It’s No Mystery: Making Reading Exciting with Best-Selling Author Stuart Gibbs

Embark on a thrilling adventure with Stuart Gibbs, a master of storytelling who turns reluctant readers into avid book enthusiasts. The author behind such hit series as Spy School and Fun Jungle takes us on his creative journey through the realm of middle-grade fiction. Want to know what borborygmus means? We've got you covered (and so does the Once Upon a Tim series). We dive into storytelling and learn how Stuart weaves tales of espionage, mystery, and scientific intrigue. Listener questions lead us to plotters and pantsers, whether librarians make good secret agents, and Stuart's favorite spy novelist (who isn't him). We also discuss conservation, science, and how Fun Jungle helps spark curiosity in young readers about wildlife and environmental issues and encourages them to make a difference. 

Chapters:

00:45: Engaging reluctant readers and Stuart Gibbs' middle grade Origin Story 

03:03: Sneaking in words like borborygmus in Once Upon a Tim 

05:52: The importance of strong male and female characters across all five series 

07:52: A big year for new releases: Spy Ski School Graphic Novel; All Ears; Spy School Blackout; and Space Case Graphic Novel

11:05: Favorite series, how or why to end a series, and researching new settings

14:02: Plotters and Pantsers: Kid Questions from Redbud Run Elementary

16:28: Would a librarian be a good secret agent? (Katie M., Handley Library)

16:51: Meet Agent 006 1/2 Jimmy Bond and discover Stuart's favorite spy novelist (who isn't him)

20:01: More Kid Questions from Redbud Run:  All Ears and amazing elephant facts

22:49: Capybaras, Conservation, Championing Science, and Inspiring Kids (and their Adults) to Care for the Planet

28:39: Cool science connections in Spy Ski School Graphic Novel (NO SPOILERS)

Additional Links:

• Stuart Gibbs' official website
• Follow on Instagram
• Order his books
• Watch on YouTube

Transcript

00:02 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I am thrilled to have Stuart Gibbs with us. He's a New York Times bestselling author. I can't keep his books on my shelf. Every time I have them, some kid who's visiting me walks off with them. Therefore, I had to go raid the library to put up all of his major books today, and I'm just so thrilled to have a conversation with you. I've been a huge fan for quite a while, stuart. Welcome to the show. 

00:29 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm a big fan as well, so it's Mutual Admiration Society here. 

00:34 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Excellent. You know your books first came to my attention a few years back. I was working with a group of middle school boys and they were reluctant readers and they had asked me to start a book club for them. And the moment we introduced spy school it was all over. Like this group of boys became the best readers you ever saw. They loved coming in, they wanted to talk about books and they even brought in some girls to talk as well. I'm wondering. And they even brought in some girls to talk as well. I'm wondering. What is it about your books that resonates so strongly with audiences, really from kindergarten on up? 

01:13 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Well, that's very flattering here, I think I'm just really trying to write the kind of books that I would have wanted to read when I was that age and, I'll be honest, I did not think I was going to be a middle grade author. I really was thinking I was going to write for adults. But the moment that the person became my agent said, hey, had I ever thought about writing for middle grade? I was like, oh my gosh, that is exactly what I should be doing. They're really like middle grade had started but it was still just kind of getting going, like I think that those readers had been kind of ignored for a long time. There had been some books, but at that point Harry Potter had come out, Percy Jackson had come out, darkroom Movie Kid had come out, and they were starting to make people recognize that kids would really read if they got a book they were excited about. 

02:10
And I was, in a sense, sort of brought in to attract boys, the thought being that girls were super cool. Girls would read a book about a boy and they'd read a book about a girl. They didn't really care. Girl, they didn't really care. Uh, the boys were maybe a little more likely to read a book that that was about a boy, about boy kind of stuff, like, uh, I, I don't think of it this way myself, right, that that you know, espionage or or or mystery solving should be only the purview of boys, but um, but that was kind of thought, was that that, uh, maybe I should be writing stuff that would certainly appeal to them, and then the girls were just going to show up and so I write things that you know were kind of like things that would have excited me at that age, that I the idea of getting to be a spy, or getting to live behind the scenes at a zoo, or getting to live at the first moon base. 

03:01 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Exactly, and you're really good at sneaking in vocabulary too, like in Once Upon a Tim, you've got your IQ boosters. I'm going to go out on a limb and ask are you a big word fan? Do you like these kind of crazy words that? Go in for the kids and, if so, what's your favorite word? 

03:26 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
I've been accused of using the word vertiginous too often, which I love, which is just, like you know, kind of being like super steep. Right, I mean the American, I'm sorry English. English is just such a great language. There's so many wonderful synonyms for things and each one means just the slightest different thing and so, yeah, there's so many great words out there. And so, yeah, there's so many great words out there. 

03:45
When I started the Once Upon a Tim series, I just had all these words that I loved, that I wanted to use, and I didn't want somebody to say, well, kids are too young to know what this word is. So I had this idea of oh, I'll put this IQ booster in, I can use a word that I can teach them what the word means, and occasionally I can even teach an adult, I guess I guess, what the other. The other thing I love I use it in the first Once Upon a Tim uh, that there's a word that everybody knows what it is, but they don't know what the word is, which is borborygamous, which is when your, your stomach grumbles, and uh, and it's like no adult knows this word. My father taught it to me because he's a doctor and uh, and I just you know, thought like, why isn't every we all have it happen all the time? We should know what that, what it's called. 

04:28 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's a great word. It reminds me so much of in third grade I had this teacher, ms Ledbetter, who when we had extra time she would give us a dictionary and she would be like look up the best word you can it doesn't matter what word write it down and you have to use it five times this week. And so I learned loquacious that way. But there were all sorts of just really cool words and I love the way you bring them in and it's sort of like you're sharing a secret with the kids, like you can use this with your teacher, who's really grumpy and yeah, there is a power. 

05:00 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
I will share a story. When I was a kid, one of the most influential series on me was the Encyclopedia Brown series, because you would always learn all these amazing facts from Encyclopedia Brown. And in one of the fourth grade and we were starting a vocabulary unit and the teacher said well, maybe someday some of you might even learn what Triskaidekaphobia means. 

05:30
And I raised my hand and I said that is fear of the number 13. And I know that the teachers were all like what? How did this even happen? And you know, like I reached out to my parents and you know it was simple, I just read the. I learned the word from a book and so I it was a really special one, obviously stuck with me. And I think you know kids, you know, having a piece of information that's that they can then show off or just have is just a really wonderful thing. 

05:59 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I agree, and you know you were talking about writing sort of in male centric spaces or places that would hook boys. And yet all of your characters like I was thinking about Spy School you know I just read the new one that's coming out the graphic format You've got these strong female characters surrounding your male lead and as a woman, thank you for that but sort of by presenting boys and girls on equal footing, I feel like you're setting both genders up to be successful in society later. 

06:32 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Well, I hope so. Yeah, you know, that's sort of another thing that came from Encyclopedia Brown. I mean, obviously it was being modeled by my parents and other people, but Encyclopedia's best friend was Sally Kimball, who was the toughest kid in school in the town. She was a girl, you know. Encyclopedia couldn't beat up the bad guys, but Sally could, and you know, and so I always like that dynamic. 

06:56
I have a son and a daughter. I don't want to say that one is any more prone to success than the other is any more prone to success than the other. So it's always been very important to me to have even though maybe I'm getting a little more appeal to the boys by having the story be told from the point of view of a boy to make sure that there are really intelligent girls surrounding them. And then, when the time came and I had the idea for the Charlie Thorne series, it was very important to me that I really have my main protagonist in that series be a girl, because I'd had boys be the protagonist all the way through and I really worked with my daughter and her friends to develop Charlie, to make her like the hero that they wanted her to be. 

07:41 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's awesome. And you've got a new Charlie book coming out this year. Is that right Actually? 

07:45 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
well, actually, I only I've got them to be. That's awesome, and you've got a new Charlie book coming out this year, is that right? Actually, I've got them to four, and so the fourth one just came out in paperback, which is Dora the Thorn in the Royal Society just came out. Yes, I would like for there to be more Charlies. It is a lot of work to write a Charlie and I've got some other things I have to do, so we'll see if the series gets to continue or not. 

08:08 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So it's a big year for you. There's always something coming out. You tend to sit at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. What can we look forward to in 2025? 

08:19 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
So Spy Ski School, the graphic novel for the fourth graphic novel in the Spy School series just came out. In May I will release the ninth book in the Fun Jungle series. That's a mystery series that always has to do with animals, environmental issues and things like that Elephant mystery, that basically, I found out that there are people who in this country who own elephants and have their own herds of elephants, and I thought, well, what would happen if one of those herds got out and then they escape, and then when they everyone sort of rounds up the elephants and counts them up, they find out one's missing, and and so the mystery is what happened to this, uh, this elephant? Did it get, uh, kidnapped or stolen or uh yeah? And so, uh, that's going on. 

09:10
Uh, the 13th spy school book will be out in october, that is, spy school blackout. And I also, we uh just announced, uh, my publisher and I, that uh, the moon base alpha series is being turned into graphic novels. So the first of those will be the graphic novel. Space Case will be out in late summer, in August I think. 

09:32 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's a busy year and, as you're sort of straddling the world of writing for middle grade and now writing in the graphic format genre, what are the differences for you in terms of writing process? 

09:44 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Yeah, so the graphic novel process is actually because the graphic novel is so visual at least for me I feel like it's much closer to writing a movie than it is to writing a book. And so when I was first approached about how to adapt my books for graphic novels, I really thought, well, I'm just going to write the screenplay version of. I wrote the screenplay version of Spy School, and so what you're really doing there is is that you know, I actually started in the movie business so. So I started out as a screenwriter and then and then moved to books. And so when you, when you write a screenplay, you're, you're really, it's really kind of like a glorified outline and you're you're playing up the visuals and there's certain things like in a movie, you're really not supposed to have a scene of dialogue go. 

10:38
More than three pages of screenplay, which is equivalent to about three minutes of screen time, that's a long time for a conversation In a book. It was wonderful to suddenly be able to be like wait, I can write a 10-page conversation Even longer, I could have a whole chapter. That's nothing but a conversation. That's incredibly freeing. But then, when you switch from spy school back to the graphic novel and the screenplay you have to figure out. Okay, I have this huge conversation, now I have to figure out how to just really condense this down to just like the really important points of it. You also have to say well, what can I show rather than tell? So sometimes that's great in a graphic novel, because you don't have to describe something that your hero is discovering. 

11:24 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You can show it, but also you know the disadvantages that can be hard to describe certain other things like you know, like what's going through a character's head, necessarily, and is there a particular series that over the years? 

11:48 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
is there one that you love writing, perhaps a little bit more than the others? Not really, I mean they all. The reason I do them all is because I each one has something about it that I love writing, or multiple things about it I love. It was it's always very sad to end a series. I should point out like, for the most part, I didn't set out to write series. I set out like belly up, I thought, well, this is one book, and then Spy School, you know one book. And then, and I loved, uh, working on those ideas so much that when I got the chance to write more, I was like great, uh and um. But when you, when you end a series, like ending the moon based out of a series, it's really tough, it's a really hard decision and uh, um. So yeah, I really love them all and ending one is it's sad. 

12:41 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So you keep writing, as long as the ideas keep flowing and the characters keep giving you new inspirations. Exactly, yeah, yeah. 

12:46 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Or even so, like I ended Moonbase Alpha, not because I didn't have ideas, but because I had been so determined to be realistic about what it would be like to be on the moon that I made the world too limiting and the moon base was very small. I said, oh, it's going to be 10 years till they build moon base beta. Wherever you go on, the moon is just like everywhere you just left and you're always in this big bulky suit and the moon's not nearly as dynamic a place as the earth is. Right, you know, if you go miles from your house, you're in a very different area. It can change dramatically. It does not happen on the moon. So I thought, oh gosh, I don't have any place for them to go. They've been in every room in the moon base 10 times already. It's just going to start feeling really repetitive. 

13:31
And that was a real uh. That was. That was why I ended it. Not, not even. Whereas I mean, it's a great thing about fun jungle uh uh. Spy school uh uh. Like Charlie Thorne, I can say, oh, where do I want to go on earth? Okay, I can figure out a way to go there and have an adventure in all these different places. 

13:50 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, as the creator of these places and being able to put them in different settings, do you get to actually go and research? 

13:59 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
I've gotten very lucky and been able to do a lot of travel for research. Often I'm not 100% sure that something's going to be inspirational, but it usually is so. So there have been some trips I've been like, hey, let's go here and see if this sparks something. Uh, I will say that spy school goes wild was sparked by a trip to africa. But I fully thought I was going to be inspired to write a fun jungle book while I was in africa and was really surprised that when I was there I was like, actually this is a great setting for a spy school book. Uh, doesn't mean I didn't also have an idea for a fun jungle book that could happen, but uh, I, um yeah. So usually anywhere I go is is probably going to spark an idea going to spark an idea. 

14:54 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's awesome. I love that. So I have a couple of questions from some kids that I wanted to ask and a couple of adults who snuck some questions into, and then I want to move into talking about the Fun Jungle series and the work you've done with the environment. So this came from Miss Burke's kindergarten class. You have a class of kindergarten fans who submitted some actually really good questions. Serena A would like to know how long it takes you to write your books. 

15:17 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Oh, okay, it's a good question, serena. So there's a lot of thought that goes in each book of four. You know I would say I'm a big plotter we talk about there's plotters and pantsers. That's a really official author term. Plotters plot everything out, pantsers make it up as they go. We all do research before we work. I don't think that even the pantsers just say, oh, I got an idea and just start writing before we even do it. I will outline my story before I start writing, so I can be thinking about an idea for several weeks or months or years before I'm like, yeah, I got it. Once I actually start the process that a lot of people think of as a writing process, right where I'm sitting at my computer, like I'm now typing it up about six months to write the first draft and then I do about another 10 drafts those additional 10 drafts will be another year, maybe even a year and a half. So it's kind of, but usually from the time I start writing the time that book comes out, we're talking about a two-year process. 

16:26 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Okay, and that actually answered. 

16:28 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Mateo's question too, because he wanted to know then how long it took to go from your idea to the store. There you go, oh, yeah, yeah, well, there's, because there is stuff besides. Uh, there are. There are plenty of other people work on the book besides me, and so you've got uh, if it's an illustrated book, like like uh once by tim or or uh, graphic novel, I've got. 

16:42
I've got uh. I've got chris choy doing my art for the tim books. I've got uh, the incredibly talented anjan sarkar doing the spy school graphics. That's like a year of work for those guys, especially Anjan, he's got to draw so many illustrations. But even if it's just a chapter book, I've got the amazingly talented Lucy Ruth Cummins who's got to do my covers, and there's all these people who are doing the proofreading and the typesetting and getting it printed and getting it shipped to the right place. So a lot has to happen besides just me writing the book. A lot of the time kids are like why don't you just release it earlier if you're done, and I'm like it's out of my hands now, kid. 

17:22 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You don't have that control Right. Librarian Katie M from Winchester Virginia would like to know do you think a librarian would be a good secret agent? 

17:33 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
I think a librarian would be a great secret agent. You know they're very quiet, they're not. You know they're good at hanging out and huffing notes, but they, you know the most important. I mean what secret agents really do is acquire information and librarians are really good at acquiring information. 

17:50 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
They know where to get it All right. And James P from Orlando, florida, said to ask you, who is your favorite spy novelist for kids besides yourself, James P from Orlando, florida, that seems. 

18:04 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
I, look, I. Even if there wasn't a guy whose name is James P, I would have to say there's a great spy novelist, james Ponte, who writes the City Spies series Absolutely incredible spy series. I just read the most recent, London Calling. I didn't read it just because it's dedicated to me and my children. I read it because I wanted to know what was going to happen next in that series. James Ponte also has a really wonderful mystery series, the frame series, uh, uh, and, and now has started another one called, uh, the sherlock society. So I would have said that anyhow, even if, uh, it's weird that james p has the same question, I know, yeah and also lives in the same town. 

18:46
That's true, true. 

18:47 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And ask one more question he said to ask you about your James Bond Jr book. 

18:53 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Oh yeah. So when I was talking before about the idea that sometimes authors are putting a lot of thought, that there's a long thinking process going on before we're actually writing, uh, spy school is my oldest idea, uh, I, I had the idea in sixth grade because I that was when I saw my first james bond movie my friends and I all kind of were imagining ourselves to be as suave and debonair as james bond. But I, I was an aspiring author and so I wrote what was we would now call fan fiction. Uh, and it was not a james bond story, it was a jimmy bond story about james bond's son. Uh, there, uh, there was a james bond book called the man with the golden gun and my story was called the kid with the golden water pistol. Um, uh, jim jimmy bond. 

19:45
Jimmy bond was, uh, james bond is 18 007, jimmy is 18, 006 and a half. But he was just, he wasn't really a spy, he was just pretending to be a spy. And so there was this joke about him going to a top secret spy school in it. I never finished the story. I didn't really know where to go with it. I was pantsing when I should have been plotting and I got stuck and I never got to the spy school part. But I loved the spy school part and I came back to it repeatedly over the years and that is really the genesis of spy school. 

20:17 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, that's very cool. So any kid out there who is writing fan fiction or inspired by the work you're doing, keep going with it, because you never know where it'll lead down the road Exactly. Yeah, all right. Two more kids, sahili and Bella, also from Miss Burke's kindergarten class, are big Fun Jungle fans, and so they wanted to know how you come up with the ideas for the elephant book, all Ears, and for the panda book. 

20:46 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Well, this series, fun Jungle, is really based upon the fact that I worked at a zoo when I was in college and I saw what was going on behind the scenes and I had always loved going to the zoo and I just thought, wow, like a lot of other kids probably like going to the zoo, they probably like to know what happens behind the scenes at the zoo. So, and I, so I still, I love going to the zoo and I now, even when I first started I was, I was reaching out to zoos saying can I come behind? I knew from working in the zoo everybody worked in the zoo loved to talk to people about their work. Sometimes the administration isn't so pleased about you getting, but if you can talk to the keepers, you're going to have a great time talking to them about you getting. But if you can talk to the keepers, you're gonna have a great time talking to them. And so, uh, uh, the original books in the series uh were uh, belly up and poach were really sort of based upon me. Uh, you know, like my experiences that I had and people I talked to. But then I started to realize that I could keep going to zoos and doing research and and so all the fun jungle ideas, for the most part, have either come from doing research at zoos, talking to keepers or actually talking to people who work in groups that are fighting for the environment. Pandemonium was. 

22:10
I was actually at the San Diego Zoo talking to them about rhinos, doing my research for big game, and the keepers were just taking around. They said, well, you know, you have to do pandas. I mean, that is like that is the animal people are most nuts about. It's the only animal people will dress up as to come to the zoo. And and I was like, gosh, okay, uh, yeah, I should, let's start talking about pandas. So so I, uh, I really did that. 

22:37
But elephants elephants have always been my favorite animal. I love elephants. They're brilliant, they're smart, they have emotional connections with each other. They have the best nose ever. Uh, they're uh, 40 000 muscles in an elephant's trunk. We have like 600 muscles in our entire body. There's just, and I was just looking for ways to do an elephant story for quite a long time. Elephants play a part in big game. There's an elephant stampede at the zoo that causes some trouble, but I had really been looking for the right way to do elephants for a long time and then when I kind of recognized that there were people who owned elephants in the United States, I was like okay, that's kind of an interesting thing. Like maybe I don't have to do a mystery set involving a zoo elephant, I can do a mystery involving a privately owned elephant. 

23:26 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that and so, as you've been working with all of these different animals and you know you've been visiting zoos. On your website you've got a really cool section about getting involved and working towards conservation. Can you speak a little towards what moves you in terms of protecting our environment and getting kids involved in conservation work? 

23:48 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I have always loved just being out in the woods. I grew up in Texas. There were woods across the street from me and then one day there weren't they. You know, there's like a lot of the. If I go back to Texas now I was just back there the corridor between San Antonio and Austin, which used to be really just countryside, is now almost non-stop suburbs and fast food places. 

24:17
I actually get into this quite a lot in in the new uh fun jungle book, because it was uh about, uh, the kids kind of being really concerned about this happening around them and uh, so it, um it, yeah, it's, it's like, uh, I mean, look, we all need places. Look, we all need places to live, we all need places to go to school, we all need places to. You know, our food has to come from somewhere. This is a tough call about, you know, like I shouldn't be able to say, well, I can have a house, but you guys can't have a house. So there are these environmental issues surrounding us all and I, I, but I spent a lot of time in those woods. 

24:57
I, uh, I love going around looking for wildlife. Uh, and I was always, uh, really, I, I went. The reason I was at working at the zoo in Philadelphia was because I was, uh, I was studying, uh, I was, I was thinking about being a field biologist, and so I was actually studying the capybara at the zoo, which at the time was an obscure animal and now everybody on Earth it's like their favorite animal. So you're welcome, america. 

25:24 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That was very kind of you, yeah. 

25:25 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Yeah, obviously, people in South America were well aware of what a capybara was back then, because they're pretty common, but so, yeah, so I just, I just I loved animals and I really sort of grew up thinking that, oh, everybody loves the zoo as much as I do. Everybody wants to go to the zoo every single day. I realized not everybody likes that, but kids really do. You know, I don't know why that sort of fades out for adults, but so I was just. That was like something I loved and we were talking before about like what do I do? That has appeal. 

26:05
I think kids, they like animals, they like going to the zoo, they like going off into the wild. A common question I ask students at schools is how many of you like catching lizards and snakes? A lot of hands go up. Uh, most places, yeah, not so much new york city but but a lot of other places a lot of hands go up. A lot of kids like to uh be out in the wild and encounter animals and I, I've just never lost that and I and I think now more than ever, kids are really concerned about like what the future of the earth and the wild and wild animals is. 

26:37 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
As they should be, cause we're definitely in trouble when it comes to the future of the earth and wild animals. So whatever we can do to reconnect ourselves and reconnect kids, I think back to nature is important. 

26:50 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, and and you're right If you like there's. I think back to nature is important. Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, and you're right If you like there's. I mean, yeah, so I like to champion science. That shouldn't be a political thing to say I like to champion science, but sometimes it is regarded that way. I think kids find it really fascinating to learn interesting things about animals. Uh, I, uh, uh. Like you know, when I've been dropping this over and over, when I'm talking whale done, the most recent fun jungle involves a blue whale. The blue whale is so big that its tongue alone is bigger than a hippopotamus, right? 

27:26 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
hippopotamus is the second largest land animal. 

27:28 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
It's not even as big as the tongue of the largest animal on earth. So kids love that. They love that. They also, though, will also respond. I wrote Big Game because my family and I were at the San Diego Safari Park and at the time they had four northern white African rhinos. It turned out there were only eight of those left on Earth. White African rhinos. It turned out there were only eight of those left on earth, and so they said to us they, by the way, you've just seen 50% of the population of this animal. Well, all four of those rhinos have died from old age. There's only two North African white rhinos left. They're both too old to breed, and if I'm talking to a bunch of kids, you don't have to say much more than, by the way, this is an animal species, a beautiful, beautiful, uh, spirit species that is going to go extinct in your lifetime, and that, and you know- they hear that you don't have to say too much, else they're going to be like, well, what can we do? 

28:23
what you know, you say like, well, that one, not much. Uh, there, san diego is trying to think about bringing them back through in vitro fertilization with frozen embryos. That's a real long shot because you still have other rhino species we want to save. So you know, often you say to the kids well, like you know, let's talk about how we save the species that we still have, right, or the ones, how do we keep other species from going extinct? 

28:47 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And also, just you know, there are all kinds of amazing careers that kids can go into that maybe weren't available when you and I were kids. 

28:54 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Absolutely yeah. 

28:55 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That they can do. That will target helping the animals or helping plants or making the world a little bit better too. 

29:02 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Look, I mean the whole idea of clean energy did not really I mean it was kind of out there on your kids, but whatever you think about it politically, it's. I mean the New York Times did a graph, a chart, a couple of months ago showing how much of every state's energy is coming from different sources. And there are some states where, like you know, like out in the plains, where, like almost all their energy is coming from from wind, and it's kind of shocking Right, or or states you would think of as just being big oil and gas places that are really getting a lot of their energy from wind and solar now, and that's a huge field that really has come to be in the last couple of decades and literature with teachers and kids, and I love it when a book takes me by surprise and I learn something new. 

29:54 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And so, like in your Spice Ski School, you had some really cool facts about Colorado and about the minerals that were there. I'm like wait, I gotta look that up. Is that accurate? And I love the fact that you're able, in such a fun capacity, to throw in science and intrigue kids and hopefully they'll have that same reaction I had of can I go look it up? Is that really true? 

30:19 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, usually that comes from something that I've discovered myself. So, yes, so the basis not to give anything away, but the plot of Spy Skies really hinges on this thing involving this mineral. Kieskel really hinges on this thing involving this mineral. That's kind of. There's kind of a crazy story behind the US, like I don't think I get into it that much, but but actually, like during World War II the Germans like sent people into America to actually get control of of these mineral rights that the US almost didn't realize was actually happening. And heard this story it was kind of like, right, can that be right? And then I went, I reached out. I actually my folks were living in Colorado at the time. I went to the Colorado School of Mines to talk to them and it was just playing around with this idea of like what could you know? Where can this go? But when I probably first heard that idea, you know, a decade, two decades before I actually ended up figuring out that there was a way to use it in a story and a lot of that kind of happens that you, you hear something and you go, wow, that's interesting. 

31:20
I, you know, I like kids are always saying like why do you? How do you have so many ideas? And I'm like I've just been around for a while, you know, I've experienced things, I've seen things. I like there's a whole scene in the inside the Washington Monument in Washington DC. That was based upon the fact that one day I had gone to the Washington Monument, I'd been on the first tour, and they said, oh, you can all walk down through the Washington Monument and go down the staircase to leave. And I was like great Many years later I took my kids back there to do to sort of make sure I had everything right. And I said to the you know, the Rangers yeah, hey, do you still let people walk down inside the Washington Monument? And they're like we've never let anybody do that. It's like, no, I, I did it, somebody had it. 

32:08 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I did it too, so I can support you on this. 

32:12 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. So now I've actually ended up meeting through all this. The head of the of the parks runs the national mall and he took me and my son down through it again. He said, like you know, you weren't nuts, that actually did happen. But for a while I was like, did I make this up? And so sometimes you have experiences that even the people who work at the places don't even know anybody ever got to do. Right, like my institutional memories, longer than their institutional memory. So it's so. Yeah, you just sort of collect all these experiences, hear these stories, things like that, and you never know what's going to end up being important. 

32:46 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, stuart, it has been a joy to have you on the Adventures in Learning podcast today. I want to finish with the question I ask everybody, and it's a question that I feel like is really important today and that's what brings you hope. 

33:00 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Oh man, I well. Okay, one of the best things about this job which I did not know was even going to be a part of the job was this idea that you get to see. You have all this interaction with your readers, right? You go to schools, you go to festivals and things like that, and last weekend I was at the North Texas Teen Book Festival in Irving, texas. It's the I think it's the largest festival. Even though it's called Teen, it actually has a middle grade and a teen component, and in this day, I mean, it's something like 15,000 kids come to this festival and just to be surrounded by so many kids are just so excited about reading. 

33:47
I know that the younger generation often gets a bad rap because people say they don't read as much as they used to. I don't think that's actually true. I would argue that I think adults don't read as much as they used to, maybe, but you know so, when you go to school and kids are just so excited about reading or, best of all, kids are so excited about reading, that's just, you know that makes me think like, hey, these are kids who are all about who are excited about reading, that's just. You know, that's like. That makes me think like, hey, these are kids who are all about, who are excited about education, they're excited about science, they're excited about what they can do. You know where those about, like you know where books will take them and inspire them to go. 

34:31 - Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. And everybody, go out and get the latest Stuart Gibbs books. They are fabulous and you're not going to regret it. They will fly off your shelves. 

34:43 - Stuart Gibbs (Guest)
Thanks so much for having me. 

34:46
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