yeah, but I having a team will would definitely help. And I do want to get the audio books, I would love to get them on the radio. I know in Germany and in France and Italy for the past year, two years, the public radio has been putting a lot of money into children's broadcasting and to great success. And like, and I really want to reach out. It wouldn't quite work because you know my audiobooks would need to be translated, obviously, and then like you know, completely redone and and whatnot. But I think it it I think kids would enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

I do oh yeah, I think it would be worth it. It would still be worth it.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Yeah. I mean, right now I'm actually getting my books translated into Arabic and we're gonna find some performers do Palestinian Arabic, and we're gonna get those to some reporters that I know in Gaza and try. I mean, I've asked them about the power situations there, and so you know it's a bit tricky. So but I think like we can try to make it work. If it can offer an hour of escapism, then to me it's totally worth all the efforts for that. So uh that's what we're doing right now.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

See now, this is usually the point of the show that we like to do five quick questions that never turn out to be quick, but I always hold that eternal hope. Okay, okay. Are you ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Since your videos help teach children about art and music and science and math and creative writing and all of this, which of those topics were the easiest for you when you were in school?

SPEAKER_02 31:41

Oh my goodness. I would say music came the most easily. Math, I would say second. Language arts was actually really hard for me, probably because the aphasia was probably even starting back then. And science was it wasn't really, I don't know, I wasn't able to kind of piece things together as as a kid. So I would I would say that was kind of that would be the order. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

And I love that you mentioned that too, about the connection between music and math, because I don't think a lot of people automatically think about that. But music is math-based. It has time, it has tempo, it has meter. Oh, yes. People don't think about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Oh, yes. No, it's very math-based. Yeah, time signatures, like counting, you know, triplets versus you know, quarter notes versus half notes versus whole notes versus you know, all the different rhythms that you can do, and you have to kind of divide it out in your head as you're going. Actually, my piano teacher growing up, she was a math, I don't know if she's PhD in math or master's in math, but that was her thing. That was that's cool. Yeah, yeah. And it made total sense. She was able to sight read so easily. There's so many connections, and it's not just like the numbers, like there's the fractal nature of the concepts of mathematical concepts that we could delve into. Is there's so much, there's so many bridges there, it's phenomenal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Question two What is your favorite flavor? Vanilla, chocolate, or something completely different?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Goodness, I would say maple.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Really?

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, I love maple. I have not gotten that answer from anybody.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Yeah, if you have maple ice cream with maple syrup on top, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Oh wow. I've never even thought about putting maple syrup on top of it. Yeah, I'm not my problem is I'm not real fond of sweet. I like bitter better. Ah, okay. Like I love dark chocolate that's almost like 80% with very little sugar in it. Okay. I'm not good with sweet. Question three What was your favorite book as a child?

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Oh, hands down, Matilda by Rawl Dahl. Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Yeah. Yeah. I identified with this little girl with magic powers as a kid. Yeah. And I loved Miss Honey. Uh, I just uh adored the idea of having this teacher who you related to perfectly. And I love the characterization of the adults. It was just like, oh, this is so hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

See, and mine was The Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book. I still have my copy. Oh wow. Question four. What is the best part about making books and videos for kids?

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Uh getting them back, getting kids writing you books and illustrating them and taking pictures and sending them back to you or showing it to you. That's when you know you've really succeeded. Oh, that would be so cool. Yeah, that is the best part.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

That would be so sweet to be able to get that interaction.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Getting letters back, anything.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yeah, it's the interaction. So question five. What is your favorite movie of all time? Uh Princess Bride, probably. Oh, good one.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

It's so funny. It's so it's such a masterpiece. Uh such a masterpiece. I was reading the script actually just uh a few weeks ago, and I was like, this is he had written it uh for his kids actually, for his two girls, William Goldman. It had come from nighttime uh stories that he would tell his daughters, and he would ask, like, okay, what what's the story for tonight? It's the princess, no, it's the bride. And he put them together, and that's where we, you know, so he got this whole book from the stories, and then the screenplay came from that. But yeah, it it's such a beautiful, beautiful film.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

And there's just there's so many quotes that come out of that movie. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Like, oh my god, my my friends and I, there's so many things that we would just say to each other at random moments, and we knew what we were talking about. And people might pick up that we were talking about that movie, yeah. But it just had so much of a connection for us that we would just you know, like, have fun storming the castle, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

As you wish. I do say as you wish quite a lot to people in my circle, like just you know, as kind of like a term of endearment in a kind of roundabout way, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Well, it's like in my my husband's best friend is Sicilian. So my favorite thing is like never bet with a Sicilian when death is on the line. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Yeah, yeah. That's one of the best ones to do. There's so many good ones, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

So now let's tell everybody where they can find you and your work.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

My website is playgrousekids.org. From there, that can direct you to either the YouTube channel or you can find that by searching for it. That's read aloud with ABBA. Uh, it's all one word, but I think if you just search that separately, you probably come up. And the books are on Amazon as well. I have not made them go wide. I stuck with Amazon because I just haven't got to other places yet. And I am trying to do book readings for schools and libraries and things, and I would like to incorporate workshops. And we could do it virtually or in person. So it's another way that I could come to you.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

And if people want to keep up and be able to find your public appearances, what's the best place to go?

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Oh my goodness. I will start putting them on to the website, theclaybrousekids.org. No, that's actually a good point. I probably should make them more public. Probably Instagram is my most public page right now. So I will I'll do better at putting those up, promise.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

We will, as always, put all of your links to your social media in the description of today's podcast. And you are going to be in our summer reads issue of BookBanter magazine, along with several other authors for children and adults giving people things to do over the summer months.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Oh, that'd be so awesome. Thank you so much, Diane. That's such an honor. Like it really is to be included in a magazine for the thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

I have really enjoyed talking to you. And once again, it's like we had a long conversation before we even started the interview that we recorded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great to get into the fun before we even start the interview.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Yeah. I I think it's it's a lot of fun just to have a conversation. Thank you for being here and doing that with me today. Thank you so much, Diane. You're amazing. And I really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

So there you are, folks. My interview with Espigon Korofa. She is such a delightful person. You really need to go check out her YouTube channel and all of her books. You can find all of the links in the description of today's podcast, and of course, at burcraftbooks.com on our podcast page. And don't forget, if you enjoy our podcast, please think about sponsoring us by buying a copy of Book Venture magazine. You can buy it directly from our website, Burkkbooks.com, and it's only $2.99, and all proceeds will go to help upgrading our equipment and to keep bringing you great content. And the great thing is you get a downloadable copy of the magazine that you can keep for yourself. It has live links to all of the authors that we'll be talking to in the two months that are covered in the magazine. You can find all of their books very easy at any time. And we also have a few extras in there, like puzzles and information on my own books that I try not to talk about too much during the interviews. At least I do my best. But I think that's it for today, folks. You know what time it is. It's time for you all to go forth and be very happy.