The Eric Litwin Interview: Eric discusses his newest books: The Power of Joyful Reading and a children’s book entitled The Poop Song (yes, a book about poop!) by Doctor Sam Bommarito. 

This week I had the privilege of talking to my good friend Eric Litwin about his two newest books and his views on the teaching of reading. Everyone knows Eric as the author of the original four Pete the Cat books and a myriad of other children’s books. Eric began his career as a teacher and he has a teacher’s eye for things. In the interview, Eric will talk about how Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes  came to be written and the new career path that launched for him. Let’s now talk briefly about his two newest books.

I’m sure you wonder why Eric would choose to write a children’s book entitled “The Poop Song.” First, know that Eric became a father this past year. His son is one year old and he and his wife face all the challenges of raising their firstborn in the midst of the Covid epidemic. They are wonderful and caring parents. It turns out Eric’s wife is a pediatric gastroenterologist. During the interview, Eric will tell you how he and his wife decided that a book about poop was really needed. Think potty training. Think first-time parents. Think of thousands of daycare centers needing children to be potty trained. Eric and his wife saw the need for the right information to get out to parents and caretakers. His wife provided the expertise in the best things to do when potty training.  Eric has the gift of making anything engaging and entertaining.  It is actually a book that will fill a real need for our very youngest children’s parents and caretakers. The book Is available for preorder. During the interview, Eric will be doing a musical share of the song from the book.

Eric’s other book is entitled The Power of Joyful Reading. It is a professional development book for teachers and parents. In the interview, he makes a compelling, research-based case for parents and teachers to encourage students to want to read and want to be lifelong readers. As only he can, he shows us ways to do that through songs and chants. Lots of takeaways for teachers in this part of the interview. I’ll mention here that Eric is doing a book club for the Missouri Literacy Association. It’s part of our summer series. The book clubs are free. Eric’s turn will come on July 15 & 22^nd. He will be attending the July 22^nd session. Links for registering will be posted soon.  Here is a link to our site so you can see all the wonderful activities MLA is sponsoring:

https://mla31.wildapricot.org/

These are the questions from the interview. In case you want to jump to a particular topic, the questions are time-stamped.

1. Tell us about yourself (01:25)

2. Tell us about getting kids involved- Eric sings! (8:07)

3. Tell us about turning early childhood classrooms into a reading playground and about joyful reading (14:16)

4. Tell us about things in literacy/literacy instruction you consider urgent and explain why they are urgent. (15:55)

5. Final remarks & then Eric Sings The Poop Song! (22:36)

HERE IS A LINK TO THE VIDEO:

Here are links to the two books mentioned in this interview

The Poop Song: https://thepoopsong.chroniclebooks.com 

The Power of Joyful Reading: https://shop.scholastic.com/teachers-ecommerce/teacher/books/the-power-of-joyful-reading-help-your-young-readers-soar-to-success-9781338692280.html 

You’ll also want to visit Eric’s website. There are free downloads, links to videos of him singing some of his favorite songs, or buying one of his many books and, of course, a link to preorder The Poop Song. Use this to go to the website:

https://www.ericlitwin.com/

So that’s it for this week. In the coming weeks, I will have several interviews. The next one will be an interview with Susan Vincent. She is currently a university professor and formerly a Reading Recovery teacher and trainer. You won’t want to miss that one. See you next week

Happy Reading and Writing.

Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)

Copyright 2021 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization

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