0:00:00.439,0:00:02.531
Hi everybody. So my name is Mac.

0:00:02.531,0:00:06.589
My job is that I lie to children,

0:00:06.589,0:00:08.605
but they're honest lies.

0:00:08.605,0:00:10.373
I write children's books,

0:00:10.373,0:00:13.601
and there's a quote from Pablo Picasso,

0:00:13.601,0:00:16.787
"We all know that Art is not truth.

0:00:16.787,0:00:20.429
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth

0:00:20.429,0:00:23.127
or at least the truth that is [br]given us to understand.

0:00:23.127,0:00:25.237
The artist must know the manner whereby

0:00:25.237,0:00:30.074
to convince others of the [br]truthfulness of his lies."

0:00:30.074,0:00:32.932
I first heard this when I was a kid,

0:00:32.932,0:00:34.623
and I loved it,

0:00:34.623,0:00:37.415
but I had no idea what it meant.

0:00:37.415,0:00:38.992
(Laughter)

0:00:38.992,0:00:40.889
So I thought, you know what, it's what I'm here

0:00:40.889,0:00:42.508
to talk to you today about, though,

0:00:42.508,0:00:44.721
truth and lies, fiction and reality.

0:00:44.721,0:00:46.573
So how could I untangle

0:00:46.573,0:00:49.100
this knotted bunch of sentences?

0:00:49.100,0:00:52.527
And I said, I've got PowerPoint.[br]Let's do a Venn diagram.

0:00:52.527,0:00:55.020
["Truth. Lies."][br](Laughter)

0:00:55.020,0:00:56.780
So there it is, right there, boom.

0:00:56.780,0:00:58.485
We've got truth and lies

0:00:58.485,0:00:59.557
and then there's this little space,

0:00:59.557,0:01:01.118
the edge, in the middle.

0:01:01.118,0:01:07.918
That liminal space, that's art.

0:01:07.918,0:01:12.915
All right. Venn diagram. (Laughter) (Applause)

0:01:12.915,0:01:15.941
But that's actually not very helpful either.

0:01:15.941,0:01:20.316
The thing that made me understand

0:01:20.316,0:01:22.806
that quote and really kind of what art,

0:01:22.806,0:01:25.023
at least the art of fiction, was,

0:01:25.023,0:01:26.463
was working with kids.

0:01:26.463,0:01:28.723
I used to be a summer camp counselor.

0:01:28.723,0:01:31.010
I would do it on my summers off from college,

0:01:31.010,0:01:34.389
and I loved it.

0:01:34.389,0:01:36.148
It was a sports summer camp

0:01:36.148,0:01:37.982
for four- to six-year-olds.

0:01:37.982,0:01:39.628
I was in charge of the four-year-olds,

0:01:39.628,0:01:41.431
which is good, because

0:01:41.431,0:01:44.780
four-year-olds can't play [br]sports, and neither can I.

0:01:44.780,0:01:46.355
(Laughter)

0:01:46.355,0:01:49.280
I play sports at a four-year-old level,

0:01:49.280,0:01:52.997
so what would happen is the kids would

0:01:52.997,0:01:54.696
dribble around some cones, and then got hot,

0:01:54.696,0:01:56.959
and then they would go sit underneath the tree

0:01:56.959,0:01:59.804
where I was already sitting — (Laughter) —

0:01:59.804,0:02:02.349
and I would just make up stories and tell them to them

0:02:02.349,0:02:04.168
and I would tell them stories about my life.

0:02:04.168,0:02:05.911
I would tell them about how, on the weekends,

0:02:05.911,0:02:09.126
I would go home and I would[br]spy for the Queen of England.

0:02:09.126,0:02:12.447
And soon, other kids

0:02:12.447,0:02:14.287
who weren't even in my group of kids,

0:02:14.287,0:02:15.756
they would come up to me, and they would say,

0:02:15.756,0:02:17.668
"You're Mac Barnett, right?

0:02:17.668,0:02:20.737
You're the guy who spies for the Queen of England."

0:02:20.737,0:02:23.959
And I had been waiting my whole life for strangers

0:02:23.959,0:02:26.389
to come up and ask me that question.

0:02:26.389,0:02:28.662
In my fantasy, they were svelte Russian women,

0:02:28.662,0:02:29.899
but, you know, four-year-olds —

0:02:29.899,0:02:34.528
you take what you can get in Berkeley, California.

0:02:34.528,0:02:38.956
And I realized that the stories that I was telling

0:02:38.956,0:02:42.453
were real in this way that was familiar to me

0:02:42.453,0:02:43.658
and really exciting.

0:02:43.658,0:02:45.864
I think the pinnacle of this for [br]me — I'll never forget this —

0:02:45.864,0:02:48.687
there was this little girl [br]named Riley. She was tiny,

0:02:48.687,0:02:51.126
and she used to always take [br]out her lunch every day

0:02:51.126,0:02:53.466
and she would throw out her fruit.

0:02:53.466,0:02:54.874
She would just take her fruit,

0:02:54.874,0:02:56.222
her mom packed her a melon every day,

0:02:56.222,0:02:57.971
and she would just throw it in the ivy

0:02:57.971,0:03:00.284
and then she would eat fruit snacks

0:03:00.284,0:03:02.657
and pudding cups, and I was like, "Riley,

0:03:02.657,0:03:05.713
you can't do that, you [br]have to eat the fruit."

0:03:05.713,0:03:07.530
And she was like, "Why?"

0:03:07.530,0:03:09.362
And I was like, "Well, when[br]you throw the fruit in the ivy,

0:03:09.362,0:03:13.254
pretty soon, it's going to be overgrown with melons,"

0:03:13.254,0:03:15.256
which is why I think I ended up

0:03:15.256,0:03:20.875
telling stories to children and not[br]being a nutritionist for children.

0:03:20.875,0:03:22.763
And so Riley was like, "That will never happen.

0:03:22.763,0:03:23.863
That's not going to happen."

0:03:23.863,0:03:26.914
And so, on the last day of camp,

0:03:26.914,0:03:29.367
I got up early and I got a big cantaloupe

0:03:29.367,0:03:31.393
from the grocery store

0:03:31.393,0:03:33.495
and I hid it in the ivy,

0:03:33.495,0:03:34.946
and then at lunchtime, I was like,

0:03:34.946,0:03:37.621
"Riley, why don't you go over[br]there and see what you've done."

0:03:37.621,0:03:40.796
And — (Laughter) —

0:03:40.796,0:03:43.474
she went trudging through [br]the ivy, and then her eyes

0:03:43.474,0:03:45.566
just got so wide, and she pointed out this melon

0:03:45.566,0:03:47.680
that was bigger than her head,

0:03:47.680,0:03:50.650
and then all the kids ran over [br]there and rushed around her,

0:03:50.650,0:03:52.237
and one of the kids was like, "Hey,

0:03:52.237,0:03:54.126
why is there a sticker on this?"

0:03:54.126,0:03:57.350
(Laughter)

0:03:57.350,0:03:59.819
And I was like, "That is also why I say

0:03:59.819,0:04:02.811
do not throw your stickers in the ivy.

0:04:02.811,0:04:08.283
Put them in the trash can. It[br]ruins nature when you do this."

0:04:08.283,0:04:13.633
And Riley carried that melon around with her all day,

0:04:13.633,0:04:15.661
and she was so proud.

0:04:15.661,0:04:20.505
And Riley knew she didn't [br]grow a melon in seven days,

0:04:20.505,0:04:23.441
but she also knew that she did,

0:04:23.441,0:04:25.657
and it's a weird place,

0:04:25.657,0:04:28.402
but it's not just a place that kids can get to.

0:04:28.402,0:04:31.934
It's anything. Art can get us to that place.

0:04:31.934,0:04:33.891
She was right in that place in the middle,

0:04:33.891,0:04:37.316
that place which you could call art or fiction.

0:04:37.316,0:04:39.381
I'm going to call it wonder.

0:04:39.381,0:04:42.010
It's what Coleridge called the[br]willing suspension of disbelief

0:04:42.010,0:04:43.690
or poetic faith,

0:04:43.690,0:04:46.100
for those moments where a[br]story, no matter how strange,

0:04:46.100,0:04:48.140
has some semblance of the truth,

0:04:48.140,0:04:50.117
and then you're able to believe it.

0:04:50.117,0:04:51.747
It's not just kids who can get there.

0:04:51.747,0:04:54.436
Adults can too, and we get there when we read.

0:04:54.436,0:04:56.686
It's why in two days, people will be

0:04:56.686,0:05:00.220
descending on Dublin to take the walking tour

0:05:00.220,0:05:05.825
of Bloomsday and see everything[br]that happened in "Ulysses,"

0:05:05.825,0:05:08.080
even though none of that happened.

0:05:08.080,0:05:10.337
Or people go to London and they visit Baker Street

0:05:10.337,0:05:11.809
to see Sherlock Holmes' apartment,

0:05:11.809,0:05:13.936
even though 221B is just a number that was painted

0:05:13.936,0:05:17.082
on a building that never [br]actually had that address.

0:05:17.082,0:05:18.807
We know these characters aren't real,

0:05:18.807,0:05:21.427
but we have real feelings about them,

0:05:21.427,0:05:22.471
and we're able to do that.

0:05:22.471,0:05:24.364
We know these characters aren't real,

0:05:24.364,0:05:27.682
and yet we also know that they are.

0:05:27.682,0:05:31.338
Kids can get there a lot more easily than adults can,

0:05:31.338,0:05:32.891
and that's why I love writing for kids.

0:05:32.891,0:05:34.871
I think kids are the best audience

0:05:34.871,0:05:39.260
for serious literary fiction.

0:05:39.260,0:05:42.084
When I was a kid,

0:05:42.084,0:05:44.710
I was obsessed with secret door novels,

0:05:44.710,0:05:45.871
things like "Narnia,"

0:05:45.871,0:05:49.574
where you would open a wardrobe[br]and go through to a magical land.

0:05:49.574,0:05:52.304
And I was convinced that secret doors really did exist

0:05:52.304,0:05:54.332
and I would look for them and try to go through them.

0:05:54.332,0:05:58.076
I wanted to live and cross over into [br]that fictional world, which is —

0:05:58.076,0:06:03.771
I would always just open people's closet doors. [br](Laughter)

0:06:03.771,0:06:06.548
I would just go through my mom's boyfriend's closet,

0:06:06.548,0:06:08.798
and there was not a secret magical land there.

0:06:08.798,0:06:11.386
There was some other weird stuff that[br]I think my mom should know about.

0:06:11.386,0:06:13.107
(Laughter)

0:06:13.107,0:06:17.272
And I was happy to tell her all about it.

0:06:19.545,0:06:23.683
After college, my first job was working

0:06:23.683,0:06:26.231
behind one of these secret doors.

0:06:26.231,0:06:28.188
This is a place called 826 Valencia.

0:06:28.188,0:06:30.280
It's at 826 Valencia Street

0:06:30.280,0:06:32.766
in the Mission in San Francisco,

0:06:32.766,0:06:34.792
and when I worked there, there[br]was a publishing company

0:06:34.792,0:06:37.431
headquartered there called McSweeney's,

0:06:37.431,0:06:40.585
a nonprofit writing center called 826 Valencia,

0:06:40.585,0:06:42.790
but then the front of it

0:06:42.790,0:06:44.360
was a strange shop.

0:06:44.360,0:06:45.787
You see, this place was zoned retail,

0:06:45.787,0:06:48.903
and in San Francisco, they were[br]not going to give us a variance,

0:06:48.903,0:06:51.790
and so the writer who founded[br]it, a writer named Dave Eggers,

0:06:51.790,0:06:54.129
to come into compliance [br]with code, he said, "Fine,

0:06:54.129,0:06:58.505
I'm just going to build a pirate supply store."

0:06:58.505,0:07:01.583
And that's what he did. (Laughter)

0:07:01.583,0:07:03.534
And it's beautiful. It's all wood.

0:07:03.534,0:07:05.464
There's drawers you can pull out and get citrus

0:07:05.464,0:07:08.483
so you don't get scurvy.

0:07:08.483,0:07:10.631
They have eyepatches in lots of colors,

0:07:10.631,0:07:13.331
because when it's springtime, pirates want to go wild.

0:07:13.331,0:07:17.674
You don't know. Black is boring. Pastel.

0:07:17.674,0:07:19.670
Or eyes, also in lots of colors,

0:07:19.670,0:07:21.475
just glass eyes, depending on how you want

0:07:21.475,0:07:25.187
to deal with that situation.

0:07:25.187,0:07:28.312
And the store, strangely,

0:07:28.312,0:07:32.324
people came to them and bought things,

0:07:32.324,0:07:34.151
and they ended up paying the rent

0:07:34.151,0:07:36.215
for our tutoring center, which was behind it,

0:07:36.215,0:07:39.267
but to me, more important was the fact

0:07:39.267,0:07:41.918
that I think the quality of work you do,

0:07:41.918,0:07:44.404
kids would come and get instruction in writing,

0:07:44.404,0:07:48.670
and when you have to walk this weird, liminal,[br]fictional space like this to go do your writing,

0:07:48.670,0:07:52.420
it's going to affect the kind of work that you make.

0:07:52.420,0:07:54.607
It's a secret door that you can walk through.

0:07:54.607,0:07:57.358
So I ran the 826 in Los Angeles,

0:07:57.358,0:08:00.840
and it was my job to build the store down there.

0:08:00.840,0:08:04.400
So we have The Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

0:08:04.400,0:08:07.240
That's our motto: "Whenever[br]you are, we're already then."

0:08:07.240,0:08:11.100
(Laughter)

0:08:11.100,0:08:15.857
And it's on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

0:08:15.857,0:08:17.967
Our friendly staff is ready to help you.

0:08:17.967,0:08:20.110
They're from all eras,

0:08:20.110,0:08:23.719
including just the 1980s, that guy on the end,

0:08:23.719,0:08:25.916
he's from the very recent past.

0:08:25.916,0:08:27.618
There's our Employees of the Month,

0:08:27.618,0:08:30.604
including Genghis Khan, Charles Dickens.

0:08:30.604,0:08:33.596
Some great people have come up through our ranks.

0:08:33.596,0:08:35.947
This is our kind of pharmacy section.

0:08:35.947,0:08:37.286
We have some patent medicines,

0:08:37.286,0:08:39.637
Canopic jars for your organs,

0:08:39.637,0:08:41.271
communist soap that says,

0:08:41.271,0:08:45.722
"This is your soap for the year."[br](Laughter)

0:08:45.722,0:08:47.938
Our slushy machine broke

0:08:47.938,0:08:50.571
on the opening night and [br]we didn't know what to do.

0:08:50.571,0:08:52.810
Our architect was covered in red syrup.

0:08:52.810,0:08:55.284
It looked like he had just murdered somebody,

0:08:55.284,0:08:56.971
which it was not out of the question

0:08:56.971,0:08:59.021
for this particular architect,

0:08:59.021,0:09:00.607
and we didn't know what to do.

0:09:00.607,0:09:01.639
It was going to be the highlight of our store.

0:09:01.639,0:09:02.984
So we just put that sign on it that said,

0:09:02.984,0:09:07.489
"Out of order. Come back yesterday."[br](Laughter)

0:09:07.489,0:09:09.525
And that ended up being a better joke than slushies,

0:09:09.525,0:09:13.621
so we just left it there forever.

0:09:13.621,0:09:17.934
Mammoth Chunks. These things[br]weigh, like, seven pounds each.

0:09:17.934,0:09:20.134
Barbarian repellent. It's full of salad

0:09:20.134,0:09:24.712
and potpourri — things that barbarians hate.

0:09:24.712,0:09:26.670
Dead languages.

0:09:26.670,0:09:29.370
(Laughter)

0:09:29.370,0:09:32.450
Leeches, nature's tiny doctors.

0:09:32.450,0:09:35.590
And Viking Odorant, which[br]comes in lots of great scents:

0:09:35.590,0:09:39.595
toenails, sweat and rotten vegetables, pyre ash.

0:09:39.595,0:09:41.703
Because we believe that Axe Body Spray

0:09:41.703,0:09:43.366
is something that you should[br]only find on the battlefield,

0:09:43.366,0:09:47.560
not under your arms.[br](Laughter)

0:09:47.560,0:09:49.544
And these are robot emotion chips,

0:09:49.544,0:09:51.771
so robots can feel love or fear.

0:09:51.771,0:09:53.481
Our biggest seller is Schadenfreude,

0:09:53.481,0:09:54.782
which we did not expect.

0:09:54.782,0:09:55.793
(Laughter)

0:09:55.793,0:09:58.240
We did not think that was going to happen.

0:09:58.240,0:10:00.501
But there's a nonprofit behind it,

0:10:00.501,0:10:02.481
and kids go through a door[br]that says "Employees Only"

0:10:02.481,0:10:03.696
and they end up in this space

0:10:03.696,0:10:05.870
where they do homework and write stories

0:10:05.870,0:10:08.330
and make films and this is a book release party

0:10:08.330,0:10:09.814
where kids will read.

0:10:09.814,0:10:11.716
There's a quarterly that's published

0:10:11.716,0:10:13.145
with just writing that's done by the kids

0:10:13.145,0:10:14.202
who come every day after school,

0:10:14.202,0:10:15.730
and we have release parties

0:10:15.730,0:10:18.677
and they eat cake and read for their parents

0:10:18.677,0:10:21.529
and drink milk out of champagne glasses.

0:10:21.529,0:10:24.777
And it's a very special space,

0:10:24.777,0:10:27.996
because it's this weird space in the front.

0:10:27.996,0:10:31.295
The joke isn't a joke.

0:10:31.295,0:10:33.695
You can't find the seams on the fiction,

0:10:33.695,0:10:36.603
and I love that. It's this little bit of fiction

0:10:36.603,0:10:39.865
that's colonized the real world.

0:10:39.865,0:10:43.922
I see it as kind of a book in three dimensions.

0:10:43.922,0:10:46.162
There's a term called metafiction,

0:10:46.162,0:10:50.245
and that's just stories about stories,

0:10:50.245,0:10:51.820
and meta's having a moment now.

0:10:51.820,0:10:53.845
Its last big moment was probably in the 1960s

0:10:53.845,0:10:56.522
with novelists like John Barth and William Gaddis,

0:10:56.522,0:10:57.770
but it's been around.

0:10:57.770,0:11:01.311
It's almost as old as storytelling itself.

0:11:01.311,0:11:03.851
And one metafictive technique

0:11:03.851,0:11:05.645
is breaking the fourth wall. Right?

0:11:05.645,0:11:08.895
It's when an actor will turn to the audience

0:11:08.895,0:11:09.961
and say, "I am an actor,

0:11:09.961,0:11:12.552
these are just rafters."

0:11:12.552,0:11:14.577
And even that supposedly honest moment,

0:11:14.577,0:11:16.803
I would argue, is in service of the lie,

0:11:16.803,0:11:19.559
but it's supposed to foreground the artificiality

0:11:19.559,0:11:21.246
of the fiction.

0:11:21.246,0:11:23.395
For me, I kind of prefer the opposite.

0:11:23.395,0:11:25.529
If I'm going to break down the fourth wall,

0:11:25.529,0:11:27.872
I want fiction to escape

0:11:27.872,0:11:29.955
and come into the real world.

0:11:29.955,0:11:34.554
I want a book to be a secret door that opens

0:11:34.554,0:11:37.446
and lets the stories out into reality.

0:11:37.446,0:11:40.427
And so I try to do this in my books.

0:11:40.427,0:11:41.970
And here's just one example.

0:11:41.970,0:11:43.892
This is the first book that I ever made.

0:11:43.892,0:11:46.513
It's called "Billy Twitters[br]and his Blue Whale Problem."

0:11:46.513,0:11:48.643
And it's about a kid who gets a blue whale as a pet

0:11:48.643,0:11:50.229
but it's a punishment

0:11:50.229,0:11:52.704
and it ruins his life.

0:11:52.704,0:11:55.516
So it's delivered overnight by FedUp.

0:11:55.516,0:11:58.106
(Laughter)

0:11:58.106,0:12:00.100
And he has to take it to school with him.

0:12:00.100,0:12:01.454
He lives in San Francisco —

0:12:01.454,0:12:03.985
very tough city to own a blue whale in.

0:12:03.985,0:12:08.419
A lot of hills, real estate is at a premium.

0:12:08.419,0:12:10.927
This market's crazy, everybody.

0:12:10.927,0:12:14.718
But underneath the jacket is this case,

0:12:14.718,0:12:18.904
and that's the cover underneath the book, the jacket,

0:12:18.904,0:12:20.284
and there's an ad

0:12:20.284,0:12:23.527
that offers a free 30-day risk-free trial

0:12:23.527,0:12:25.426
for a blue whale.

0:12:25.426,0:12:28.420
And you can just send in a[br]self-addressed stamped envelope

0:12:28.420,0:12:32.270
and we'll send you a whale.

0:12:32.270,0:12:36.610
And kids do write in.

0:12:36.610,0:12:40.018
So here's a letter. It says, "Dear people,

0:12:40.018,0:12:43.199
I bet you 10 bucks you won't send me a blue whale.

0:12:43.199,0:12:45.676
Eliot Gannon (age 6)."

0:12:45.676,0:12:49.350
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:12:50.838,0:12:52.960
So what Eliot and the other kids

0:12:52.960,0:12:55.451
who send these in get back

0:12:55.451,0:12:58.376
is a letter in very small print[br]from a Norwegian law firm —

0:12:58.376,0:13:02.337
(Laughter) —

0:13:02.337,0:13:05.698
that says that due to a change in customs laws,

0:13:05.698,0:13:07.905
their whale has been held up in Sognefjord,

0:13:07.905,0:13:09.129
which is a very lovely fjord,

0:13:09.129,0:13:10.593
and then it just kind of talks about Sognefjord

0:13:10.593,0:13:13.073
and Norwegian food for [br]a little while. It digresses.

0:13:13.073,0:13:14.855
(Laughter)

0:13:16.767,0:13:18.680
But it finishes off by saying that

0:13:18.680,0:13:21.414
your whale would love to hear from you.

0:13:21.414,0:13:23.000
He's got a phone number,

0:13:23.000,0:13:27.714
and you can call and leave him a message.

0:13:27.714,0:13:30.290
And when you call and leave him a message,

0:13:30.290,0:13:32.281
you just, on the outgoing message,

0:13:32.281,0:13:37.399
it's just whale sounds and then a beep,

0:13:37.399,0:13:40.954
which actually sounds a lot like a whale sound.

0:13:40.954,0:13:42.934
And they get a picture of their whale too.

0:13:42.934,0:13:45.465
So this is Randolph,

0:13:45.465,0:13:48.806
and Randolph belongs to a kid named Nico

0:13:48.806,0:13:53.088
who was one of the first kids to ever call in,

0:13:53.088,0:13:55.398
and I'll play you some of Nico's message.

0:13:55.398,0:13:59.530
This is the first message I ever got from Nico.

0:13:59.530,0:14:01.769
(Audio) Nico: Hello, this is Nico.

0:14:01.769,0:14:05.803
I am your owner, Randolph. Hello.

0:14:05.803,0:14:09.279
So this is the first time I can ever talk to you,

0:14:09.279,0:14:15.523
and I might talk to you soon another day. Bye.

0:14:15.523,0:14:18.110
Mac Barnett: So Nico called back, like, an hour later.

0:14:18.110,0:14:20.360
(Laughter)

0:14:20.360,0:14:24.297
And here's another one of Nico's messages.

0:14:24.297,0:14:27.840
(Audio) Nico: Hello, Randolph, this is Nico.

0:14:27.840,0:14:32.993
I haven't talked to you for a long time,

0:14:32.993,0:14:37.688
but I talked to you on Saturday or Sunday,

0:14:37.688,0:14:39.938
yeah, Saturday or Sunday,

0:14:39.938,0:14:42.953
so now I'm calling you again

0:14:42.953,0:14:47.869
to say hello and I wonder what you're doing right now,

0:14:47.869,0:14:50.805
and I'm going to probably call you again

0:14:50.805,0:14:52.988
tomorrow or today,

0:14:52.988,0:14:57.184
so I'll talk to you later. Bye.

0:14:57.184,0:15:01.492
MB: So he did, he called back that day again.

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He's left over 25 messages for Randolph

0:15:05.373,0:15:08.125
over four years.

0:15:08.125,0:15:10.216
You find out all about him

0:15:10.216,0:15:11.852
and the grandma that he loves

0:15:11.852,0:15:14.207
and the grandma that [br]he likes a little bit less —

0:15:14.207,0:15:16.400
(Laughter) —

0:15:16.400,0:15:18.827
and the crossword puzzles that he does,

0:15:18.827,0:15:22.607
and this is — I'll play you one [br]more message from Nico.

0:15:22.607,0:15:25.910
This is the Christmas message from Nico.

0:15:25.910,0:15:28.273
[Beep] (Audio) Nico: Hello, Randolph,

0:15:28.273,0:15:31.528
sorry I haven't talked to you in a long time.

0:15:31.528,0:15:34.194
It's just that I've been so busy

0:15:34.194,0:15:36.893
because school started,

0:15:36.893,0:15:39.926
as you might not know, probably,

0:15:39.926,0:15:43.807
since you're a whale, you don't know,

0:15:43.807,0:15:48.487
and I'm calling you to just say,

0:15:48.487,0:15:52.177
to wish you a merry Christmas.

0:15:52.177,0:15:56.778
So have a nice Christmas,

0:15:56.778,0:16:03.651
and bye-bye, Randolph. Goodbye.

0:16:03.651,0:16:05.175
MB: I actually got Nico,

0:16:05.175,0:16:08.306
I hadn't heard from in 18 months,

0:16:08.306,0:16:12.424
and he just left a message two days ago.

0:16:12.424,0:16:14.850
His voice is completely different,

0:16:14.850,0:16:18.350
but he put his babysitter on the phone,

0:16:18.350,0:16:22.211
and she was very nice to Randolph as well.

0:16:22.211,0:16:26.561
But Nico's the best reader I could hope for.

0:16:26.561,0:16:30.287
I would want anyone I was writing for

0:16:30.287,0:16:32.428
to be in that place emotionally

0:16:32.428,0:16:34.664
with the things that I create.

0:16:34.664,0:16:38.365
I feel lucky. Kids like Nico are the best readers,

0:16:38.365,0:16:41.960
and they deserve the best stories we can give them.

0:16:41.960,0:16:44.162
Thank you very much.

0:16:44.162,0:16:46.817
(Applause)