Valerie -Welcome to Book Worthy. Today we're talking with Rachael Hartzell, the author of picture book, The Garden Scouts, Buzzing with Love, which is the first book in her Garden Scouts series. The Garden Scouts, Buzzing with Love follows Kiki the Fly and Rhino the Beetle in a heartwarming adventure of friendship and love crafted for Christian families. Welcome to Book Worthy, Rachael.
Rachael -I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me on.
Valerie -It is a pleasure. I love your little buck and I'm a nature lover. So I kind of love that you're in a garden with bugs and all that kind of thing. But I thought we'd start with finding out what is your favorite bug?
Rachael -So the first thing that pops into my mind is anything that shows immense creativity from God. So like the intricacies that he can put in such minute little packages. You know, I mean, even if you think about like a roly-poly, how tiny each of those little sections is and how each part of it is purposely made for what it needs to do and to protect itself. Those kinds of things are cool to me. So the more complex and even colorful it can be, the more fascinating I find it. But one of my more recent ones that probably I've been just blown away by are the ones that I find in the garden that are the beneficial ones, like the protectors. So like It doesn't look probably cute to most people, but
like the wheel bug where it has this raised little, it looks prehistoric. It's so cool to see right now. I know I'm like nerding out, but it's just those cool little details. It's there to protect the plants because it eats the things that destroy them. And it looks kind of terrifying, I'm not gonna lie, but it's just so cool to see how something that looks dark and bad actually brings a lot of great protection to the garden. I don't know. Those kinds of things I find cool and interesting when looking at bugs and researching them. But something like that isn't going to be as cute in a kid's book.
Valerie -I don't have to look up a picture of a wheel bug. I don't think I, that's not coming to my mind. So it sounds like an interesting adventure.
Rachael -I never saw one as a kid. So, it's been something that I've discovered as an adult.
Valerie -I love what bugs bring this reminder that God is a God of details, like the smallest details. I, what is it? I love, I am, it's a common answer, but yeah, the bumblebee, like their wings are physically should not be able to carry them because of their size, but, but because of how fast they move them, And because of God's design, they can, they can carry their large body from flower to flower and do the job that they've been given. So I kind of love those fun, odd little details. Do you have a very interesting bug encounter you wouldn't mind sharing with us?
Rachael -Oh goodness, because my daughter's obsessed with bugs, we get a lot of bug encounters. Um, one of them that sticks out the most though was this last, um, end of summer this last year. And all summer long she, she's not like afraid of pretty much anything out there. So she'll, she wants to handle it all. Bumblebee, she doesn't care. You know, like we constantly warn her, they're going to sting you. They're going to sting you. And you know, then they sting her and then she keeps doing it. She knows not to handle the poisonous things, but if they aren't poisonous and she hasn't had a reaction, she keeps handling them. We're still working on it. But, so she's out there, I don't know if you know what skippers are. It's like the really teeny tiny butterflies that look like they just fly fast. They're called skippers. And so she's hand capturing these skippers in our garden to hand feed the garden spiders. We call them zipper spiders, the ones that have that zigzag zipper in the center. Black and yellow and it's the only spider that I'm not terrified of. Maybe that and jumping spiders. Jumping spiders are actually kind of cute. If you get up close and like look at them, they're really cute. But every other spider I'm not a fan of. But she was hand capturing these and hand feeding the spiders. All summer long we found them as little adolescent spiders in the garden. And we had about three of them, I think. And so she's feeding them all summer long, watching them grow and everything. And one day she comes in and she's like, Mom, God spoke to me. And I was like, okay, that's awesome. What do you mean? Can you explain that to me? And she was telling me how when she at that moment, I mean she's been doing it all summer, at that moment she was hand feeding the spider and she realized how his web was like a web of lies or a web of sin and they were getting caught in that and devoured, I mean you know they were killed because of the sin and how that, she was like relating it to, and this was before she accepted Jesus as her savior. So she's like having these lessons that she's learning in the garden. From her passion with these insects. And well, technically a spider isn't an insect, but. Yeah, potato potato. Yeah. But that was so cool to see how she had this passion and God spoke to her through that and was teaching her in that moment about what happens when we live a life of sin. And we're gonna get caught in it and we're going to not have a very pretty ending, to be honest.
Valerie -Yes, my boys love talking about that process, the icky part of the process. I'm like, okay, why are we focused on this part of it? Can we focus on how cool this is and how God provides and not the disintegration of bug parts? That is a really sweet encounter. I love how God reaches out to us through nature and speaks to our hearts wherever we are, whether it's in the garden or a book and, you know, serving other people. God is just wanting to reach out to us and to seek us out where we find our interests. Now I'll share a little bug story of mine. Mine is not as heartwarming and adorable as yours, but my kids, I have three boys and they love Legos. And so it is not uncommon for me to find a Lego minifigure inside the laundry. So, you know, going and taking from the washer to the dryer, I find Legos all the time. So I see something in the bottom of my washing machine. I'm like, oh, it's just a Lego minifigure. And I pick it up and it is a dead wolf spider. But it was like the size of a minifigure. And I was just like, okay. I did not expect that in my washing machine.
Rachael -I think I would be putting on thick winter gloves to do laundry even in the summer from now on. That's too much.
Valerie -It definitely makes me look at the minifigs a little different. How many arms and legs do you have? Because they can get very creative, but I'm just like, all right, that's enough. Well, Rachael, I love that you've brought your daughter's love for the garden and bugs into your books and the garden scout series. Can you tell us a little bit about your book?
Rachael -Yeah. It started when I was just trying to find some kind of resource that would explain better than I could because I didn't quite understand all the fruit of the Spirit at the time because I didn't grow up with a strong Christian education. So I needed a resource that would explain beyond, here, and memorize what the names of all nine are. I wanted something that dug deeper because I saw that there was a gap in the education from Christian resources and just the church in general. It's just here's the verse, memorize it, or here's some other verses to memorize that are supposed to teach that. But for really young kids, that doesn't always click with them. And I wanted to reach kids, specifically my daughter initially,
on a level that makes sense for them and that can sink in, and not stories. So I wanted to help my daughter initially, but now all kids, understand how to live out each fruit of the spirit in a practical way in an everyday life situation. Granted, you know, we're not bugs, but there are still situations involved in the stories that you can see are things that kids deal with. So in this story, we have this fly who just so desperately wants to have a friend and she's having trouble because she has a little annoying quirk that she buzzes a lot, and not everybody likes to hear all the buzzing. And so she's been struggling to have friends. And then there's this grumpy beetle who is coming to join this garden scout troop. They're the Bud Scouts, this level. It's patterned after typical scout systems like boy scouts or Girl Scouts. So there are different levels and this is the Bud Scouts. And so these characters are meeting for the first time at the first scout meeting. They struggle to get along because he's so grumpy. I guess he's the one more that's struggling to get along. He's really grumpy. She just desperately wants a friend and she's trying to make it work. And so through it, there's a little allegory hint at how Jesus showed love to the unlovable because Rhino's kind of unlovable. And Kiki in her own right, because everybody finds her so annoying and so it's hard to make a friend. And in the end, you have these two characters who are unlikely friends become friends and bond over a situation that happens. And that's, you know, the start of the whole series from there because, and I wanted to start with love because love is the foundation of every other fruit in The Fruit of the Spirit. You cannot have anything else if you don't base it on love. There are so many facets of love beyond loving the unlovable, but I feel like that's one that kids struggle with a lot. And so I thought that would be a really poignant purpose for this book to help them in that struggle.
Valerie -I think it's relatable because you know, Kiki the fly is, she wants to make friends with everybody. She's very bubbly. She's very high. Hi, hi, hi. And then, you know, Rhino is more like, I'm here kind of the Eeyore character. And we all love Eeyore. So it's one of those, we do encounter those people in our lives that are harder to connect with.
Rachael -Yes. Yeah, yeah, he is kind of that Eeyore character.
Valerie -that don't meet us at the same energy level, don't meet us at the same interest level in what we're doing. And I think Kiki and Rhino both do it, walk through the story and learn how to accept one another, accept their differences, as well as care for one another, even though they're not the same type of bug, even though they look at the world differently or react to the world differently. And what is it? Rhino pretends to be dead and Kiki flies away. And so they just learning how to, okay, what do I do with this? And I think kids, you know, what is it? Have been struggling over the last few years with how to have friendships and how to relate to one another. And I love how your book does a good job of walking into the
struggles that friendships have for young kids and giving them ways to love when things don't seem easy. A lot of the time we want to say, just love love, but it is hard it's a choice you have to choose it and I love that your Characters are walking through that struggle because I think our kids are having to face that in Our day and age and it's they're not a lot of resources out there to do that.
Rachael -Yeah, I love what you said about kind of, it's not like, oh, love is just so wonderful all the time. It's messy. It's real love is messy. Whether it's a friendship or a familial relationship, there's always going to be some kind of struggle going on in that relationship. And it's important to understand how to work through it and still foster that love and that relationship.
Valerie -I know with three boys that are all very strong-willed, there's lots of, what I call goat moments where they're ramming heads. And they'll get separated and we'll go and talk to them and they're like, why do I have this brother? I'm like, God gave you this brother on
purpose to teach you something. He's like, I don't want to learn this as well. God does want you to learn this because you do need to learn to love through this hard thing. And so I love that. Hey, yo. we can come to our kids like love is not an easy thing. It's not, it is beautiful, but it does not always look beautiful. It's sometimes really hard. And you know, sometimes the people closest to us are the ones that push our buttons the most because they are the ones who installed them, right? So fun. Now you have modeled this kind of garden world over kind of this garden scouts. Were you in scouting as a kid?
Rachael -I was briefly. Yeah, I did about two or three years in Brownies. My mom was our scout leader for, I think, the first two years, and it was a lot of fun.
Valerie -Very neat. Does your daughter do any scouting?
Rachael -Not at the moment. We are contemplating maybe trying out some sort of situation like that. Not necessarily Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts right now. I think there's a new scouting system that I heard of recently that's like a Christian-based one. And so we were thinking about looking into our area and see if there's one around here, but she's not in one yet.
Valerie -There definitely are a lot more options nowadays than there were when I knew I was growing up because it was Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts. And that was your choice. So this is very true. I know I have a kid, it's currently Scouts. It's not Boy Scouts anymore. It's Scouts. And so I have one kid in Scouts and it has its positives and its drawbacks. Two will find that. Now, why did you choose a fly to be kind of the Kiki's representation in this story?
Rachael -It seems out in left field, I know. I wanted to pick something as a main character that's usually not seen as beautiful, and I wanted to make it appear beautiful to show that even those uglier, quote-unquote, uglier parts in life can still have beauty in them. And so I specifically chose a green bottle fly to model the character after. So I wanted to kind of try to show the iridescence that they have. From a distance, it just looks like this nasty black thing flying around, but when you really get up close, there's this beautiful green bluish iridescence to them that is, I just think it's gorgeous, but they get a bad rep because of how annoying they are. And the things they do when they land on our food and you know.
Valerie -Yeah, flies don't.
Rachael -But I wanted to give it, I wanted to redeem it a little bit and show some beauty and give it some kind of redemption through this story and help people see bugs in a different light.
Valerie -I love that because yeah, I've seen some photographs of flies, their eyes, like magnified and it is breathtaking and just amazing that, you know, we wouldn't normally see just how beautiful a glass bottle fly is and, you know, or even a beetle and to be like, wow, God is intentional about all of his creation, whether big or small. And I love that you're painting that detail inside of your. Now you talked about how love was the first of the fruits of the spirit that you're walking through and I think, each of your books is going to be focused on one of these fruits of the spirit and gaining some sort of pin. Like this book is the love strawberry pin, right? What is the possible next pin that could be highlighted in your next book?
Rachael -Well, the next one would be the Joy Pineapple. We're gonna go in order of how it's listed in scripture. So next up is the Joy Pineapple.
Valerie -Now I love how you're kind of using, you kind of mentioned that there is this gap in communicating the fruits of the spirit and how we often, you know, ask kids to memorize it and then assign fruits to these different qualities. What made you pick a love strawberry as your first pin?
Rachael-Well, I actually have a lot of layers to this whole series. And it'll become more evident as I get more out and I will start making resources for it. But that is way far in the future and I'm not there yet. But just to kind of give you a little insider information, I have a different culture that is highlighted in every book. So like the next culture is gonna have more of that. Hawaiian type of culture in it. And so one of the most commonly recognized fruits in Hawaii is a pineapple. In the first one, we have a character who is kind of like your Southern grandma kind of feel. And so strawberries feel very American to me. It feels like a very American fruit. I mean, I know they're everywhere across the world, when you think of fruits in America, that's one of them that pops into your mind first. And so there's a fruit that is representative of the specific culture that will be highlighted in each book. So, apples also show up a lot in American culture, but it was very specific to a different culture. So it shows up later in the series.
Valerie -That sounds exciting. I love the attention to detail that you've put into your Appendix.
Rachael -I'm very focused on those little details. Those are very important to me.
Valerie -That's what makes a book appeal to such a wide age range where a young kid, you know, that's three or four, could sit and enjoy the book and just enjoy the beautiful colors and all the different bugs. But someone who's on the, you know, the upper echelon of your age range to be like they could dig deep if they wanted to and to take that time. So that's really a neat element of your book that you've put together. So did you always want to be an author?
Rachael -That's kind of a yes and no question. So when I was in elementary school, about fourth and fifth grade, I was starting to earn some writing awards. Fifth grade specifically was this one where we wrote and illustrated, like those books that have all the empty, clean pages in them, hard front and back on them, and you get to like write your story inside. So, we did that in fifth grade and illustrated our books and then they were submitted to a competition. I was one of them from my school who was picked as a highlighted author to be showcased at this big event in a nearby really large town. And so everybody, there was a bit like an author that came to speak and Everybody had their books on display for the whole crowd to go and read. And so that whole experience of like constantly being told your writing is good enough, you know, better than the average kid coming in. You know, so that made me think, you know what, maybe I can write and I could be an author when I grow up. And then sixth grade hit and that was my first rejection. And I was crushed because I didn't win that year. And I just thought, you know what, I must not be good enough anymore. I'm just, I'm done with it. And so I didn't write any more stories until 2022, 20 years later, when I picked my pencil up and started writing this January 1st. And yes, I was called back to it. God had other plans. And so here we are.
Valerie - Wow, that was quite the journey. In the interim, you have been in education and a few other little, uh, what you call them hats, I think on your bio on your website. So what, what were you doing in those, uh, that 10th, 20-year span?
Rachael -I decided to be an elementary education major and I went through all of that and that reawakened my love of children's literature because as a kid growing up, it was kind of stolen from me. I thought might be too strong of a word, but the way that my public school was teaching reading actually made it feel like a chore and it didn't feel like it was enjoyable anymore. So I didn't get to read a lot of them, or I chose not to read a lot of the classic children's literature that I wish I could have read now as an adult. So when I went through my college education as an elementary major, we had a class that was all about children's literature. And that class is what reignited my love. And I became obsessed with picture books and chapter books for kids. And it was like, that was when I started my collection. And I've just not stopped having an obsession with how much you can learn from them and how relatable the characters are. And they kind of become like friends and you know, some of those families, it's like, oh, I feel like I'm a little fly on the wall part of their family. And so that took me on a whole journey of just falling back in love with books. And I started so I started teaching and I did that for three years before I decided this is entirely too stressful for us wanting to start a family. I didn't want the stress on top of it pregnancy. And so I decided to quit and during the year between quitting and having our daughter, I was tutoring one of my past students who had dyslexia like really fairly I don't know how to word this probably edit this part out for a second. So my student had dyslexia that was causing him to be behind. And he needed a lot of help. And so his mom decided to hold him back, not hold him back, and decided to homeschool him. And I was there to help tutor him for that year. And I found a program that was specifically designed for kids like him. In the time that I was tutoring him for about eight months, he went from barely being able to write a five-word sentence to writing a 10-page story. That was the most impactful teaching I feel like I've ever done outside of being a mom. I can't replicate that in a classroom setting, a traditional classroom setting. And so I knew that wasn't for me anymore. And so after having my daughter, I also decided, you know, I can't also split my time trying to tutor other kids and be a mom for her the way I want to. So I started homeschooling her from a young age in an age-appropriate way. you're still educating even a two-year-old whether you call it homeschooling or not. So yeah, you're gonna learn whether you want to or not, or whether they want to or
not. There are tricky little ways you can make it happen. So I've been doing that since then, and we picked up helping out at our church on Wednesday nights and teaching fourth and fifth graders through that program at our church. And that has been immensely fun to get, to work with an older group of kids again, because, you know, working with toddlers and stuff wasn't what I went to school for. So it was nice to get that, then, that verbal exchange with those older kids, you know, it's just, it's a different type of conversation you get to have, so that's been fun.
Valerie -And what was it when I was pre-kids, our Sunday school used to volunteer in our children's department at the church we were at. And we volunteered with four-year-olds. And I was like, golly if I could just pop out a four-year-old that could have a conversation with me, I'd be happy. But God knew the way it was supposed to go. But it was just one of those like in my unknowing. I was just like, I just want a four-year-old, please. So there is something to do about that communication and that ability to say, see into their world a little bit, which is a lot of fun. Rachel, what is, the most impactful book in your life other than the Bible?
Rachael -Oh, other than the Bible. So I would say probably two. One is for homeschooling. I had to think about this a lot last night. And I just could not pick one over the other. I feel like I had to categorize the impactful areas that I've had. So homeschooling, I feel like, would be
Teaching from Rest by Sarah McKenzie, because I went from being a public-school teacher and being taught this is how you teach, this is what it looks like. And then I went to homeschooling and I was like, why is this not working? Why doesn't my kid not wanna sit here and do the same things that I was, the same strategies I was teaching? It just was mind-boggling to me. And then I read that book and I went, oh, I have to rewire my brain. I have to re-evaluate what it is to be an educator at home. It's so different. And so I had to completely deconstruct what I knew about teaching. And that helped me take
the anxiety away and take the pressure away that I was putting on myself, which was being transferred into our homeschooling. And then as far as passion for books, I feel like that's another area that was really impactful with the book Babushka Baba Yaga by Patricia Palacco. That was the first children's literature book that I picked up and created and taught a lesson from. And it just ignited that fire in my belly for a hunger of figuring out what have I been missing this whole time with these children's books that have these huge lessons in them and so many different ones, they're so versatile. And it's not like you just have a book and it's a one-trick pony. There are so many things that can be taught from one book. And so that was a pivotal moment for me in realizing what a book, like the power of a book, can really do.
Valerie -Very neat. I love Patricia Palacco and following her on social media and kind of seeing some of her drawings and just kind of behind the scenes of her writing also. And so that's kind of fun. One of my favorites of hers is Thundercake. And so it was like, as a kid, that was like in fear of thunderstorms and that kind of thing, that was always a big one. And so I love, love those stories. They're dear to my heart too. Well, Rachael, what can we expect next from you?
Rachael -Well, right now I am getting ready to start putting a lot more focus back into promoting this first book and getting the word out there to more people because for me to publish the rest because I'm doing this all by myself, I'm self-publishing everything. And so for that to happen, I have to get this first one to be uber-successful to get the rest out. I'm putting a lot of effort into getting that promoted, but in the background, I'll be working on the manuscript more for book two about Joy so that as soon as this is gaining traction and I see that it's feasible to start production of the next one, I can get that rolling out and have that in little kids' hands as soon as possible. But this first one's gotta make some more improvements from what I've been doing. It's a lot harder than you think. You know what I'm talking about.
Valerie -Yes, it is. It's one of those, there are different parts of your brain between writing a book and marketing a book. And so that's definitely something you don't always think about when you tackle that self-publishing area.
Rachael -Yeah, it wasn't even on my radar when I started it. Like, you know, it's kind of the rose-colored glasses. That's what it was like starting this whole process. And then as I got further into it, I started to realize what all was involved and how difficult it was gonna be. But I've been called to do it, so I'll do it. And he's gonna make some amazing things happen from it.
Valerie -Most definitely. Now, where can people find out more about you and your books, Rachael?
Rachael -Right now, the best place would be on Instagram at Rachael. Hartzel, and hopefully later this year, I will have my website ready to release to the world. But right now it's still in the editing process.
Valerie - Thank goodness for the editing process. Too fun. Well, I hope our listeners will reach out to you on Instagram to learn more about what's going on with these garden scouts and what we can expect next. So excited for you and what you're doing.
Rachael -Yeah, Valerie. Thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun.
Valerie -My pleasure. And thank you for joining Rachael and me on this episode of the Bookworthy Podcast. Check the show notes for any books or links we discussed and let us know in the comments if you have a favorite type of bug or an interesting bug story to share. I'd love to hear. Be sure to like and subscribe to discover more great books together.
Happy reading.
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