#854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

“I'm not going to use that for a question.”

Now I'm at a seat in the book and time. What if I get the item? I must have a netty book and it's a living tissue with metal and pistol scorer. In the end, I'm in Paris, Seoul. Tish, it is lovely to finally connect.

I've really been looking forward to this. And thanks to my old friend and your new friend, Alon Lee. Here we are. We made it happen. We thank you for making the time. Really excited to be meeting you. And I don't even know where to start.

We could start with the 200 children's books, more than 11 million copies sold.

We could start with 300 children's songs. But maybe we can, I suppose, start the journey with what you studied in college.

“Were you always intending to end up where you are now or where did the story start?”

Where did the story start? As a matter of fact, I did not start out to be a children's book author. I started out to be an opera singer. I went to college to be an opera singer. So that was my plan.

I had a great plan. In high school, I tell the kids I talk to a lot that I had two things I loved. I loved to sing and I loved to write. So all through high school, I was, "Are you going to be a singer or a writer or a writer or singer?" And finally, I had to apply to college and I really knew in my heart.

I wanted to be a singer. So I before you degree an opera with a minor in jazz.

And everyone always asks me, "So how did you end up being a singer and a new up being an author?"

And the very short story is I came to New York and I was auditioning everywhere and my high school music teacher got a job as assistant music director on Sesame Street. Season two. I went to meet him and told him I was auditioning and he asked me if I could type. And I said, "Yes, I can sing and I can type so I got a job as music production assistant at Sesame Street."

And all I wanted to do was sing with Jim Henson's Muppets. And my first job was hiring the jingle singers in Manhattan to sing with Jim Henson's Muppets. So I sang all day. I sang when I typed in I sang when I filed. When I sang when I answered the phone, Sesame Street may.

I help you. Well, after a year, everybody was so tired, I was going to be sing all the time. But they said, "Would you like to sing on Sesame Street with the Muppets?" And I was, "Yes, so I sang with the Muppets. I sang on the show. I sang on the albums and I sang on the specials."

So I sang on everything and it was just so much fun.

And my first big break was I sang with Oscar, "I love trash."

Everything dirty and did she industry. Anything ragged and rotten and rusty. "Oh, I love, I love, I love trash." And I don't know that my parents ever got over it to the industry. The big break.

Well, let me ask you, "When you got the job on Sesame Street?"

“When you first got that job, what did it feel like at that time for season two?”

And I'll tell you something that I haven't told many people, which is, "I have a season one staff jacket for Sesame Street." Because a friend of my family who lived nearby when I was growing up, worked on Sesame Street in the early days. So I grew up going next door as a little kid, hearing her stories, looking at her Emmys.

And my love of Fair with Sesame Street in a way began before I ever started watching it. So I have a long history, what did you feel like to be there in the earliest stages of Sesame Street? What was the vibe like the environment? First of all, the most creative environment anyone could ever be in. Basically, the John Stone, who was executive producer and Jim Henson, and all the puppeteers,

and all the puppeteers, and everybody were so creative, they just made stuff up all day long. Another interesting thing to share is that they were very worried that this show was going a bomb. A six-foot yellow bird, a monster that only eats cookies, a grouch and a trash can, a multi-racial

Joan Gansconi, who created the whole thing, just let them be creative. Whatever you guys want to do,

“go ahead. And it was so much fun to be a part of it. And I believe in my heart that my background”

on Sesame Street is how I can do what I do today, because I was enveloped with this every single day. One of the interesting things that happened was Sesame Street, they needed books, they needed toys, they needed merchandise. Who knew? This was going to be a massive hit. And they literally asked staff if they had ideas for books. And I, you know, courage, you know, what the heck? Why got method to lose? I'll go down and you know, try. And I went down to the

book department, and I told him about when I was a little girl, and I broke my great-grandmother's

T-pot, and it shattered into a million pieces. And my mother came in and saw the broken glass,

and she said, "I'm not mad or anything. I love you more than any T-pot." And I went down, and I pitched my idea to Sesame Street books, and it's your classic, right? You go pour your heart out on the story, and there's dead silence. I know, but he moved. I'm not. So I'm standing there going, "Okay, that went well." And from the back of the room, the editor for Sesame Street books said, "Could you make it a story for birth?" And my very first book, here it is,

"Burgle up." And the broken T-pot, it's out of print, but I have a few. But, and in this book, "Burt, Break, Stavard's Favorite T-pot," spends the whole book trying to get it fixed. And in the end, David says, "He's afraid, David's not going to be his friend anymore," because he broke his favorite

T-pot. And David says, "You'll always be my friend, and can you help me in my restaurant next week?"

And at the time, it got just create awards and letters because it's easy to have things be about stuff. And this message obviously was that their friendship met more than this T-pot. But that was book one. So let me peel back the layers a little bit on what you mentioned. This well-sprang of

“creativity, just being steeped as opposed to poverty. steeped in this creativity, what did that look like?”

Were people just ad libbing all the time? Like of Robin Williams, times the number of staff, were their meetings different? What did that actually look like in practice when you went to work? It was one of the first TV shows that had educational research behind it. So we had topics. We're going to try to teach every single season. There was a notebook like this thick with what are the, you know, what are we trying to teach kids? You know, obviously numbers and letters, but

compassion and sorting things by shapes and whatever it was. And then you would watch the writers just come up with stuff. And it was absolutely fascinating. And they just kind of made stuff up as they went along. But the big thing I learned from the Sesame Street writers and it has saved me many, many, many times is that they wrote the endings first. So they used to look at Abbott and Costello movies and Mark's Brothers movies and they looked at everything. And they used to tell me, okay,

Abbott and Costello are pushing a piano across a bridge in the jungle with a gorilla coming across the bridge at them. How did they get there? So as an children's book author,

“I always write my last page first. So in my I believe bunny books, my inspirational books,”

one of them ends with just like the I believe bunny, you may get a surprise. You can make a difference even a bunny, your size. Then I wrote the whole book about how he helps his friend who can't swim and above above, and then end at that page. It's a very important page in children's books because it is the last page they hear before the book is shut, go to sleep, take a nap, watch a play,

whatever, and I always write the last page first, always. Did you have much interaction with

Jim Hansen? Yes. I worked for Jim for years and somebody said once he was a gentle giant with a mind of steel, you know, he's a great business man, but so creative and so nice to all of us, because we were at low in the total bomb, we were at a production assistance, and he just worked and worked and worked. And he would do a Sesame Street day and then fly to London and do the

very nice to me, always. Did you learn anything about him or how he managed anything that stands

out the distinguishes him aside from just being a man possessed with his work, which certainly

“doesn't surprise me. I think the thing was, you could just watch his creative mind, the creative”

minds on Sesame Street when I was there, you know, something would happen, and they would just make something else up, you know, and the sense of humor and the lightness of what they were doing, and it was almost like, oh, and by the way, we're teaching kids. Oh, yeah, okay, you know, the other thing they did, which was really something, is they were one of the first to do double level humor. So they wrote stuff that was funny for kids, but had all kinds of stuff in it

for adults. Because all these studies had done if parents watched the show with their children, the kids learned more because the parents were there to help them and kind of thing. And, you know, some of the early children's shows, no, no parent would be caught dead sitting in front of, but Sesame Street was so nuts that everybody loved it, and that really, really made a difference,

“big difference. They had the double level humor. Yeah, I remember first being struck by that not to make”

my side of the story all about Robin Williams, but was Robin Williams in the songs in the first Disney animated feature of Aladdin, and just how many levels there were to that and how effective it was because parents would go back, take their kids to the theater multiple times in this case, right, obviously, watch the television show. How did your music training, if it did help what you ended up doing not only at Sesame Street, but afterwards? And I suppose I'm just asking if

some of the tools or sensitivities that you developed actually ended up being assets as you move forward with these other supposedly separate art forms. Well, one thing that I used to do, the songs were all prerecorded, and so the puppeteers, puppeteers would go into and record their songs in advance. So now you're a big bird, right, and you're going to sing a song on Sesame Street, but they are doing their dialogue. So how are they going to know when the song starts?

So I would stand next to one of the cameras and count them off, so measure one, two, three, four, and then they would sing. So Carol's been, he could see me enough to know that when I pointed to him, he had to sing the song, the pre-recorded song, you know, move the costume, you know, move the puppet, so he was singing the song. And the first two times I did it, I was scared to death. I was only 21. I think this is going to be the one. I'm going to go one, two, three, and start him,

and it's going to be the wrong place. You know, no, but that's really where the musical training came in. And also, we used to sing the jingle singers in New York in the 70s,

“literally you come into a session. To this day, I'll never forget it, and literally they would sing it”

through once. We are at the sound of the sound, though they're count count counts down, you know, four part harmony. And they look at each other, so you take the route, I'll take the third, just you take the fifth, and then somebody do the octave, one, two, three, go. And I remember a hold on with a thread to this thing. And the other thing that I love about this

really days back then, we had orchestras. So the Christmas, I'll never forget this, the Christmas special,

full orchestra. I mean, violin, and Carol Speny was trying to sing "I hate Christmas." So he's behind this microphone, and he's going, "I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, finally." They said, "Let's take a break." Everybody, all the whole orchestra, let's take 10 minutes. Everybody's give them a minute. And I was standing next to him when he moved over and opened the case and took Oscar out of the case. I was standing right next to him, I had the music and everything. So everybody comes back,

these violins and cellos and clarinets and they started it again and Carol moved over and Oscar sang.

"I hate, Christmas, perfect." I never got over and I was like, "Whoa!"

But this kind of stuff went on every single day, all day. Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

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So drinkag number one.com/tim to check it out. One more time that's drinkag1.com/tim. And when you were working on Sesame Street, what was the reaction from people at the time when they would ask you what do you do? I don't know the magnitude of this success when you joined versus later on in your time there, but what just to paint a picture for people? Because there are some older folks who listen to this podcast, who maybe even had really, really early exposure

or maybe are much older and had really young kids who were exposed to Sesame Street,

“then there are some in the middle who certainly remember watching it, and then there are some”

who have probably never seen it. Right. What was the reaction that you would get from people when you told

them what you did for living? Well, it's funny when I tell the story that I got to New York and I was auditioning and it was going okay. I would get a jingle here, a jingle there, but I couldn't support myself. And I am convinced I went home one Thanksgiving to my hometown. I'm from Needham, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. And I got literally got out of the car and my mother told me that she had read that my high school music teacher had gotten this job. And she said,

you gotta get all dressed up and you gotta go see him and he hasn't seen you since you left high school four years ago, you've been in college. And I have to say it took a lot of guts for me to go

the whole thing. And I think when I look back, it was timing and luck to a lot of extent because

“whatever have walked into Sesame Workshop and said, you know, do you have a job for me? No,”

I was convinced I was going to be a star. It was just a matter of time singing. And back then, I'm sure they still do this. You would audition and they would literally let you sing nine notes. So you go, oh, glow home all where the wind goes. Thank you. Really? I am dead serious. Anyone who auditioned in this? That was it. And you, you were there and you had your music and everything. So the fact that I actually was able to get a job in music

on a television series was just magic stuff. And was the public's reception at the time? So you

have this sort of complements of factors and synchronicities that get you in the door. You still have to prove your metal. So you get the job. And was it just the bell of the ball at that point, Sesame Street or was it still in kind of growth mode? So some people knew up and not all people.

“Where was the public awareness of Sesame Street when you joined? Well, I think when I started,”

it was just really taking off, you know, literally. And I don't think anyone recognized that it was, you know, as I said, they were mature how was going to go. And something a lot of people don't

know about Sesame Street is it was originally created to help every child learn their alphabet

and their numbers. Because there was a disparity between kids who had came into kindergarten knowing their letters and their alphabet. And the kids who came in not knowing and started behind before they even got started. I don't think anyone really realized that this was going to have such a huge impact. Because kids then were going into school and singing the numbers song. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Alligators went to the alligator picnic. Okay. Yeah. That's,

this went on all day long, you know. So because now there was more of an even playing field when the kids all hit kindergarten. And that was people just didn't see it coming. And it was true. What happened that led you from Sesame Street to all it followed? Oh, the followed. Yes, exactly. Well, among my other things that that happened is I was at Sesame Street. And as soon as I started writing my Bert and the broken T-pop book, I just kept writing and writing and

writing and writing. And this is just on your own time or was it for me? Well, I started hiring me. I wrote for Scholastic and I wrote for, you know, Houghton, Mifflen and Random House and everybody. How did you make those contacts? So I was working at Sesame Street. And then I produced Big Bird in China. I was part of the crew that went to China with Big Bird in China. 1982 something like that. And then I was senior producer for three to one contact,

which was another whole story. And then I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing. And I ended up at Random House as their director of video. This was back in the VHS days. And once I was in there directing all the videos back in the day, they used to just take the artwork for the book and move the camera around. It was called Animatics. And I produced all the music and all the voiceovers and all everything for that. But now I'm in Random House. So I'm

author, proven author, and I happen to work there. So in the hallway, they'd say, you know, could you write a book about butterflies and sure when do you need it? So it was kind of a two-way thing. I was working as a producer, television producer. I also, with three to one contact, that's when I started writing songs. Because three to one contact was a science series. And it took more time for us to explain to other composers what we needed than just to write it in

house. So I wrote songs about electricity and mammals. And, you know, and either you need it. By favorite, my favorite was producers would come into my office and I'd say, "We need a song."

“I said, "Okay, okay." What's it about? Never forget this. And the guy, producer,”

looks at me and says, "The gestation period of different animals." I said, "As singing for me already." Good gestation period. So I wrote a song called "I'm waiting for my baby." I'm waiting for my baby. Feels like a long, long time. And we just took stock footage of chimpanzee and an elephant

elephant two years. And whatever it was, it had a baby. And at the end, it was, "And baby, you were the weight of seven." So we made stuff up. And, of course, happily, for me, I sang a lot of it. So that was one too. If we open the hood and look at the workings of making a song, yes. What does that look like for you? When they are successful, do they have common patterns where you start with something? And then there's seconds, there's something else. And third,

there's something else. What did that process end up looking like for you? Well, the first thing I did back and have done a lot of is perfect example, you know, what's the science? What are we

trying to teach a child in this song? And then I always make sure that I have a verse and then

what we call a B section. So the song goes somewhere and then comes back. That's always very,

“very, very key. So you decide on those two pieces first? Yes. What are we trying to court of wood?”

That's a perfect example. I wrote a whole second. Yeah, I would love an example would be great. Court of wood, I can all remember how it goes, but Court of wood, well, you could find out how many toothpicks are there in a court of wood? How many, you know, picnic tables? Can you make out of one court of wood? So you've got to figure out what you're putting in for the science and how you're going to make it rhyme and that kind of stuff. It's certainly helped me that I had been a singer

so long that I was so used to singing and rhyming lyrics. One quick thing to share because very few people know this. Why was it Sesame Street? The executive producer asked Joe Reposo, Joe Reposo wrote the theme and he wrote all the big songs. And he said, I wonder how Kermit feels. Have you ever thought of how Kermit feels living on this crazy street with all these nutty people? And Joe Reposo went home and wrote being green. But the big thing about being green

is all of us who write songs for kids have end rhyme. Sunny day, sleep in the clouds away on my way to wear this sweet. Can you tell you how to get how to get to Sesame Street? Everything rhymes with end. Being green, there's not one rhyme. It's not easy being green. Having to spend each day the color of the leaves. When it would be nicer to be red or yellow or gold or something, much more colorful like that. It's totally talking. There's not a rhyme in it. And he came into the office and

sang it for the first time and people were thunder struck. And of course, it became a mega hit.

“So yeah, I just started writing songs about everything. What possessed him to break the mold?”

Had that been done before? Or was that something that struck him? I'm wondering if you know the

backstory of why? I always felt that this is a long time memories of these things. But I sort of

felt like maybe one of the writers kind of challenged him. You know, there's only one other song any of us could find. And it's moonlight and Vermont also doesn't rhyme at all. But I don't know if someone said, yeah, why don't you write about how Kermit feels about living on this street and not have end rhymes? I don't know. I don't have anyone challenged him or he just went home and said, I mean, the man was a genius. Whether you went home and just said, you know, I have an idea.

I get nothing else to do this afternoon. I'll try to write a song with it as a rhyme. I don't know.

But they'll say one thing. It was really amazing. It's basically Joan Gansconi told them all.

She had faith in them. Just do it. Just go. So it was so free flowing that people just made stuff up. I have a favorite song. People always ask me my favorite song that I did not write. It's called I just to do our four. I just to do our four. The number for me. I just to do our four. It's

“let's see, less than five more than three. And I think the lyrics were so grown up, right?”

I mean, that's hilarious. But if it kids, you know, just ate it up. They just understood it. They understood what that meant. You know? So it was wonderful because every day you went into work, you had no idea who's going to come up with what today. How many drafts or versions made the cut? I'm wondering in such a free flowing creative environment where you're allowed to throw anything against the wall and you're given permission at people say they believe in you.

My assumption would be that you come up with a lot of ideas and not all of them work. That's right.

makes it to air. The real challenge on that show was the curriculum was king. So yeah, you could go off and know right a story about your lamb. Whatever the curriculum of the day was today it's seasons or cooperation or I don't know. Whatever they were, that was true. They had to get that by that team and it was a whole team. The other thing they did a lot of is focus groups. They played stuff for kids and this was groundbreaking at the time and they tell stories about

how Oscar was originally orange and the kids didn't really like it. Whatever it is, you know, they changed stuff. So although it looked easy, there was a lot of background on what they could do and not do. The focus groups, I mean, that does sound really innovative for the day, especially with kids. But I imagine if you're trying to sell shampoo and you've got Bob the adult in your

“focus grouping, but like Bob, how much would you spend to buy a part shampoo or whatever it might be?”

And Bob can give you an answer. What types of reactions or feedback were they looking for when they tested? It was great. They wanted to know things like did the kids walk away, understanding

that Abkadefki is ABCDE, ABCDE, itch. I want to, you know, because they always wanted to pay

attention to the fact that they made it too sophisticated. The kids would be lost. There's a very fine line, because by doing the double-level humor, like I just a door for, excuse me, genius, Joe Bailey wrote that one, that they didn't leave the kids lost, because that's not what's not the point. You know, the point was to teach them, we get them ready for school. I mean, curriculum. Well, curriculum number one, there's a question that I could ask about

“songwriting, but I could also ask about bookwriting. So can you explain how”

Dr. Seuss enters the picture? So as the years went by, I kept, as I said, writing for everybody,

never turned down, never turned down a book offer. You know, we'd be a scholastic. We need a book

on butterflies, you know, in a week. Now go OK, a week. You know, like, how long is I going to take me? You know, how much am I going to earn an hour? You know, whatever it was. But wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote and wrote and wrote. And in 1991, I always go by how old my kids were. I guess they were like three and four. I submitted a rhyming book to Random House. I was there. I was the senior producer for home video. I was singing on all their TV stuff. And I was singing on VHS for them.

Anyway, I was right there. And I sent in a manuscript or a book, Morris O'Rourdes, was a brachiosaurus who had the best voice in the dinosaur chorus. He liked to play tennis and swim in the sea, but mostly he liked to eat fresh broccoli. Oh, he took it. And the end of that one was, so his friends try to get him to eat something else. And he said, the gut, his friends go broccoli's fine. It's got color and crunch, but you eat it for breakfast and dinner and lunch. So you talk

and mend it eating something else in the last line. So one thing is true and you cannot deny it. Like it or not, you won't know till you try it. Fine. Type it up, walk down to the quick department and random else. Hand it to the book department and hear nothing. This is, and I tell the kids, this is before texting, voice mail, you know, we're used to using pay phones at this point. And I hear a thing, so I know that's really work, but okay. So I finally

get my courage up and I call and I finally get somebody on in the phone and that division. And I say, "Tell him, no, I am." And I, oh, oh, she said, "We're supposed to call you." I said, "Well, let me call

“me." So we're sitting right here, but nobody called me. And she said, "Okay, I'll never forget it."”

She said, "I have bad news and I have good news. What would you like to hear first?" And I said, "Well, I'll take the bad news." And she said, "We cannot publish more and so we're as brachiosaurus because we are the rhyming home of Dr. Su's." And okay, all right. However, she said,

"How would you like to write a new series for Dr. Su's?" Sure, you know, you never say no, never,

turned down a freelance dive. And they literally handed me. Dr. Su's, not me. Dr. Su's, wanted to write a series of books for kids about science in rhyme, for early readers, four to seven year olds. And died before he could finish the first one. So they handed me a stack of research on mammals, a huge stack of research on birds. They said, "We are so far behind

And more sororous brachiosaurus was both. Thank goodness." And they said, "Can you have two books ready in four months?" And I carried all this stuff home and I went, "Well, okay." And I just

started writing as a camel a mammal and find feathered friends. And I never stopped after that.

What an incredible opportunity. I mean, talk about just the right ingredients at the right time. And my brain will not let it go unless I ask. So the more sororous still thing,

“I think it sounds like a great book. But that couldn't fly because Dr. Su's basically had”

exclusivity on that nature of rhyming book. For random house, yes. For random house for us. And he not only did he write exclusively for random house, but he created the beginner book series, which other authors also wrote. So he was head of the whole thing. And one thing to share about him, which is, and there are many authors to do this, but he was an author illustrator. And I'm clear to tell everybody I write the words, but I do not draw the pictures. And I had heard,

I missed meeting him by one year. But he used to tell me that he would come in with a brand new book Let's say, Horton, here's a who whatever. And literally art directors and the editors at random house did not have to do anything. They didn't fix it. They didn't have to tell them to fix that. Elephant, they didn't have to do anything. They were so perfect when he showed up with them.

So that was just as always amazing that he could do both. I actually never spoke to him,

“but I spoke to his widow, Dr. Eguysel. And she called me because to the day I could never forget it.”

She called me. I felt like on the phone. I couldn't believe I was actually talking to her. And she said, do you remember when years ago in the 50s? They did the study where they had pregnant moms talk to their babies and sing to their babies. And when the babies were born, they recognized and the dads too. They recognized the voices and they waived their little hands and their eyes linked and stuff. And what they used on the study was they all read the cat and the hat,

the original cat and the hat book. So here we are. It's 2008, I think. Audrey, you guys will call me and said, could I read all 41 of Ted Geysel's Dr. Sue's books and write a book with references to all of them. And she wanted it called, oh baby, the places she'll go to be read in utero. I'm sitting there going, oh, okay, sure, la. So I went and read all of them. Martin here's a who if I ran the zoo, if I ran the circus, the whole, you know, you're

all the turtle who did with the moose. I read them all. And I wrote, oh baby, the places she'll go. And turned it in. And I love this story because by then my kids were in middle school. I think and I was going to pick them up from school. And I had my car keys in my hand. My phone rang it's random house. They said we are sending the files to the printer for oh baby, the places she'll go. We need a bio for new, really short, and it has to be funny. And we need it right now.

“So I just said, I get to give me two minutes and I hung up the phone, never forget it.”

And all of a sudden, I thought, oh, wow, and I called them right back. And I said, Tishrabbi's a mom who thinks that it's cool to be home rhyming rhymes while her kids are at school. And they went, man, it's they're like, done, like it's okay. Just make this stuff up. It's what I do all day. And oh baby, the places she'll go is the best seller flies off the shelf. So oh baby, the places she'll go. Oh baby, the places you'll go. And the other thing I just

real quick about that, I am very careful to say to everyone, you do not have to have kids to write for kids. Many, many, many fabulous authors did not. However, the last page of oh baby, the places she'll go, I don't even know who drew it because I don't think Ted drew it, but there's a little pregnant mom, Suzie and little pregnant moms in there, you know. And I had two kids, I have a son and a daughter. And at the end, I wrote, it's a scrumptious world and it's ready to greet you and as for myself.

Well, I can't wait to beat you. And I really have to say, I think if I never had kids,

But it just was flew off the shelves. Still does. So when you get that first assignment,

here you go, pile of research on birds, pile of research on film, the blank, a couple of questions related to that. So you can tackle whichever one you'd like to tackle. Okay. So one question is,

“how on earth do you pick what to include out of these many, many stacks because you have to be”

really selective? The other question is, what guardrails/rules do they give you? Do you keep you within the universe and tone and feel of Dr. Suzie? Well, a couple of things. The first thing about what to put in the book, they did the research for me for the first two books, but for all the many, many books I wrote after that, I did my own research. And what I did that really saved me and surprises a lot of people is I went to the Children's Department in the local library and

pulled everything they had on the topic because already it's not in rhyme, fine, but it's already been simplified. So I would get a spiral notebook for every book and write and write and write the facts about space, the facts about insects, which I knew nothing, and get them all written down and then figure out if anything popped as a rhyming potential word, one of my very proudest was when birds wanted to go on a winter vacation, they all take a trip and they call it

migration. Because at one point I was writing down the birds migrate and migration, I thought, oh vacation, you know what, so that was one thing. And as far as guardrails, there are two kinds of rhyming in children's books and migration and vacation is perfect Suzie and rhyme. Farm and barn is what they call a slant rhyme. Close, but it's not a pure rhyme. Dr. Suzie insisted on two things. The rhythm had to be perfect. On the 15th of May in the jungle of Newl,

Courtney, the elephant sat in the pool. Doesn't vary, it never varies and the end rhymes are pure.

Something Ted did and I did as well is if he was in trouble for a rhyme, he made up a word. So, you know, in the sleep book, one of my favorites is, "Have you met the van of Lex?" or something like when they sleep, they yon so wide, you can see down their necks. You know, so he made up the of Lex. So, in my book, oh, the pets you can get, oh, the pets you can get takes place in girplets where they know quite a bit about caring for pets. So, I made up girplets to

“omit much to Ted because when you're in trouble, it makes nothing that's what he did. It's a clever”

effect and that the game is straightforward or what is straightforward. I mean, it was genius. I mean, it just made this stuff up all the time. So, those were the two things. I had to get with the facts where for the books, keep it simple, make stuff that rhymes, the kids, and what really worse realm about rhyme is there are kids that would not have ever known what the word migration meant, but they love the rhyme and they remembered the rhyme. So, it's a very, very successful,

after that, every single one of my books rhymes, like as it works. It is their first exposure to a namanic device, right? And, you know, I've done, I mean, I think you would blow me out of the water. I have so many questions about how your mind works, but I did a bunch of cognitive testing recently with pretty well-vetted studied battery of different tests and I'm 48, but I aged 20. Now, the only reason I aged 20 is because I have these namanic devices. I've trained myself to be able

to do it. And rhyme is a fantastic, in some ways, instinctive example of that. Have you always had

a mind for rhyming or is that a trained muscle and also your recall? I mean, good Lord, you're just

“incredible. Recall, have you always been that way or are there people in your family like that?”

It's interesting because I had a phenomenal English teacher in high school, high school for me, a need of high school, need of Massachusetts, not only did my music director end up getting my first job in New York, but my Mr. Allen, my English teacher was phenomenal. And what he used to have us do is write poems, sonnets, if we wrote plays, and it helped me understand the format and also how to, you know, figure out and rhyme and lyrics. I have a book that is still not published.

and I wrote a whole book for him three, actually for Nickelodeon, that are in Limerick rhyme.

“You know, have you met Morris? He's an I change him to an Oopsosaurus because he's kind of clumsy,”

but a 12 foot tail. But anyway, have you met Morris? He's an Oopsosaurus, a dinosaur, if you can't guess. But sometimes he bumps things and sometimes he thumps things and sometimes he makes a big mess. So the entire books and Limerick rhyme, but yes, that background, and I am sincere saying that I was really torn between majoring in English and college and being a writer or a singer. And very happy I decided to be a singer because now I can do both.

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So check it all out. And now you can get 27% off anything on their website. So site wide. So just go to HelixSleep.com/Tim. One more time HelixSleep.com/Tim. With Helix, better sleep starts now. So do you think the ability to construct rhyme came from that education and the practice in the English class or do you just have the equivalent of some type of perfect pitch for rhyming out of the box? What do you think? I will tell you this is funny because when I first started

my husband bought me a computer program that was called a million gazillion rhymes. Seriously.

“And I would sit there all day long and type the word in. What rhymes with antenna?”

You know anything? Hello? Then after over the years I have gotten to the point where now I just know what they rhyme. But speaking of nomatics, I think you'll get a kick out of this. This is the page in my best selling solar system book. All about our solar system. All about our solar system. So things are going fine. And I write this nomatic. You've seen all the planets. Now here is a trick to remember their names and remember them quick. And I write the whole thing, Mallory Valerie Emily

meets us just served up 999 pizzas. So so far so good except pizza stood for Pluto. So I get a call from Random House Pluto has been demoted. And I'm like, what? I'm on the phone. And they said, can you fix this? But we can't get the illustrator to change the art. So Emily here, Valerie, Emily, what are their name? Mallory Valerie Emily meets us was holding pizzas. Tell them like, okay. So I changed it to Mallory Valerie Emily Nichols just showed us 999 Nichols. And all the art I had to do was change

the pizza boxes to Nichols saved. But I'm like, what? Give me Pluto. Give me a brain. I mean, Pluto's been demoted. Come on guys. Plan is to eight. I'm not prepared for this. So this kind of stuff

“goes on all day. This is what I do for living. But it is fun. I mean, you have to, you know,”

keep your sense of humor. I'm going to move on to asking you more about the craft. But if you don't make me ask, what is your age at present? At the moment, I am 74. We're 75 in July and I started my own company when I turned 71. 71. And we are definitely going to talk all about them. Do you have siblings? I do. Is everyone in your family as razor sharp as you are? I mean, that's a hard question. I know why to throw your siblings under the bus. But I'm so curious to what you attribute being, I mean,

you're sharper than 999 percent of my friends who are my age or younger. Yeah. And I'm wondering

to what you attribute that? Well, a couple of things are interesting about my background. And we'll talk about this. I know in a few minutes my military book. But my parents got married as world

that later. But when he came back, they wanted to start a family. And they had two little boys and a

“little girl and the little girl was me. And my father used to come home and play piano for about”

a half hour after work. But I do not come from a musical family at all. My mom was an English major. So she loved to write. So she was a writer. But music was not a thing in our family. My brothers didn't play much. And it was fine. They played sports. Well, supposedly when I was seven,

I was in first grade. My father was playing the song. He played every single night. It was my mother's

favorite. And I just stood up and started singing with him. And they still talk about it. It was a song called Tammy, and Tammy in the bachelor movie. My mother loved it. I hear the cotton wood was spring above. Tammy, Tammy, Tammy, Tammy's my love. My brothers were doing their homework. They stopped. My mother was doing something. The kitchen. She stopped. My father stopped. And it was like, even though it just happened. And I was just encouraged from day one to pursue music and writing.

So it was a very receptive, and I'll be honest, when I went to college, I told my mother,

“I'm going to get a degree in singing. Well, now, you'd say, well, what are you going to do to eat?”

You know, that's nice. You know, but if you don't make it on Broadway, what are you going to do? I was the only one in my class. If the college, class of 72, that did not take an education back up. I didn't want to teach music. I didn't want to teach kids, you know, don't rain me if I saw Latido. I wanted to be a star on Broadway. There's just like, are people missing this? You know, what part of this you guys miss it? So I literally

was convinced. I would leave college and come to New York and with an ear, name and lights,

piece of cake. And only anybody is nuts as I am when they that, but hey, and my parents never

blanked. They said, sure, if you think this is going to work, you know, good luck.

“But anyway, it just, it has always been a part of my life. The music, I think more and more,”

I mean, I wanted to be a neuroscientist way back in the day and was a major in the department, the whole nine yards, things ended up taking a turn and I ended up where I am now. But I'm still very involved with science and the more I look at music, the more I talk to musicologists or in dialogue with neuroscientists, the more important and orthopedic life giving music seems to be. And it's impossible to say you pull this one lever and you get X,

Y, or Z result, but it seems to be a commonality that musicians or people who engage with music regularly just retain their faculties and hone their faculties a lot longer than people who don't. That's my impression. Well, the other thing that's huge is that music is unbelievably helpful to teach kids and the sound of it and the rhythm of it and the rhymes. Every single one of the books I've created myself has a song in it. And what I do is I write them to public domain melodies

because people know these songs, most of them. And my first one, the first book I created was a little book about going to sleep. So I wrote a lullaby, you know, now it is here today. It's time to sleep my little one to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. So smart, so smart. And it really

works. And I really encourage everybody, I get this all the time. Everybody's always,

yeah, but you got this beautiful voice and you sing all the time and no, no, no, no, I can't sing and I just try to say to everybody. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart, you can sing, just it doesn't mean if it's croaky, it doesn't matter what it sounds like. The only voice your child wants to hear is yours. They want to hear using to them. And yes, I have me singing them on my website and I try to help everybody learn to sing them them up. But at the end of the day,

it's your voice resonating in their ear. I forget how I said it in here, but it's like, you know, that is the voice that every little kid wants to hear. The sound of your voice when you read and sing is what your child loves more than anything. It's in sweet dreams here. But what made sweet dreams work? What makes it work? And maybe even more broadly, what makes Lollabies work? What are the other ingredients you mentioned? The mapping to a public domain melody is really smart. I mean

that makes so much sense at a lot of levels. What else makes that book work? Yeah, well, it was really interesting because I started my own company right during COVID 2020. COVID's flying around

with a friend of mine said you have to meet the people at pajama program. It's now called the on bedtime, but then it was called pajama program. So I went in and I found out that they give free pajamas and story books to kids facing adversity. Many kids don't not having any pajamas, any story books. So I kind of went into meet with them thinking, well, maybe I could do a fundraiser, get my girlfriends, you know, send in some pajamas or something. And they said what we really need

“is to help parents learn how to get their kids to go to sleep. And I said the best thing that works”

for this is to write a story book, they'll read to their kids and then put the tips in the back and they'll read them too. And then I put them all in rhyme. So 30 to 60 minutes before you talk them in is the perfect time for their bedtime routine to begin. So and what's happening is parents read the book and they read the tips that led to the kids. So the kids are going on 30 to 60 minutes. Mom, you know, we're supposed to be in bed now. You know, and then of course, it has

and then you're just saying a little bit because singing is in so restful. And the kids get and now it's been out for a couple of years. Everybody knows the songs. The kids know it, you know, the kids in school, they sing it in school, daycare, you know, so yeah, it's very,

very powerful. I want to come to starting your company and then the reasons behind that,

why did you start a company at 70? 70. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. I know, what are you nuts? What the reasons were behind that. Well, it's funny. I ended up marrying

“a guy in high school, neat that high school. It was shaped my whole life. That's what you did. So many”

family. So many crowds. So many jails and my husband and I live in Mr. Connecticut and he's an avid fisherman. So during the fishing season, he's fishes three to four days a week. So I'm sitting there going, well, what am I going to do? You know, this thing. And I really felt that I had some ideas for books that the other publishers weren't doing. One book I'm very proud of

is called Love You, How You Read to You. It was my very first book and it's a board book.

And I had begged all these publishers I work with to do a book with what they call dialogic reading and dialogic reading has little questions. So you got the adorable mommy cat reading to her little kittens and the little thing below says, what do you think that little

“kittens are thinking? And that helps the child go, I think they just love that their mom's reading”

to them. And it sets up a dialog as why dialogic reading. I couldn't get anyone to let me write a book for them. So I'm fairly simple, then I'll just do it myself. So what I'm doing now with my books

is I have the ability to do what I want to do and the messages I feel never got out there.

It has been a huge learning curve or spike because I always just turn the words in and somebody magically a year and a half later sent me 10 copies of the book. Now I've got to find an illustrator and a printer and a shipman thing and beyond Amazon and sell books on my website. But I absolutely love every minute of it. It is so much fun. Well let's, if this is going to be, I suppose maybe off topic, my listener's going to be like, why are you asking about fishing? What is your husband

love so much about fishing? I went on my first wilderness like outdoor survival training trip in Montana specifically and the guide brought along something called tankara rods which are these very simple rods where the Japanese design, they are simplicity itself and we would just stop at random holes and give it a shot. And I found it so therapeutic but it was my first real enjoyment of fishing and just wondering what your husband gets out of it. We have four children and two living

Boston and two living in Manhattan. So we sort of pick Mr. Connecticut because it's kind of in the middle and it is the best fishing in New England because we are right on the ocean next to Rhode Island and Black Island and all of that stuff right around and he goes out and they have the best time and they catch sea bass and all these different kind of fish and it's out in the water, you know, beautiful ocean, he's got a 24 foot boat, you know, the whole thing and he brings back fish and

people we give it away and he cooks it and it's just really fun. I love it. But he literally leaves

do something or I'm going to go nuts. And I tell you there is nothing like giving a book to a child who doesn't have a book. You know, I am on this lifetime mission of trying to get free books to kids who don't have any and I have to say having started at Sesame Street when that the idea was to lift everybody up and help everybody and teach everybody how to read. It's amazing to me we're here at 2026. But I'm doing what I can to make sure kids get books and it is possible.

Read, read, read. Well, let's talk about Alaska and yes. Sometimes apart always in my heart,

what is the context on what I mentioned? Tell the story. Yes, I can. The easiest of this book is

“interesting. As I think I told you, I am the child of a World War II hero. And my dad was in college”

when he enlisted and he was an engineering, he's an engineer. So they made him a navigator and a navigator in a beef 17 sits in the front with the pilot and shows them the maps and stuff like that. And his plane was hit by enemy fire, burst into flames, and he jumped out and was arrested and spent a little under two years in a German prison camp. That's when he came home. They had my brothers and they had me, two boys and a little girl, a little girl with me. And all through the

years writing children's books, I had wanted to write a book for military kids and military families. And honor of my father, but also because I felt no one understands this life, no one understands this sacrifices they go through. And I'm the grandmother of two little girls who are five and three,

“and I's got thinking about what it means to my granddaughter when my son isn't away on business”

for two days. And the military kids see their parents, their moms, and their dads go for a year. And I tried everything. I tried Department of Defense, Department of Education, and the naval bases and like, I can somebody help me do this, you know, fast forward. I'm starting my own company. And I got clearance to go on the base at the Grat and Naval Base, which is right next to Mr. Connecticut. I went into their library. I got permission to go into their library. I read every

single book for military children in a library. And didn't see anything that was helpful for this topic. And I was literally leaving and that librarian said, what are you here for? And I said, I want to write a book for military kids. And she said, oh, and she smiled at me and she said,

“you just need to reach out to United through reading. And I looked at her and said, United through”

reading, okay, United through reading records, deployed service members, reading books to their kids, hold it up, read the book. Then they send the video recording home to the child with a free copy of the book so that they can all read together. And when I heard this story, I said, well, what I want to do is write a book from the point of view. It's lovely that they're reading cat and hat. And there's no place like space. And that's all nice. But I want them to have a book that reflects

their story. This is where I am. I miss you, but I'm fine. You know, you're fine. I'm fine. It's fine.

And the first thing I did was I interviewed service members, spouses, partners, and kids.

It took me months. I have no books full of this stuff about what it's like to walk away from your three-year-old and hope you'll be back to see her someday to serve our country and keep us safe. And I got inspired to write the book and the people I interviewed gave me tips to put in the book for young families facing this for the first time. And one of my favorites was early interview she said, when my husband leaves, he traces his hand on paper and I put it up next to the door.

So the kids can give him a high five every time they leave. I mean, really.

You know, so sometimes apart, always in my heart, helping military families send love from far away.

I was honored to write it. I've received a lot of big awards for it. It's really a passion project for me because I cannot imagine my son walking away from my granddaughters for a year. But it happens every day. And then, like, funny thing about Alaska, this is really fun. He was Alaska. I actually was going to-- So Alaska is a little stuffed dog. He's a little stuffed dog. And I went to buy my granddaughters

And then I thought, wow, I was right in the middle of writing. Sometimes apart, always in my heart.

And a lot of service members have to leave their pets as horrible because they get relocated and sometimes can't take them with them. So I said to myself, okay, I'm going to have the bare family have a dog. Here he is right there. And have him adopted from a shelter. And then I thought, well, there's a lot of training in Alaska. And I googled one thing, all of you, if you ever want to create a character. First thing you do is Google the name.

Because for me, if I find out that I was going to name him Tony, and I put in Tony the dog and there already is one, I would name him something else. It's just not worth the hassle.

“And I put in Alaska and the only thing that came up was Alaska and Huskies. But not the name”

Alaska. So I named Alaska. But the cool thing was I sent one of these little dogs to my art director and my illustrator. And from the first minute, she was able to put him in the book the way he really looks. And one of the things that happens to service members, that's him getting adopted from the shelter. One of the things that happens to service members is they all said to me that what the hardest thing is missing their families and missing the day-to-day little stuff. So in a bare family, daddy

bears on a location and they adopt Alaska, what he's thought. So in the last page of the book is Alaska jumping on him because they just met. And I also wanted to have this little dog. So the kids reading the book and they also have a little soft guy to go with them. So he's on my website right Alaska. Yes. So really inspired to write that one. And is the best place for people to find the book and Alaska at tishrubbybooks.com? Where would you suggest that? Alaska and the book and Alaska are

on tishrubbybooks.com. We have e-commerce all set up. You know, you're just great to go home right when anybody. So yes, you know, that was another fun thing. Who'd ever made a plush dog before?

“You know, and the nice thing was the only thing they had to do was put his little bandana on”

because this is the real dog I found but all he just had says Alaska and the name of the book they didn't have to build a whole new dog. So just adapt. So the spelling folks I'll just remind you Robby is RAB. So T-I-S-H-R-A-B-E books.com. What else can people find on your website? What else will people find that? There's a lot going on on my website. I have a lot of books in development.

I just started my company. This is always makes me so laugh. This one is called Days Can Be Sunny

for Bunnies and Money. I got it called from a bank in Ohio. They wanted something for kids because financial literacy is a huge thing. You know, you get to start young. So I came up with these three bunnies. They're triplets. And honey, fur and likes to earn. Sunny Dave likes to save and funny band likes to spend. So anyway, so the thing goes on and at the end, they also give some of their eggs to the library. And this is them giving them eggs to the library. So I love

doing content-based books. You know, something that's going to teach somebody about something. And I've got a big new book coming out in a month that's actually all of that central park New York. So it's a rhyming story book. Central park you can see is the best place to be. It's coming out. How did that come about? Well, it was funny. We moved here to Mystic.

And I've never had this exactly happen before, but I joined the small business, the Mystic

Chamber of Commerce, right? Because I thought, well, I've running this tiny company by myself, maybe there are other people who are running small companies who could help me with advice or something. So I go to this coffee shop to meet their head of membership. So the Mystic Chamber of Commerce head of membership. And honestly, I think she's going to want me to put something about me and her website or something. And she literally looks at me and says,

we have a huge anniversary coming out. Would you write a children's book about our town?

“And I remember looking there and going, well, that was February 8th. And I never forget it.”

And I said, well, sure, I said, when do you need it by? And she looks, I mean, she goes, July. I remember looking there and going, oh, sure, what do you need it? Anyway, here it is.

happened to me before, we're in a coffee shop at Mystic Seaport, coffee shop. I'm looking right at her beautiful, beautiful young woman, right? And she says, can you get it done that fast? And I thought, I, and all of a sudden, I saw four seagulls fly over her head. Right in the middle of a coffee shop, obviously, they weren't real seagulls. But in my head, I saw four seagulls. And I got to my car. And I said, I got it. It's a family of seagulls who fly all over Mystic, looking at a seaport,

the aquarium, the boats, the, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I wrote the whole thing in like two days. This is downtown Mystic. So, you know, who knows where these ideas come from? I don't know.

But that was the first time I ever had a complete hallucination at a coffee shop.

“Was Central Park something that you wanted to do or did that come to you a different way?”

I work with a friend of mine whose name is Jennifer Perry, and she was this Vice President and publisher of Sesame Street Books for a long time. And as soon as I started Tishraabi books, she came on as my executive editor. But interesting thing about her, she is a trained reader, reader, G-R-E-E-E-T-E-R, reader at Central Park in New York. And she came to me and she said, every single family comes in with the kids in the stroller, and like, don't do the blah blah blah,

and the first thing they ask is what should I show my kids? Where should I take my children? She said they need a book, they need a rhyming, children's book, and I was kind of like, okay. So literally Central Park is 843 acres of open land and lakes and waterfalls. And how do you get that into 24 pages? I'm like, sure, I got it, I got it. And so it took it's taken a bit for us to get

“that done, but it's coming out in a month and a half. So I think so. Very exciting.”

And I'm working on a big campaign, which is going very well, to get people to help me fund free copies of the Central Park, but to kids in underserved neighborhoods in the five girls, Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn. And again, when I met your friend Alon from this group in New York, the Sinfluence Group, I met a young woman who said, I'll help you do this. It's on the landing page of my website, and we are absolutely crowdfunding enough money to give a book

to every first greater. Wow, incredible exciting. The five bars in New York's, very exciting.

I love that. I may have a group that could be also, maybe of interest or could be interested in the book itself, but donors choose.org, which I was involved with. I suppose still I know it was

“involved with for ages, in any case. Okay. So I will certainly, we'll link to the website and”

link the crowdfunding separately for people who would like to contribute to that. Is you mentioned 24 pages is that the canonical length, that's probably not the right modifier, but is that the default length of most children's books? They're all kind of all over the place. The Dr. Suspux, these books are 42 pages, and what's happening is, hopefully, we hope, hope, hope. Is that parents read to their kids when they're going to sleep or, you know, they're home from school, and it's kind of tricky,

because if they're too long, you know, it gets too much. So starting my own company, I thought, well, let me start with 24 pages. The interesting thing also to share, we do other languages,

your sweet dreams, and Spanish, and also, pace of, you know, not a million words on a page,

kids love to turn pages. There's a whole kind of, you know, part of this. That's just how it works. It's also to turn pages, too. Exactly. Exactly. We're going to turn it. We're going to see more artwork here or what. The other thing I urge people who want to write a children's book is to really think about the illustrator. I had worked with Jill Gile and London on a number of books. We did the Huff and Puff train books. And I knew for this book, which is all about reading and

snuggling and going to sleep, that she was the perfect illustrator. And a book like bunnies and money, it's supposed to be funny. It's just wacky group of kids. This is another kind of artwork. So it really depends on what your message is and what your style is of who you pick. If you're stuck on a book, if that ever happens, but let's just say something's not working,

unstuck if something isn't working? It's really interesting. I did a presentation to a group of writers called Girls Right, W-R-I-T-E now. And I had young women in my, in the room with me, and then we had zoom

calls across country. It was the first time anyone has asked me if I get writer's book.

“Then one has ever asked me them. This was a couple of months ago. And I remember thinking, yes,”

I do. And what I do is, if I get hired to write a book and I still write further people, I just finished another book for Harper Collins, if they say we have to have your first draft by April 1st. Okay, April 1st. I write in, it's due February 15th. Because I know there's going to be a day when I cannot do this. I can't figure it out. It's not going anywhere. I'm stuck. So when that happens, I stop. If I just say, I cannot think one more minute

about what funny Ben spent his money on. For instance, just for instance, I will let it go, work on something else, work on another book, do something. Because it is true. You get circled in, like a soft dissolve in, you know, you're just so, so consumed by it. This is a great example of that. This is interesting. This is the one that I wrote all about the things you can

“do that are good for you. And this was the only time that I got this assignment. And honestly,”

Tim, I thought that is the most boring idea I have ever heard. They wanted a book, the American Academy of Pediatrics. I wanted a book about code of sleep, eat healthy, exercise, and I can't,

this is, oh my god, first of all, you cannot write this stuff without sounding preachy, do this,

do that, do this, do that, don't know. So I got my courage up and I called random house and I said, how would you feel if I created my own Dr. Sue's characters? Like, Zing Zing Zans who loves washing your hands. And my editor at random house said, we cannot call Mrs. Geisel and say that you, mother to living in Connecticut, are going to start writing Dr. Sue's characters? All you can do is write the whole book, 42 pages, all rhyming. And we'll submit it to her. And if she turns it down,

you got to start over. I don't know. Oh great. Okay. So I write the whole book. Here's one. Here's the Zing Zing Zans who loves washing your hands. "Wishily, washily, washily, washily, washily, washily, washily, washily, washily, washily. Wash your hands carefully. It's up to you. You're soap and warm water. It's easy to do. Rinse them in while we all sing this refrain.

Germs from your hands will slide right down the drain. So first, sure, fine. Okay. So I turn this in.

I turn this in and I go, boy, I tell my husband, I got no B, I have no B, plan B, does not exist. At the Sneak Snickers Knee, I was brushing your teeth. Anyway, they loved it. Thank you, Mrs. Geisel, and they put it out. And Michelle Obama funded 16 additional pages with exercises

“and all kinds of stuff she loves. But that was a perfect example of, what am I going to do?”

I said this is so boring. And it turned out to be a huge bestseller, but it is funny. I just, you know. Woo. We're going to land the plane in just a few minutes. This has been so fun. But I wanted to also ask you 1982, Big Bird in China. What was that like? That was a really extraordinary situation. We were the first crew allowed into China, the first film crew. A couple news guys have been in, but it was the first time anybody walked into China with a six foot yellow bird among

other things. So somehow we got permission to shoot this thing. I don't know. And we walked in and they shipped one Big Bird costume. And I was a production man, I wanted what I was, associate producer at that point, I guess. And they literally said to us, you cannot shoot this bird in the rain. Their hand painted, their hand died feathers. If it starts to rain, you've got a pull carol out, carol spiny out of it, and you've got to put it somewhere dry. So I thought I really

knew when I was doing a schedule 13 rain days. We were there a month in China. It poured the first 13 days. I mean, I mean, I'm not just a little rain, you know. So we would literally push him out and have him do one line. I don't know. Should we go this way or that way? Oh, pull him back

was a 90 minute special. That was another thing. It was crazy. That is a lot. Oh my god, we got back

with all this footage. First thing NBC said, you know, maybe it should just be an hour. And we're

all looking at each other because it had a really complicated plot. You know, you're just looking to find the phoenix and the ends you find the phoenix. How do you cut the middle out? You know, we got it. So anyway, but so we did air as as 90 minutes. But for us, it was just crazy. I mean, everything that possibly could have gone wrong. But we came home with it somehow. But it was really stuff. How long? How long were you there in total? We were there a month and there's no coffee.

You can't have a film crew with no coffee. You just can't. So the first day everyone's looking and going, "Where's the coffee?" And like coffee? We're China. I mean, no. The tea is tea. You know, a couple of days they didn't want tea. They want a coffee. As well, you guys are going to have to, you know, get it together because this is not going to happen. Oh, yeah. 1982. It was crazy. 1982. Wow. And I sing a song on that when I sang the Monkey King song on that show. But you know,

“how fun. But it was crazy. What an experience. What an experience. I think I'll just do a real”

quick is there was a five-year-old little girl from China. And she has the lead, right? And she and Big Bird travel around. She spoke no English. Zero. She didn't even have to say hello, right? They taught this to this little girl by wrote. So she finally understood by love you met, finally, by the last day of the shoot. But we would send them scripts and then we would change the scripts. But then we met her and she'd memorize the original ones. So you'd be out in this shooting outdoors.

And all of a sudden, she'd say, I don't know. Big Bird, let's find out. We got cut that. Didn't we cut that? Like a year ago, I'm going to be a part of it. And it was crazy. And we shot at the great wall of China at four o'clock in the morning. Anyway. But that's another world experience. I was in China at the universities in 1996. I guess it was. And it is just a different experience entirely now. I can only imagine 1982. Well, the interesting thing for us was

yes, there's a billion people. But back then, they were all walking everywhere in bicycles. Now,

of course, it's cars. Yes, change. Just the sheer volume of people was just. Oh, my god. Like, yeah, I got lying boggling. I got there at the tail end of the bicycles. So I got to see people in big, big green jackets. It gets cold. Depending on where you are, it can get really chilly. But what a wild experience. Tish, let me ask you a question. This is a metaphorical question. But it's a question I like to ask guests. And that is, if you could put a message, could be lyrics, could be a line, a quote, a mantra,

anything at all, on a huge billboard for lots of people or lots of kids to see. Does anything come to mind that you might put on that billboard? I would say right now, I would say, remember the children are our most precious gift. I could concern about the way the world is going. And I just want

“everybody to remember that they are the most precious part of our world, because they are the future,”

they are the dreams of the future, and we must take a care of them. And read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read. And I hope you keep writing writing writing as well. Tish, that is the plan. That is the plan. Tish, is there anything else you'd like to mention and a closing comment, anything at all you'd like to cover point people too? Well, one thing I would like to say, I have another big book coming out is called Kindness is Carrying Friendship is Sharing. And it is

written with international rotary clubs. And rotary clubs are all across the country all around the world. And it comes out in three weeks. And it's a gentle story. It takes place in Africa, a little zebra. And it's about just that friendship, caring, sharing, and making the world a kind

“of place. And I think the world has never needed it more. And I'm very proud of it and it'll be”

out in three weeks. I just think we all have to be kind to each other. And I'm doing the best I can to

make that happen. We do rotary club, amazing, amazing organization also. Yes. Have some very

very old friends who came through rotary club. Well, the other thing too that's fun about it is it's a book for kids, right? But when young parents read it, we're hoping that they see learn about rotary and say, well, let me find a rotary in my community. So we can get some new members and keep going. I love it. I love it. Tish, you're such a joy to spend time with. Thank you.

But do not miss going to Tish Robby Books. It's TISHRABE Books.com, contribute to the crowdfunding

“and buy a few books while you're at it. And we'll link to all of your social media and so on.”

But people definitely check out TishRubby Books.com. We'll link to other things that have come up

in this conversation at tim.plox/podcast. You'll be easy to find. You're the only Tish.

“I know. I know. It's only a few of us out there. I know. It's a beautiful thing. Yes, beautiful.”

So it makes it very easy to find you. And everybody listening, as always, this is how I close my

shows. Be just a bit kinder than is necessary. When you stop listening and go on with your

“day, not just to others, but also to yourself. And Tish. Lovely. What a wonderful, wonderful”

time. I really appreciate you making the time to have this conversation. And you're welcome, Ben. Yeah, I hope we cross paths against you. Yeah, I'm going to say, I'll end with what I say to the kids reading and writing book. You're so exciting. Read a book or write a story. Start right now. That's how we close. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you.