Odder Otters, Pocket Bears, Arctophiles, and Championing Libraries with author Katherine Applegate

What's better than a novel in verse about a wild sea otter rescued by the Monterray Aquarium? A beautiful picture book that tells that otter's story! Award winning author Katherine Applegate returns to chat all things otter, as we explore environmental themes in her magical Odder: An Otter's Story, illustrated by Charles Santoso. We also offer some fun ideas for bringing the book to life in early childhood and elementary classrooms.

Katherine is the 2025 Summer Reading Champion for the Collaborative Summer Library Program. This summer (from June 1-July 31), budding storytellers ages 8-12 are invited to enter the Color Our World Writing Contest. The grand prize winner receives a virtual writing workshop with Katherine, signed copies of Willodeen, Crenshaw, Odder, and Wishtree, and $500 of books for readers ages 8-12 from Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.

Katherine also gives us a sneak peek into her upcoming middle grade novel, Pocket Bear, a magical tale of mascot bears, love and second chances, and Ukranian refugees. And we discover that my youngest daughter is an arctophile.

Chapters:

• 01:03: Odder: An Otter's Story  
• 12:02: Collaborative Summer Library Program
• 14:28: Pocket Bear, the power of second chances, and what it is to be an arctophile
• 21:38: Book Tours and celebrating the magic of connecting with books

Links:

• Educational resources on Katherine's website
• Connect on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky
• Katherine's previous podcasts: Episode 51 &  Episode 83

Transcript

00:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So the next guest on the Adventures in Learning podcast is the all-time champion of appearances on my podcast. This makes appearance number three and you've got to guess this is my absolute favorite guest in the whole wide world. Today we have the one and only Katherine Applegate on and we're going to talk books and libraries and so much more. So, Katherine, welcome to the show. 

00:28 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, thank you, Diane. It is such a joy to chat with you. I always come away feeling better about life. 

00:33 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I always feel better when I talk to you. So I was so excited when we were able to work this out. So I fell in love with the original Odder when you were here last year and I devoured your novel in verse and I understand that we've got a treat coming out this month. Can you tell us a little bit about what's in the works? 

00:56 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, I'm so excited about this picture book. It is a picture book version of Odder. It's called Odder an Otter's Story, but it has the most wonderful conception tale. It came about after I was in Marin County in Northern California doing a district-wide read for Odder. It was three elementary schools and I had worked with them before and they had done, for example, ivan and used a picture book there. 

01:30
So this wonderful librarian since retired named Deborah Armstrong, took me aside and she said you know, it would have been so cool if we'd had a picture book to go with this middle grade novel, because you know, the K through twos would really have understood it and been able to visualize it a little more. So I went to my editor, liz Zabla, at Firewall and Friends and told her what Deborah had suggested and Liz said yeah, and they ran with it and Charles Santoso, the illustrator, just did a brilliant job. I keep joking. I really didn't need to write anything because it's just so beautiful and joyful and you just want to hang out with Otters when you're done looking at it. So I love that it started. The catalyst was a librarian. 

02:21 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's beautiful, and I'm going to ask, because I just reread Odder how did you condense Odder's story into the 32 pages of a picture book? 

02:31 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
You know it's funny, it was already condensed, I thought, because it was free verse. There was a white space, it was pretty tight, and so I had to think and this is hard for me because I'm not particularly a visual person about the collaborative aspects of it and how much I could pass along to Charles and he just, you know he can do anything. So I had to remind myself things like oh, expressions and emotions can often be seen on the page without any words, and that made it a little bit easier, but I had to keep winnowing. It took a while. 

03:12 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I see you've got a copy of the book behind you. Would you like to share maybe a favorite page or a favorite spread? 

03:20 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, where to start, oh, oh, where to start there's. I think one of my favorites is this moment where the two otters are floating together. They welcome otters, showing her where the best muscles hide and how to float together paws entwined a comforting tangle of whiskers and tails. And what I love about it is that you know it's the illustrations. Charles has them holding paws, as they often do, and there's something about his capacity to convey emotions with animals that I think is really remarkable. I've been able to work with him on a bunch of books. I've been really lucky Wish Tree and he did the cover for Pocket Bear and the Interior Illustrations and Willowdean, and just it's every time. It's just such a gift when you get those first sketches and you open up that document and you open, you know, you open up that, that document and you go whoa, because they've, they've taken just some random words and turned them into something so magical. 

04:35 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And that's one of the things I love about picture books is they extend the story and you get to. You get to see things that maybe you didn't even imagine as the author initially. 

04:46 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Exactly exactly, and it's a really fascinating process. I mean, I've only done a few picture books so I don't have a lot of experience, but they're sort of invisible and I know this not always the case. I think, particularly with graphic novels there's a lot of back and forth. 

05:05 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right. 

05:06 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
And of course, you've got the art director, who's amazing Rich Dees and other people involved too. But there's something about just passing those words along and then having it come back in this full-throated, beautiful, amazing visual that I just I can't get over. I think it's one of the best parts of picture book writing. 

05:33 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
One of the things I love to do when I work with teachers of young children is we talk about ways to read a picture book that draw kids' attention to both story and art, and so often we'll do a walk where you walk through the illustrations first and they try to guess what's happening based on the illustrations, or you read the words first without showing the pictures, and then you show the pictures so they can see how the two marry together and they sort of become detectives as they're reading and they find things that maybe they would have missed had they listened to the words alone. 

06:07 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, that's fascinating. I'm going to steal that. I love that, please do? 

06:11 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love sharing these things to steal. I mean, that's part of why we teach and write right. 

06:17 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, that's a beautiful idea because it would. It forces them to think, yeah, beyond the collaboration, and to kind of kind of go in surprising directions. I think, especially if you start just with the illustrations. I love that. 

06:32 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Now I have a question for you, because I was thinking about you've got Odder and Willa Dean. There's the Ivan books, there's Wish Tree. You have a heart that is so capacious and given to the environment. Can you talk a little bit about why you fell in love with otters and sort of how that connects to sort of your overall love of the planet? 

06:55 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, I mean, just spend two minutes watching an otter video and you know why they are just the way they move in the water. It's lyrical, it's gorgeous and, let's face it, there's the cute factor they're adorable, but it turns out they're a little more complex than we tend to give them credit for. They're wild animals and they're a little more complex than we tend to give them credit for. They're. You know, they're wild animals and they're a stressed species. But I was going to write your basic all-purpose. Here's an otter having an adventure story. 

07:31
And then I came across the Monterey Bay Aquarium's surrogate mother program and I had no idea that they were ending up in this particular part of the California coastline with tons of abandoned or orphaned baby otters and they didn't know what to do with them and they were trying to have humans raise them, which did not go well because of course they acclimated and pretty soon they were, you know, jumping on surfboards and into kayaks and just generally too human friendly. 

08:05
So this particular program, they had a couple of um, of resident otters who'd been declared non-releasable and they happened to have the timing workout, just right. They brought in this baby who had been we think in this particular case, the mother had probably been killed by a great white shark, which is more common, unfortunately, than it used to be because of climate change and the changes in the water temperature and so they paired them up and this surrogate mom rose to the occasion and it just it was such a breakthrough. They have managed to repopulate a lot of Elkhorn Slough, which is where these otters hang out right near Monterey Bay, and it was just so fascinating that I went in a whole different direction and wrote about that. 

09:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that, and you even managed to make me feel slightly sorry for the great white shark in the beginning as well. 

09:09 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
It's a little goofy? Yeah, apparently, a lot of times they are. They're adolescents, they're on the younger side, and they see a figure above them that looks like a seal. Potentially they love blubber. They go, wow, here's a, here's a tasty little treat. And it turns out to be a surfer. Unfortunately, sometimes, or very often, an otter and otters are nothing but fur, no blubber at all. So of course they spit them out and move on, but it's a little hard on the otters. 

09:43 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yeah, and I loved the notion of the otter beauty salon too, like I had no idea that that much work went into their fur and their upkeep and that transition from baby to full out otter. 

09:57 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
I didn't either, and isn't that the coolest job? There is a job where you basically just sit there and brush baby otters and because they have that incredibly dense fur and they need to keep it, you know, keep air bubbles in there and the videos of it are just you just go. I want that job. 

10:18 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I'm feeling like early childhood teachers. You heard this first when you get the picture book version of Odder: An Otter's Story. You need to set up a play center and you can have brushes and blow dryers and stuffed otters and you can have kids be the veterinarians and the people working at the aquarium and they can feed and brush the otters.

10:40 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
 I love it.

10:42
You're so good at this. 

10:44 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's funny, I taught preschool once upon a time. These are the connections I would totally be making. I'm like, oh yeah, we need that too. 

10:50 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
That's perfect. I love it. That would be so much fun. I would have loved that when I was a preschool kid. 

10:56 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I mean, imagine you can set up your medical kits along with your salon stuff You've got them both and create a tank where you can practice letting them dive. I mean, hey, you've got it made. That is so much fun, I love it. Now I want to teach preschool again. That would be fun. 

11:15 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
I was a preschool aid. I was never a teacher per se while I was in college, but I loved it. It was, you know it was exhausting. 

11:24 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It is exhausting, but what an amazing age. And you know, I've come to think as I'm getting older, that everything we needed to know we learned in preschool or we should go back and ask a preschool teacher about, because everything we need to function as humans in life we can get from that experience. You know, we learn empathy, we learn how to play together, we learn how to get over our differences. Wouldn't that be nice, oh wouldn't that be nice. 

11:52 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
There's an idea. 

11:55 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I see behind you you have a poster that says libraries are life. Tell us a little bit about that. 

12:02 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
That is from this wonderful group that I'm sure you're very familiar with. I was not called the Collaborative Summer Library Program and you can find them at cslpreadsorg and they are amazing. They make available this wonderful handbook each summer for library programs and they're, you know, incredibly well, you know, right up your alley lots of fun ideas, inexpensive ways to engage young readers, but even all the way through adult, and so I am their summer reading champion this summer and I have just been delighted to be a small part of what they're doing. It's so cool. 

12:49 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So in the summertime, when they put this book together, does this go out to other libraries or to families, or how does that work?

12:56 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
 Yeah, it's available to public librarians. 

13:00
You can go to their website and it's just rife with great ideas, so I highly recommend it, and they have all kinds of volunteer librarians who contribute ideas, and every year it's different, so you know when you're on a budget and you're you're overwhelmed, as all librarians are. It's a wonderful resource. We're also with um, my publisher, macmillan. We are sponsoring a writing contest and it is for 8 to 12 year olds and it runs from June 1st through July 31st. There's a real simple prompt and the winner gets a writing seminar with me and $500 worth of Macmillan's books. Oh wow, and fine books from me, and it's a really fun contest. So you can again. You can find out about that at cslpreadsorg or at the Macmillan School Library website, and I'll drop both of those links in the show notes as well. 

14:06 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
No, that's amazing. 

14:07 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading all these wonderful stories so you get to read these wonderful stories. 

14:13 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You're championing the work they do. What else goes with being their summer champion?

14:17 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
 Oh, I got a really cool t-shirt.

14:23 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's awesome. So what else is going on with you? 

14:28 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Well, I have a very fun book coming out that I'm excited about, called Pocket Bear. That is coming out in September, and it had two sometimes, you know, a display of used stuffed animals, and they had been beautifully refurbished and they each had a little biography, and this is a organization that takes used stuffed animals and rehabs them, and very often the kids who donate them actually provide biographical information, you know, because sometimes teddy bears, you know, are allergic to peanut butter. You got to know these things and so I thought that was really charming and it, as it happens, toys are a huge problem in terms of waste. Yes, particularly plastic toys, but certainly stuffed animals too. Then, sometime later, I came across a story about pocket bears, and they were also called mascot bears or soldier bears. Okay, and they're teeny tiny. I happen to have one here. I will show you this. This is an actual one. 

15:49 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Wow, that is a very little bear. 

15:53 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, they're tiny, like palm size. Palm size, three and a half inches usually, and this guy's been through a lot. He's easily 100 years old and they they were manufactured by this group called Farnell in the UK during World War One and it was so sweet and poignant. They would make these little bears and their eyes look up just a little bit and they were made to go in a soldier's pocket so that while he was, you know, presumably in the trenches, he would look down and see this little bear looking up at him and think of his sweetheart or his family. They also made mascot cats and I thought that was so touching, I just kind of went with it and it became a story. So I combined those two elements and added a couple humans in the form of Ukrainian refugees. Believe it or not, this all works. I swear I believe it and it's told from the point of view of a kind of tough street cat named Zephyrina. So all those elements sort of combined into what I hope is a really special book. 

17:08 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And of course you have sold me with that elevator pitch and I can't wait to get my copy and read it.

17:12 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
 Yeah, it comes out in September and I'm really excited about it,

17:16 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
and you even have a bear behind you In addition to your little pocket bear. You've got a bear on the shelf with a pocket bear. 

17:24 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Well, this is. He actually figures in the story. There's some debate about who came up with teddy bears first. There's some debate about who came up with teddy bears first. There was a guy in Brooklyn who claims to have invented these bears after Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt saved a bear. It's a complicated story, but he was hunting Sounds like a little bit of American mythology. 

17:55
Yeah, and hence teddy bear. On the other side of the pond you have some say Stief, some say Stief manufacturers, and they also were coming up at the very same time with the idea of a stuffed teddy bear. So this is the original Stief version and the story is that they were on a the very, very, very. These are the very first prototype bears. There were 3000 of them and they were on a ferry across the ocean and, according to the company, they vanished and nobody knows what happens to them. So this is based on an early drawing they had and I managed to incorporate that into the story as well. Nobody knows if it's true or if it was just a marketing idea, but the disappearance of these 3,000 bears remains a mystery. 

18:53 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Ooh, what a fun mystery to unravel, or at least to play with. And I remember the Stief stuffed animals because we lived in Germany when I was a little girl and so my parents really loved those. And I still have a couple. I have a deer and a giraffe that are Stief. 

19:11 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh you know, people collect them. Some of them are incredibly expensive, so I was fascinated. They're called, I think, arctophiles stuffed bear enthusiasts. 

19:25 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You mean there's a name for those who collect stuffed animals

19:28 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
 Apparently? 

19:29 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yes, I'll have to let my 22-year-old know that that could be her other career in addition to acting. 

19:50 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
This is, you know, bear specific, though you know there are many variations. Maybe there's a broader sort of archaeological term for those who specialize in a wide range of stuffed animals. I'm a real, as is my, my grown daughter, a real stuffed animal. I'm not allowed to go into a toy store where they're really cute stuffed animals, because I'll walk out with one for sure. 

20:03 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I understand. I came back from Australia with a blue penguin, a little baby blue penguin, and a. I think I had a kangaroo as well. So, yeah, I get it. And then, of course, they're the ones behind me that have been with me since my kids were small. I've got my Paddington. 

20:22 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
I see. 

20:23 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Paddington. Yeah, and Lily and her purple plastic purse keep me company when I'm working, so I guess you never outgrow them. 

20:30 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
They say, somebody did a study recently that stuffed animals are good for adult stress. So who knows, maybe they are. 

20:38 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I would agree with that study. I think we all need to play a little bit more than we do. And we're definitely all stressed yes there's a lot of stress, so that actually is a great question how are you coping with the stress of the world today? A great question how are you coping with the stress of the world today. 

20:54 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, you know I'm not on the front lines. You know I was just at Texas Library Association. You want to talk about being on the front lines? That is the home office of book banning, and there are these devoted librarians going in every single day and having to confront book bans and and you know they're underpaid and overworked and and so I can't complain. I worry about so many people right now about immigrants, about trans kids, about you name it, and we're all worried and I think it's just a one day at a time thing. One thing I've realized is, maybe because I worry about so much, as I know you do, I think maybe it helps to focus on maybe one particular cause, because we can't change everything and we only have so many emotional resources. So I'm trying to think in those terms a little bit more. 

21:59 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think that makes sense and I think figuring out how to have that balance between being present and on the front lines, or trying to amplify those who are on the front lines, but also living in joy and maintaining your own spirit, because you're no good to anybody if you can't fill your own cup and I say this even as I have primal screamed more than once in the last month, but I know that there needs to be that balance. You're no good to other people if you can't also take care of yourself. 

22:32 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
If it's any comfort, you're not alone in your primal screaming. 

22:37 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and you know, the louder we get, the more primal screams, maybe the more we'll change things. 

22:43 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
You know, there are moments I still feel optimistic, more than pessimistic, and there was a period where I just felt so dark. 

22:51 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I think you grab onto that and go with it and you get the opportunity and you're going to be going on a book tour with the picture book, you get a chance to engage with kids and I know we've both talked about how. In so many ways those engagements with kids are reassuring, because they love to read, they tend to be hopeful, they see the world through different eyes. What are you most looking forward to on your book tour? 

23:19 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, exactly that. You said fill your cup. That's exactly what happens. I find, especially because my kids are grown now, I need to go back and be around fourth graders and be reminded of their idealism and their silliness and their energy, and I take that and I go back to the laptop with it and it helps me. I had this interesting conversation recently with some writers about whether they wrote for themselves or for a particular audience and we were all over the map. It was interesting because of course, you have, you know, that childlike part of yourself that's going into any book you write. But I very much find that doing book tours helps me remember for whom I'm writing and I love that. 

24:10 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, that's wonderful and I know, having seen you on your book tours, that the kids respond in kind and there is nothing like seeing you out on a book tour and hearing kids screaming for books and knowing that that love of reading really is out there. And it's about good storytelling that when kids connect to a good story, magic happens. 

24:31 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, absolutely, but it's also about teachers and librarians and parents, of course, and booksellers all of whom are out there, you know getting those books into the hands of the right kids, and that, I think, is where the magic really happens. 

24:48 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, I am so excited to get to hopefully see you when you make your tour down in the Virginia area but I will drop the links to the rest of your tour dates for everybody and we are so excited for the premiere of your picture book Odder and to see Pocket Bear come out later this year. Katherine, thanks for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast and I can't wait to welcome you back. 

25:12 - Katherine Applegate (Guest)
Oh, thank you, Diane. You are so much fun. I always love doing this.