Episode #144: Our Performance Review!
Grace and Alvina have their own “off the cuff” performance review of this podcast! They talk about the last year's highlights and challenges, and their goals for this year.
Don’t forget to check out the Patreon Page! These beautiful notebooks are going fast! Support this podcast by becoming a Patron! For $1 an episode as a Patreon member you will get:
Access to the "Random Questions Secret Feed" for the Kids Ask Authors podcast
A small blank notebook with an illustrated cover (by Grace) inspired by Alvina's Mom quote "If it is to be, it is up to me." (While supplies last!)
An opportunity to share your own grateful on our podcast! Send your grateful as patron and it can be read on an episode!
One of their goals moving forward with this podcast is to figure out more perks for Patreon members! The Book Friends really want to make it special and worthwhile. They’re taking suggestions! The goal is to put out a survey on this…stay tuned!
“How have you been?”
Grace has still been struggling with trying to find time to work an entire day because of Hazel’s school schedule. She has a winter school break coming and so there really won’t be much time. Grace has school virtual visits lined up and it’s hard to find the time to work on her books as well. She mentioned the mental load of mother’s vs father’s. Why do moms generally end up carrying more of the burden of parenting? Alex will do anything that she asks him to help out with, but she would love it if he would think about the things that have to be done on his own.
Alvina is excited because she finished up her performance reviews at work! She can get back to editing. She’s currently working on “The Wild Robot” the 3rd! By Peter Brown. It will be called “The Wild Robot Protects.” It’s been fun!
Performance Reviews:
Since performance reviews have been on Alvina’s mind, she thought it might be interesting to do a perfromance review on their own podcast! Step one in a performance review is reviewing yourself, and then step two is having managers review. Listeners of this podcast are the managers! Please review us and send us your feedback and suggestions. *be gentle please. :)
Past year goals and achievements: What were some of our goals and did we achieve them? What were some other achievements?: Creating a Patreon page to cover some of the costs of this podcast, deciding to do more segments like Fortune Cookie, Chop Suey episodes, Alison Morris actually joining us live, 100th episode celebration, deciding on the episode topic on FRIDAY instead of Monday giving more time to think and prepare.
Past year challenges: Falling short on getting the Patreon notebooks to everyone on time, Grace wants to improve upon reaching out to everyone to get their addresses. Grace and Alvina talk about how they want to make sure the podcast is great but also lack the time and money to really pour all they have into it. They’re working on that balance.
Development and improvement areas: What skills do you want to improve upon? Grace notices she says “like” too often usually when she’s more passionate, interested, or more nervous talking about something. The would like to work on correct pronunciation of names.
Upcoming year goals: Be more intentional about our guests; more BIPOC guests, look into a way to have transcripts, possibly via YouTube? Open to listener suggestions! Come up with concrete ideas for Patreon, work on reaching out to listeners to get correct pronunciation of names. Be more timely and split some of the editing duties.
Please review us and send us your feedback and suggestions!
Fortune Cookie Segment!
As it is the end of Black History Month, Alvina shares an interesting story about the poem and picture book, “Hey Black Child”.
“What are you grateful for?”
Alvina is grateful for Valentine’s Day, Stephen, and John and Kira’s chocolates. Grace is grateful for all of the helpers in her world right now; the Smith College research assistant who’s helping her with the Chinese Food book, Justina Chen who is helping her write her speech for the Legacy Award. She’s very grateful for Alex and all that he helps with.
Special Tribute:
The Book Friends were going to have a tribute episode to memorialize all the authors and illustrators we lost in 2021, but instead they decided they will play the recorded tributes at the end of these episodes until Lunar New Year (or whenever they run out of tributes.) The Book Friends would love to hear your memories of these authors and how they touched your life in some way or another. On the bookfriendsforever.com menu, click “Record your author/Illustrator Tribute” and record your memories through Speakpipe. Some of the authors and illustrators we lost: Jerry Pinkney, Tomie DePaola, Beverley Cleary, Lois Ehlert, Eric Carle, Patricia Reilly Giff, Floyd Cooper, and Gary Paulsen. We encourage you to leave a memory and we’ll share it on a special upcoming episode! Thank you!
On this episode, you’ll hear a tribute to Tomie DePaola.
Thank you for tuning in!
*If you’re a patron, don’t forget to check out this week’s Random Questions feed! Authors Nikki Grimes and Grace Lin answer the random question: “What word do you want added to the dictionary and what is its definition?” Click here to listen! If you’re not a patron already, join today!
Thank you to Hachette Audio, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, and Alex at Pacyworks Studio for producing and editing this podcast. Be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and tell a friend about us. (Use the hashtag #bookfriendsforever.) Also, if you have any ideas for topics on future episodes, please let us know!
You can find Alvina @Planetalvina on Twitter and TikTok and @Alvinaling on Instagram
You can find Grace @Pacylin on Twitter and Instagram and @gracelinauthor on TikTok and @authorgracelin on Facebook
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