Special Guest: Author Lisa Papademetriou 📚
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Description
💐 Let's learn about four springtime holidays: Passover, Easter, Holi, and Ramadan! 📚 As National Reading Month comes to a close, we sit down with author of more than 30 books for children, Lisa Papademetriou and her grammar-obsessed alter ego, Ivana Correctya! 🏎 What is Formula 1 racing? How is Formula 1 different from NASCAR? 🥣 Plus! The Trivia Question of the Day!
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Transcript
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Bethany Van Delft 0:06
From fast cars to incredible fines. In the next 10 minutes, we'll get the lowdown on what's up in the world. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and this is The Ten News. Hey, Ten'ers guess what? Spring has sprung. Flowers are blooming. Bees are buzzing. Brooks are babbling. That's what brooks do, right?
Various Voices 0:35
Yeah, I guess so.
Bethany Van Delft 0:37
Anyway, there are lots of ways people mark the coming of the spring season. A common one is with a holiday. One example is the Jewish festival of Passover, which began on Saturday. There is also the Hindu festival of Holi on March 28, and 29th. The Christian holiday Easter is coming up on April 4, and the Muslim holiday Ramadan based on the lunar calendar, so the date changes from year to year, will last all the way from mid-April to mid-May. Every holiday has its own traditions and significance. Passover includes the Seder original feast where the story of ancient Israelites moving out of Egypt is retold. Many Christians in the United States go to church on Easter Sunday, then come home and have a big meal with family and friends. The holiday also often includes dying easter eggs, getting Easter baskets, and eating lots of chocolate bunnies. Holi involves people throwing brightly colored powders and water at each other. How fun. And Ramadan is a period of fasting, which means Muslims observing the holiday don't eat or drink during the daytime for the entire month of Ramadan. But the holiday ends with a three day feast. These holidays differ from one another but there are common themes in all of them, like spending time with family, giving thanks for what we have, eating special foods and getting together in celebration. What's your favorite springtime tradition? Send us a note at hello@thetennews.com and let us know. As national reading month comes to an end, our correspondent Ryan Nerz caught up with one super cool author and her grammar-obsessed alter ego.
Ryan Nerz 2:30
Since we're coming to the end of both Women's History Month and national reading month, it seems only appropriate to talk to an awesome female author. So I reached out to Lisa Papademetriou who's very funny and has literally written more books than she can count.
Lisa Papademetriou 2:45
I have written and published over 20 books, but I actually wrote a lot more under what's called a pseudonym. And that is like a pen name, a false name.
Ryan Nerz 2:59
Lisa writes mainly middle-grade fiction, which means she makes her stories up, and they're written for kids aged eight to 12. In other words, her audience is basically you. And I'm gonna guess some of you out there might be interested in one day writing your own books. Your first question might be, how do I start?
Lisa Papademetriou 3:18
I always start with a character and then I just need to come up with a problem for them. And once you have the problem, it's kind of, if it's a big enough problem, it's pretty easy to see where it will go.
Ryan Nerz 3:31
Interesting. I'm intrigued, do go on.
Lisa Papademetriou 3:36
If you start with a character, say a Sasquatch, and okay, you have a Sasquatch, that's not necessarily going anywhere. But what if the Sasquatch has a problem? He could want to make friends with a little dog and the dog is scared of him. Okay, that's one kind of story.
Ryan Nerz 3:51
Hm... Right. I'm not quite sold on this story yet.
Lisa Papademetriou 3:57
He could be accused of committing a crime that he didn't commit.
Ryan Nerz 4:01
Okay, getting closer.
Lisa Papademetriou 4:03
He could be captured and forced to attend sixth grade.
Ryan Nerz 4:08
Sold. I love it. I'd read that book.
Lisa Papademetriou 4:11
So once you have the problem, it's much much easier to think of a whole bunch of moments that could follow.
Ryan Nerz 4:18
Sounds so creative. Lisa uses her life to help create entire plots. For example, She grew up in Texas and her husband is Pakistani-American. So one of her books, "A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic," is set half in Texas and half in Pakistan. And then there's the book she's working on now.
Lisa Papademetriou 4:39
It is based somewhat on my life about being in kind of a blended families about a girl who makes friends with a girl who wears a hijab, but also her parents are divorced in twos. Her dad's happily remarried but she now she kind of wants her mom to also. She feels like her mom deserves that too.
Ryan Nerz 4:56
So Lisa incorporates details, like her own parent’s divorce, into the bigger themes of her books. But she says good writing is also about the little things.
Lisa Papademetriou 5:06
I like grammar. I think it's a game and so I always tell people like I do not believe in grammar police. I only believe in maximum sentences.
Ryan Nerz 5:16
Extra credit if you got the criminal justice joke in there. Lisa believes so deeply in maximizing sentences with good grammar that she's created a character to help you out with that.
Lisa Papademetriou 5:27
Hello, darlings. I am Ivana Correctus, grammar diva. And today, we are going to be talking about buts and ands, and all sorts of conjunctions and the commas who love them.
Ryan Nerz 5:44
Take it from Ivana Correcta, and Lisa. If you don't put commas in the right places, the result can be very confused readers. And that's not just important in writing, but in life as well.
Lisa Papademetriou 5:57
My husband actually, one time went on a trip to Las Vegas, because someone didn't include a comma in an email.
Ryan Nerz 6:04
So if you want to not send people on random trips, do your grammar homework. And if you want to be an author, you have just one assignment.
Lisa Papademetriou 6:13
The most important thing you can do is read as much as you can, read a whole variety of stuff, you know, graphic novels, poetry, you know, plays, novels, novellas
Ryan Nerz 6:28
On that note, all I have left to say is from Lisa P. and me, grab a book, and enjoy what's left of national reading month.
Bethany Van Delft 6:41
Have you ever heard a sound like this before?
No, that's the sound of a car going over 200 miles an hour. That's right. Over 200 miles per hour. Cheetahs the world's fastest land animal, only run about 70 miles per hour, and your average Amtrak train tops out at about 170 miles per hour. The driver of the car you just heard is competing against 19 other drivers in the sport called Formula One. F1 is the highest level of international auto racing for Formula cars, meaning cars that are built around a similar design, with one seat, powerful engines, and wheels that are outside the body of the car.
A Kid 7:33
Awesome.
Bethany Van Delft 7:34
You might not be as familiar with it as baseball or football. Because only one F1 race takes place in the United States. And only one team is based in the US, the Haas team. throughout the season, teams participate in anywhere from eight to 23 races in different countries around the world. And yes, it is a team sport. Each car only has one driver, but every team has two cars, the two drivers actually compete against each other as well as the other teams, scoring points for both themselves and for their teams in races that can last up to two hours.
Sound Bit 8:14
Cool.
Bethany Van Delft 8:15
The rest of the team is made up of the pit crew who are ready to jump in and fix a car if it has any problems. And the team principal, who is kind of like the coach, and we can't forget about the engineers who design and builds the cars, which can cost millions of dollars to put together. Now you might be saying to yourself, this sounds a lot like NASCAR, except that Formula One drivers are going almost 30 miles an hour faster.
Wow.
Also, while NASCAR tracks are basically just big ovals, F1 tracks are all different shapes, some with hairpin turns, that require the driver to completely change the direction they're heading without losing too much speed or crashing. Also different and pretty cool is the fact that all F1 cars are hybrids. And by 2030 the sport aims to be entirely carbon neutral, meaning the cars will create zero air pollution.
Sound Bit 9:22
Way to go.
Bethany Van Delft 9:23
The 2021 season kicked off with the first race on March 28. And the next race or Grand Prix as they're known is scheduled for April 18 in Italy. And now:
Sound Bit 9:40
What, what, what's the big idea?
Bethany Van Delft 9:43
Trivia on The Ten which of the following items found at a yard sale turns out to be an ancient artifact worth $500,000 was it A) cheese grater B) a clay pot or C) a porcelain bowl?
Did you guess it? The answer is C! A porcelain bowl purchase at a Hartford, Connecticut yard sale for $35 turned out to be a 15th century Chinese artifact. The white bowl with dark blue paintings of flowers on its inner and outer sides is pretty small, only 16 centimeters in diameter, and is one of only seven of its kind known to exist in the world today. Just another example of how one person's trash is another person's treasure. Yeah. That's it. Time's up. But before we go, here's a quick note for the grownups. What's up Ten'ers? It's official, we launched The Ten News Ten'ers club. It's new. It's awesome. And we want you to be a part of it. Join now as a founding member, and you'll get an exclusive shout-out on the show. Plus, your very own principal Ten'ers club press pass. Don't wait. Get in on the fun and be one of the first to join. We made it easy. Just click the link in today's show notes or visit thetennews.com to sign up today. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for our new episodes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and extras on Saturdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. Our editorial director is Tracey Crooks. Editing and sound design by Pete Musto, who also co-wrote today's episode with Ben Austin de Campo. Our creative producer is Jenner Pascua. Stephen Tompkins is our head of audience development. And our production assistant is Sarah Olender. Ryan Nerz contributed to today's episode. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle, and The Ten News is executive produced by Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. Would you like to be part of the show? Do it! Have a grown-up help you record a question, a joke, or fun fact you want to share and email it to us at hello@thetennews.com and show your love for The Ten News by going to your favorite podcast app and submitting a rating and review. It helps others find the show so they can join the fun too. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to The Ten News.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Sources for this episode
Springtime Segment:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/why-dont-easter-and-passover-always-line/587572/
https://parade.com/1173236/lindsaylowe/what-is-holi/
https://www.almanac.com/content/when-is-easter
https://www.vox.com/2017/5/25/11851766/what-is-ramadan-2019-start-date-muslim-islam-about
Formula 1 Segment:
https://f1chronicle.com/how-much-does-a-formula-1-car-cost/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a29777576/formula-one-carbon-neutral/
Trivia Question:
https://apnews.com/article/yard-sale-find-porcelain-bowl-worth-500k-6afe3261a5b4b74e9c02a533e0403081
