RUSH: Sarah in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Hi. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: I’m great. I’m great. I’m glad you called. Thank you.
CALLER: Yes. Thank you for taking my call. I actually called for my seven-year-old today, but he’s proven to be a little bit too timid to be on the radio.
RUSH: Oh, no.
CALLER: But he is a huge fan of your books. We have a five-year-old also, and we have all four of the books, and we have read them all multiple times except for the most recent one. And the only reason we’ve only read it once is because we’ve just had it for the shortest amount of time.
RUSH: That would be Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner. Right.
CALLER: That’s right. That’s right. But they are big fans. I thought at first they might be too young for them, so I think we ordered our first one when our oldest was around four, and he saw me reading it one night and just crawled in me lap and asked what I was reading, and I started reading it out loud, and I said, “I’ll just read it ’til he gets tired of it,” and he was just hooked. I mean, he loved them.
RUSH: Well, that is wonderful. I only… Can you hang on? Because I’ve only got 10 seconds left. I have to take a little break and be back in two or three minutes. Can you do that?
CALLER: Yeah, I can.
RUSH: Yeah, because I need… I’m gonna tell you why. I think I understand why a four-year-old, a six-year-old gets into it when he’s having the book read to him, or her.
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RUSH: And now back to Sarah in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We left off with you, that your first child was too young to actually read the book, between four and six. But when you read the book, you thought it wouldn’t be long and he would fall asleep or get bored. But that didn’t happen, right?
CALLER: No, it didn’t happen at all. He loved it. I don’t know how many little boys you’ve been around, but Liberty was found in the bathroom, I believe, at the beginning of the Brave Pilgrims.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: Bathrooms are just automatically hilarious places for little boys.
RUSH: We have learned that, yes. (laughs)
CALLER: (giggling) And so he was hooked from that moment on. But I wanted tell you, too, they’re both homeschooled, and I kind of see the father-reaching truths of these books. I’m sure on some level you must know this, but they’re enrolled in a program that requires they do a presentation once a week. And every so often that topic is an event in history. So to see a five-year-old little boy stand up before a group of his peers and their parents and to expound on an event in history because he knows it, not because he memorized —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — a set of facts for that day that he’s gonna forget later, but because this is a part of his base of knowledge. Even part of that process is to field questions at the end. (chuckles) To watch him answer questions because he knows what the answer is —
RUSH: That has to blow your mind. That has to blow your mind and make you so proud. I mean, here a five- or six-year-old being able to do that?
CALLER: Well, it does, and I just thank you for giving us the tools because these stories stick in their heads, you know, and they remember. But I’m just thankful that they know about the events and they know about the circumstances surrounding the events. Most of us who are doing what we do, that’s why we’re doing it.
RUSH: Why do you think children your age, which… Our target age is, say, eight to 11, maybe outside 12, 13. But your kids are younger than that. Why do you think they got so captivated listening to you read the books to them?
CALLER: Well, it’s a good blend. I mean, there’s a great blend of factual information, but it’s blended with humor and fantasy and imagination.
RUSH: See, that’s the key. Exactly. Exactly. When you’re talking about young kids five, six, seven, they dream. They’ve got wild imaginations.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: They don’t know enough yet to have all these boundaries built up on their imaginations. And there’s nothing that feeds the imagination more than a talking horse that can time travel —
CALLER: (chuckling)
RUSH: — who happens to be a smart-aleck horse to boot, which makes it immediately lovable to a kid.
CALLER: They do. They love him. They love him. But the funny thing is, before these presentations, I would make sure that they had their factual information straight and then what was part of the story separate. And they do. Now, I can’t explain how that happens, but it does somehow happen. So I would give them a little quiz before we would go in just to make sure that they knew, you know, “Elizabeth is part of the story. Liberty is part of the story. But this is a part of history,” and somehow that’s been kept separate. For my boys, at least.
RUSH: Well, that’s music to my ears, because that’s the exact purpose of writing these books in a way with the time-travel feature, where the reader is actually taken to the event and becomes part of it. It’s much easier to remember something that you think you were part of or you were witnessing, rather than just having it read back to you by rote, where you have to remember it. There are keys here that make you feel involved, that make the reader feel involved. You’re validating everything that we’re trying to do with these books. I cannot thank you enough. You just… You’re perfect. You’re validating everything we’re trying to do with these.
CALLER: Thank you. I’m glad. I’m glad to offer you the encouragement, and I thank you for doing it.
RUSH: Well, look, you say you have all four books?
CALLER: Yeah, we have all four.
RUSH: And you homeschool. Well, look, I want you to hang on. I want Mr. Snerdley to get your address. We have a bunch of things that we can package for homeschoolers, curriculum-wise, study lesson-wise, plus some Liberty cuddly stuffed dolls. I want to send those out to you so you can do some things with those with the other people that like the books and like Liberty.
CALLER: Oh, great. Thank you so much.
RUSH: Oh, yeah. How old are your kids now?
CALLER: They’re seven and five now.
RUSH: Seven and five.
CALLER: Hm-hm.
RUSH: Wow. It’s great to have them focus on this kind of stuff at that age.
CALLER: It is. I mean, they’re still babies to me, obviously.
RUSH: They’re always going to be your babies. I mean, Madonna is still somebody’s baby. Anyway, well, look, I appreciate it, Sarah. Thank you so much. Don’t hang up for Mr. Snerdley.
You know, folks, we get e-mails like that all the time, and we have posts on our Facebook page, the Rush Revere Facebook page all the time. I have one here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. I’m gonna turn the Dittocam off ’cause I want to zoom in on this. I want to show you just as a sample of what people are sending us. This is a young six-year-old boy standing at a stable feeding a horse apples because he learned horses like apples from reading these books. Liberty likes apples. And his parents took a picture of him holding Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims while feeding an apple to a horse. Here, Dittocam’s on. I’ve hidden all the e-mail addresses and phone numbers, so don’t zoom in hoping to find that. I’ve hidden it all.
There are tons of these things that we get. I mean, they just come in every day with e-mails that explain the purpose of the book and so forth. Let me read you the picture. It says Rush and Kathryn, Cade, age 6, loves Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims. We read it in the car while traveling on our trip to visit with relatives for the holidays. We read a new chapter every night before bed. Favorite character is Liberty, the talking horse. So in honor of Liberty we fed apples to horses for Thanksgiving. Rush, me and his grandmohter — I’m a teacher — we own many, many wonderful books, but this is the one our grandson asks for every time.
As a matter of fact, this copy is part of a set you donated to my class. Thank you, Rush, for taking the time and effort to create fun, educational books for the next generation to read and learn to love this country and its Founding Fathers. It’s just the first book. You know, we’ve had four of these things in two years. The latest, Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner. And I don’t know, folks, I enjoy sharing this stuff with you because it’s just over the top great. It just is.