Where Are You, Bronte? Barbara McClintock on Honoring Tomie dePaola, Creative Journeys and the Transformative Power of Storytelling

Where Are You, Bronte? celebrates its book birthday this week -- and this book should come with complementary tissues for the adults reading it! Beloved illustrator Barbara McClintock took on the herculean task of illustrating Tomie de Paola's final manuscript. The result is a beautiful collaboration that pays tribute to his style while exploring the universal themes of love, loss, and memory. In the end, our stories and the connections we build with others outlive us and leave a lasting legacy.

With a focus on love, loss, and moving forward, Barbara discusses the challenges of honoring Tomie's distinctive style while infusing her own creativity and vision. 

We also chat about the journey from childhood sketches and wanting to be a cat to becoming a renowned illustrator. Barbara talks about mentorship from Maurice Sendak and the power of self-education through libraries. Barbara continues to pay her early mentorship forward through the work she does in unlocking the stories of college students.

0:54: Where Are You, Bronte? and adapting Tomie's style

9:47: Our shared favorite spread

13:31: Barbara's Origin Story and Adventures in Learning (Cats, Maurice Sendak, and Lots and Lots of Paper)

15:07: Libraries as Art Education

19:09: Teaching and Mentoring Young Authors and Illustrators

27:16: New Projects In the Works

32:01: The Importance of Mentors -- Books and People

34:47: Hope -- Bonding With Pets Like Bronte

Links: 

Purchase Where Are You, Bronte?

Barbara McClintock's Website

Follow Barbara on Instagram

Transcript

00:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. This week is a special treat. Not only do I get to welcome Barbara McClintock to the show and she has been dear to my family for many, many years, huge fans of her illustrations and her books I feel like my girls grew up alongside of her work but also we're celebrating her illustration of a brand new book, that is, it was Tomie DePaula's last book and the illustrations are incredibly gorgeous. It should actually come with a trigger warning because there is a spread that will make you ball, but this book is absolutely gorgeous and we're going to talk about Where's Bronte and I'm just so happy to have Barbara on the show. So, Barbara welcome. 

00:48 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for inviting me to join you. This is just quite an honor, thank you. 

00:54 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, I have to tell you, when I opened up Where Are you, Bronte? Tomie dePaolo was so near and dear to my family for years, and at first I looked at the illustrations and I thought, wait, did he do these? And then I realized that it's in his style, but not quite him, and it was this beautiful tribute to his words and you snuck in these glorious Easter eggs of the characters that had made him so special to so many generations of kids. How did this book come into your hands, and what was it like working on it? 

01:31 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Oh boy. Well, in June of 2022, I was at the Highlights Foundation and I was about to give a presentation and I was in my cabin sort of doing last minute details with that, and my phone rang and it was Laurent Lin, who is the art director at Simon Schuster and a very good friend of Tomie's, and he asked me if I might be interested in illustrating the last complete manuscript that Tomie wrote and I and it was about his dog, bronte, and he started getting into the you know depth of what the book was about and and it was about Bronte's relationship with Tomie, but it was also about Bronte passing away and leaving Tomie and then how Tomie kind of moved forward in his guilt and found a way to transform it into something that was very positive and loving for him. So both Laurent and I had lost very beloved cats just a few weeks earlier, so that the theme of this was on our minds and in our hearts very much. So we laughed a lot and we cried and we talked about episodes of grief and, you know, pets and all sorts of things in our lives, and we talked more about the manuscript and about Tomie and it just became so, you know, the more we talked about it, the more I realized that I would really just be all in on illustrating this book, and of course I hadn't seen the manuscript. 

03:16
So that was the last detail of it. And once I saw the manuscript it was like ah geez, I was just over the moon. It is is the most lovely, lyrical, simple thing. This perfect writing and that continuing phrase where are you? Bronte becomes kind of a bookmark for different stages in Bronte's life and Bronte's relationship with Tomie and vice versa, and it's beautiful. It's just there's so much there and it fits on a eight and a half by 11 inch piece of copier paper, the whole text. I was like I don't know how he did it. 

03:58 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It was like a miracle, it was incredible and it's so tender and I lost a beloved dog last year and so I found you know I was responding to it as an adult in terms of the idea of love and loss and what do you do after that happens. And then there's sort of that added layer of love and loss with Tomie you know, as you read it those of us who loved him as an author and illustrator there's that added dynamic to it that you can read into the book as well, and so the same idea of Bronte's journey sort of felt it was there for Tomie as well. 

04:39 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
It helped a lot of the people, we people who loved Tomie work and him. I didn't know him personally, I met him several times but he was just so important to so many children and the adults those children have grown up into. So yeah, it kind of helped ease the pathway to sort of find a way to correspond to his loss. 

05:07 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yeah, definitely. And the illustration style. You managed to pay tribute and respect to his illustration style in the way that you did the art and you know I see elements of your art in there from your other books, but it's definitely something fresh and different for you. How did you go about doing that? 

05:29 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Well, I knew that I wanted to honor Tomie's drawing style. I mean, it's just every bit as much of his storytelling voice his drawing style as the text, as his writing. So I thought, okay, this is, I've got to do this. I want to do this. 

05:43
I just I'm such a fan of his work and it was quite a challenge because I thought, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to start copying his drawings. So I had many of his books and I started trying to draw like he was drawing and I kept failing and failing. It was awful. It was just like I had mountains of drawings and the floor and my drawing board and I just couldn't get it and I kept. 

06:11
You know, it was so puzzling because on the surface his drawing style is so simple, but it's really, there's something in it that is so inherent to him. And also there was something else missing and I realized, by going back and looking at his paintings as well as his illustration work, that his work is really about the color and in some ways the color almost comes first. So by really getting into the color in that way, it really helped me kind of get back in and do all the drawings, which is totally different than the way I work, but it was exciting to do. I really enjoyed stretching and I stretched far to find the style to do this book find the style to do this book Well, no matter what age we are. 

07:07 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's so good for our brains and our hearts, I think, to try to stretch and do something new, and it sounds like this book was that challenge. 

07:12 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
It was yeah. In fact, when I finished it I almost felt, like you know, walking into the studio, like I could sense in some way Tomie's presence, like he was there and I, I just he was such a big part of my life, for it was over a year. It took me to do all the illustrations and the sketches and go back and forth with Laurent Lin, the art director, and then my wonderful editor, celia Lee. So we finally figured out what was going on and I had a lot of help from Pia here who is on my lap and joining us, even though it's about a dog. She said it was okay, she would help. So yeah, I love the work of Alice and Martin Provenson, and also Leo and Diane Dillon, and I saw an exhibit of the Dillon's work at the Eric Carle Museum several years ago,

08:12 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
 best museum ever. 

08:14 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, oh gosh, you got to love it. It's just incredible. And their work was amazing. They work same size. So you know, there are a lot of small things. I think they also must have done some work that was larger. But they changed their style to fit every manuscript and they looked at the time period and the theme and they found a way to make the art correspond with that and it was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to like fall over. This is so amazing. So I tried to channel my inner. Leo and Diane Dillon as well, and Alice and Martin Provenson were the same way. They had many different stylistic approaches to the books they did. So I thought they can do it. I'm going to do it, I'm going to try and and it. I think it worked. I came out at the end and I was like I'm not even sure who this is. Is it me, is it him? Is it like it's both of us? 

09:22 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And it was a beautiful fusion of the two of you and it works on every level. 

09:29 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Well, there's something really scary inherently scary about stepping out of your comfort zone, and I definitely did that. This was like a near death experience at times, like get this to work out just right, but I'm so pleased to hear that you have that feeling. 

09:47 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Very much so. So I have a question. I know I have a favorite page from it. I'm wondering do you have a favorite spread? I do you want to share it and we'll see if ours are the same. 

10:00 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Okay, so I'm opening my book now and okay, ready. 

10:05 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yeah, that's exactly my favorite spread. That's the one where I literally lost it and sat and sobbed for like five minutes. Oh well, I just beautiful. I mean, if you can't see it, you know, if you're listening and not watching. You've got Tomie and you've got Strega, nona and the art teacher and you've got Bronte and you've got all the different characters from the different books, big Anthony, and it's just a lovely tribute and you're all eating together. It's just such a beautiful page. 

10:40 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Oh, I know, and he loved food, and Big Anthony who doesn't love spaghetti, although, because Strega Nona is there, I think the pot stopped cooking at the right amount. 

10:54 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, they don't look like they're drowning in spaghetti, which is good. 

10:57 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, yeah, that's true. That would have been a much different approach to that drawing. 

11:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That looks like it was just the most fun page to create. 

11:07 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
It was, it was, and I just and I thought what a great way to honor Tomie, I mean his whole, all of his characters. And then there are. So my art director, laurent Lin, and my editor, celiaie Lee, are also in here, so this is oh that's lovely, and they're sitting next to Oliver Button. 

11:30 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh I love that. 

11:32 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yeah, so they were such an integral part of the team of putting this book together which I think a lot of people don't realize that that they think, oh, an author just sits down or an illustrator and they're in their studio and they just write a book and it gets published and that's it. But that's so far from the truth. It's such a collaborative effort with an editor, with an art director, and you've got this wonderful team that takes things a little further down the road than you might, or they have like something, that they kind of turn something upside down or twist something a little bit so that it's like amazing, it's like 10,000 times better than what you might have originally thought of. So we had that kind of thing going on. 

12:21 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, the team effort definitely pays off and if you are out there listening, you really need to pre-order this book. It is such a beautiful book. I'll have the link in the show notes. I'm also going to include a link to a picture of my little ones when they got to meet Tomie DePaula when he came to the Merritt Bookstore in Millbrook, new York, so many years ago, just because it's one of those pictures that really illustrates the love and the kindness that he showed to kids when they came out to see him. So we'll include all of that. Now I'd like to shift gears a little bit and let's talk about Barbara. You have been doing this for so many years and you've written just the most beautiful books. You had a longstanding partnership with Jim Aylsworth Sorry, that was a tongue twister just then books on your own. You've done so many folk literature illustrations. You've got the Adele and Simon series. Tell us about your adventures in learning. How did you become the illustrator that you are today? What led to all of that? 

13:31 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Well, I've always loved to draw. In fact, my very first memory was of lying on my stomach on the kitchen floor in my house when I was three years old with a crayon in each hand, drawing big, gigantic circles like a slinky, and I was like just my mother's worst fear was running out of paper because they would keep drawing like on the floor, on the walls, on the inside of the kitchen cabinet doors and on the bottom of pots and pans, and it was just so. She would like always scramble around and like go through the trash basket and find like the backs of envelopes for me to draw on anything, because I just compulsively drew all the time. And whatever characters I drew, they just they had to be singing or dancing or doing something that told a story, and I especially loved cats. In fact, I wanted to be a cat when I grew up and obviously that didn't work out so,

14:31 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
 but you're a mother of cats instead. 

14:34 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, yes, I am. Yes, I definitely am. So I just so. That was something that I, even as a small child, I drew comic strips and when I was probably in the third and fourth grade I drew comic books and invented the stories and the characters, and it's just always something. I love stories, I love storytelling, and I love doing it through words, but also very much so through pictures. It's always been a joy and a love of mine. 

15:07
So I grew up in well, the first part of my growing up was in New Jersey and then the second part was in North Dakota, and the school I went to the college I went to in North Dakota didn't have any kind of classes in how to illustrate children's books or how to write children's books or history of children's literature. I think that long ago, which is when I was in college, there wasn't as much of that and I knew that I wanted to write and illustrate children's books. So I read an article about Maurice Sendak in Time magazine and I thought, oh, you know, I should call Maurice Sendak. He could tell me how to write and illustrate children's books and help me get started in this career. So the article said that he lived in Ridgefield, connecticut. So I called Ridgefield Information. I got his phone number and I dialed his number and I thought OK, how wrong can this go? He'll either be really nice to me or he'll hang up, so one thing or the other, so it's like I don't have to worry about anything. He picked up the phone and he talked to me for 20 minutes and he told me how to put together a dummy book and to do sample illustrations to show an art director and editor how I would handle doing the creating the finished artwork, and he told me what a portfolio was, because I had no idea what a portfolio was. And then he encouraged me to move to New York City and I said well, should I go to art school? 

16:46
And now Maurice Sendak could be a bit of a. He could say one thing one day and something else the next day. And that day he chose to tell me don't go to art school, because I'll put so much stuff in your head it will take you 10 years to get rid of it. And I was like, oh, okay, I guess I shouldn't go to art school and learned a lot and a lot faster, and I would have made connections with people and had friendships, and it is so valuable to go to school, so that my message is that go to school. 

17:31
But I didn't, and I just went to public libraries and I checked out children's books and art books by artists whose work I admired and I'd bring them home and I would copy the drawings in the books and take them back and then check out more books. So I had really a pretty solid education in not just children's literature through doing that repeatedly, going down and checking out book after book after book but I also really had a pretty firm background in in drawing and and maybe that you know picking up and drawing other people's styles and thinking about that. Maybe that helped you know and how I finally did this and incorporated Tomie's drawings into mine. So if you want to, if you want to study art, if you want to be an illustrator or you want to be an author, certainly I encourage you to go to school. 

18:32
But most importantly, go to a library. Go to a public library or your school library, check out books and read them and just contrast and compare the stories, the way that they're written, why a certain illustrator maybe was chosen to illustrate that story. You know it's fascinating and it's fun. You know, it gives you something to do. There is never a dull moment in your life if you kind of take that approach to learning, just looking at stuff all the time and reading, reading, and reading and reading. It's really important. 

19:09 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I got goosebumps when you told the story about calling Maurice Sendak because you're right, it could have gone one of two ways. And how amazing that he picked up and had that conversation One of two ways. And how amazing that he picked up and had that conversation. And it feels like you're paying that forward all these many years later, because I know that you also teach and nurture and mentor young writers and artists. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

19:33 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, I teach a class at Wesleyan University called Creating Children's Books and I work with students over the course of the semester to develop a story idea that they might have and what we do. On day one it's just an introduction and we talk about what to expect and what we're going to do and I introduce myself and I find out who all of them are. But the second class we walk down to the Russell Library, which is the public library in Middletown, Connecticut, and we spend the entire class period talking to librarians, going into the stacks, finding picture books that relate to their story idea or, if they don't have an idea, picture books that relate to their story idea or, if they don't have an idea, just something that really speaks to them. So they check out a minimum of 10 books, they take them back to their rooms and they have to look at these books and write down what is similar, what is different than each one of them, what really, you know, speaks to them in each one of these books. And then they have to take them back to the library and they have to check out 10 more books. 

20:46
So they do that every week and until probably about midway through the semester. They kind of have a sense about where they're going with their story. They do have a sense about where they're going and they start to develop it so they can pinpoint books that they want to look at, rather than just a broad net. But they but they love it. And some of them haven't been in a public library since they were little and it's so important to not let that go your library. And when they go home to wherever they live, be it, you know, Chicago or a little town in Utah or whatever, there is a public library somewhere where they can get in a car and drive to it so they can continue to educate themselves about children's literature all on their own and over a cup of coffee, and have a good time with it. 

21:44 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, I love that you know you had mentioned the Dillons and the Provencens being influences for you. Are there other illustrators? As you've gone through this process again and again of going to the library and getting books, are there illustrators that you find that you go aha, they tell a story really well or they connect with me in some way. 

22:07 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
So I just well, certainly Maurice Sendak and Tomie. They're biggies and then but there's so many and they've changed over the years. It's everything from Chris Van Allsburg or David Wiesner to Sophie Blackall or Luan Pham, or you know just. There are, oh gosh, like what have I been looking at recently? I'm just trying to think of somebody. I well, as you can see, I have a lot of books behind me and I have collections of children's books. Elijah Cooper, big Cat, little Cat is a real favorite also, but I can. I like everything from very, very detailed work, and I think when I was younger the more detailed work was really important to me and I really love them. But I've come to sort of enjoy work that's a little more free form and spontaneous. 

23:17 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I have no idea I could list like a hundred point that the more you read, the more you discover and the more you love, because that certainly happens to me. With the classes I teach for University of Virginia in Shenandoah work with teachers to help them connect picture books to STEM and STEAM constantly looking for books and comparing and contrasting. And so, for example, I have your gingerbread man that you did with Jim, and then there are all these other versions of it that have come out since you know, there's the gingerbread girl and there's a Hawaiian version, and there's a Lithuanian version, and so to be able to share them all with a teacher and allow them to sort of share them with kids and let them pick and choose experiences, that's powerful and it's neat to see how different people have different ways of telling the same story. 

24:14 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
That's absolutely true and it's so surprising. 

24:18
And another thing that a lot of my students are not they're not necessarily art students or English lit students, or I have biology majors and people who are interested in chemistry or business, or all of these very, very and a lot of film students which you know this is much closer to you know filmmaking and writing, you know doing storyboards and that sort of thing. 

24:46
But the ones who, but they all have such wonderful stories, like a pre-med student who suddenly comes up with this idea about, about a pill, how, how taking a pill, an antibiotic, fights off a bacterial infection or something, or, or, and it, the pill goes into you know, somebody swallows it and it has this adventure and it travels all around in the body and it's so. It was so surprising and just lovely. And every single student has a story to tell and I think that they kind of, at a certain point, children sort of say, oh, I can't draw anymore, or these stories are silly, I can't keep telling stories like this. So it's really wonderful to take a college ageage student and get them to open back up again and find all of these wonderful surprises. 

25:47 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Absolutely. I found when I was working with freshmen at Shenandoah, many of them hadn't been to a library in years and a number of my students never had exposure to the world of picture books that you and I live in. And so to bring in just piles upon piles of multicultural picture books that you know cross all kinds of stories and experiences and set them on the floor and just watch them in pairs and individuals, rediscovering books, was so powerful. It made me realize the power of story, that we each have a story that we need to tell, and we also need to be able to listen to and pay attention to other people's stories. So that's part of fundamental to connecting, I think. 

26:38 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
That's so true. That is so true and I think that it opens up and it's a safe space to read about just the gamut of other people, other human beings who have different experiences and different situations in life. I think that is also the beauty of a book, because you can just sit with it on your own, you can share it with other people, but it's an experience where you can slowly connect with that story and that individual or those characters. It's really, really beautiful. 

27:16 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So transformative. So are you working on anything now that? Where Are you? Bronte is out. Are there other projects in the works? 

27:25 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
So I'm working on two projects. One of them is a picture book called the Razzle and the Cazzle by Gideon Steerer and it's for Little Brown. It's about a kingdom of rats and a kingdom of cats and they have been lifelong mortal enemies for generations and the young rat prince and the young cat princess push back against this whole idea that you know there has to be war and conflict and they build a friendship and change the old ways. And it's a beautiful message and the writing is so clever. Gideon is like just brilliant. He's just got this wonderful way of playing on words and anyway, it's a lovely, lovely story. And then I'm working on my very first graphic novel. 

28:15 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, wow. 

28:17 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Roaring Brook at Macmillan, and that is about a curator named Rose Voland who lived in Paris during the Second World War. Rose Voland, who lived in Paris during the Second World War and she worked in the Jeu de Paume, which is a smaller museum in Paris. And during the Nazi occupation the Nazis took and stole artwork from museums, from galleries, from private collections, and they used the Jeu de Paume as kind of a clearinghouse for all of this artwork and Goring would come to go through the museum periodically and he used it as his supermarket to just pick paintings for himself, for Hitler, for you know other, and they'd pack these paintings and load them on trains and ship them to Germany, austria, where they were sort of, you know, just locked away. Sometimes they were stored in caves, underground caves, because the climate, you know, the temperature, was fairly constant, and it's a fascinating story. 

29:33
And she, at great risk to her life, cataloged almost all of these paintings and artwork that passed through the museum. So she would either memorize where they were going, what the title of the painting was and where they were going, eyes where they were going, what the title of the painting was and where they were going, or she would write them down, take notes or, you know, find other ways to catalog these pictures. So once the war was over, she was able to help organizations and groups try to track down this lost artwork, and not all of of it is. 

30:10
there's still pieces of artwork. They're missing, but without her cataloging over 6,000 pieces of artwork, they might have been lost forever. So she's quite a hero and we don't really know about her. So this is kind of a wonderful, wonderful story to be working on. 

30:30 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love stories like that, like for me, that's one of the cool things about history is we know certain stories because history is generally told by the winners and there are so many other stories that we don't know, that we haven't been told. And when we can tell those stories, it gives us a more rounded approach and a better way to maybe avoid making some of the same mistakes again. 

30:53 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, hopefully. 

30:55 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
One could hope. 

30:56 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, yes, so. And the author this is her first graphic novel too it's Kirsten Larson, and she has done some STEM books and so she's, you know, it's been wonderful, well. Well, I'm not exactly working with her. We've been in contact and, um, but this is another thing that a lot of people don't realize the author and the illustrator are very separate, so that the thinking behind that is that, um, an editor wants an illustrator to come to a book with their own vision for it, and it's very challenging for an author to. I think authors do have some input into what happens, but it's kind of it's hard to let go. Yes, exactly, exactly. So that's why it's nice, like working with Jim Aylsworth he kind of knew what to expect from me and I knew what to expect from him, so it was a really good collaboration. 

32:01 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and you all retold some amazing stories and you made them your own and very, very uniquely in your illustrative style, and I could see sort of that whole desire to tell a story that goes beyond the words in everything that you do, and so I was always a huge fan, and the girls loved reading the pictures just as much as the words, because they would read the pictures and they would tell me stories when they were little. So thank you for that. 

32:30 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Oh, you're welcome. That's wonderful. Well, that one of my very early mentors was Randolph Caldecott. I mean, he was I've been long dead but I loved his work and he was just the king of doing that. He would take just a simple line of text and just elaborate it visually, make this visual. He was sort of a cartoonist at heart, but he would extend and expand a story and so you could look at it in two ways and just really get deep into what that story was. 

33:05 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I, like you, just actually made a really good point that you know you can have a real world mentor, somebody who talks to you and is alive at the time, like Maurice Sendak was for you or you can create mentors from folks who are long past, simply by studying their work and really getting to know the body of what they do. And there are always teachers available to us, no matter where we are, and particularly as long as we're making good use of those public and school libraries. 

33:34 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Yes, yes, that is so important. Yeah, I think it's just, and it's wonderful to pull a book off the shelf. Like I do a lot of you know, I use my laptop constantly to look for research and, to you know, find and explore things. But there's no substitute, at least for me, for going into a library and just seeing books and just pulling them off the shelf. Yes, there's a different timeline to how you experience a book, a paper printed book that you can hold and go back to and reference in a different way than there is on something that you find on Google. You know, like if you're doing Google search for something Agreed. They are both very important, but I cannot stress how important that visual, tactile involvement with a book is. 

34:29 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, it's part of building that physical connection to the work, to the world. We need that. So my very last question it's one I'd like to leave everybody with, because I feel like we need more and more of that these days is what currently brings you hope? 

34:47 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Well, interestingly I just because I've been talking about and thinking about Bronte so much I think what brings me hope is probably the message in Bronte. 

35:00
I mean, there's several things that bring me hope, a lot of things that bring me hope, but I think when a beloved pet passes away, you have to find a way forward and the way forward is that there's something about that bond you have with that pet that never goes away. 

35:19
That love you have with the cat, with the dog, with the hamster, the snake, whatever it was, that intimate or a person in your life. That love is something that is permanent and it can never be taken from you. And I think that is such a strong message and I think that gives you hope, because I think it's really. We tend to fixate on things that are living and right in front of us, to fixate on things that are living and right in front of us and I think sometimes we miss the fact that there is that invisible bond, that thread of love, and what that person or that animal has given to you that helps to build you into a more interesting, creative, kind, loving, whatever it was that most you most responded, responded to in that, that feature, that person. 

36:13 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, thank you for being the generous, creative, kind human being that you are, barbara, and we are so grateful that you've spent this half hour with us on the Adventures in Learning podcast. Please pre-order or pick up your copy of when Are you? Bronte, by Tomie DePaola and Barbara McClintock. It's out this week and it is just seriously a book that's going to become a family treasure. Barbara, thank you for joining us. 

36:39 - Barbara McClintock (Guest)
Thank you so much and have a wonderful rest of your day.