Author Chelsea Clinton visits Gaynor

Posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

Board Chair Megan Hogan, Chelsea Clinton, PA President Keech Shetty, and Book Fair Chairs Katy Williamson and Samantha Regan.

Author Chelsea Clinton visited the Purple through Silver Clusters on November 29 to read from two of her books and take questions from the students. Clinton was invited to Gaynor by the Parents’ Association through a connection with Gaynor parent and Book Fair Committee member Dana Raucher, in conjunction with the Scholastic Book Fair held on December 1. This year’s Book Fair Chairs Samantha Regan and Katy Williamson welcomed Clinton to Stephen Gaynor School’s Performing Arts Center and introduced her to her attentive audience.

Chelsea Clinton is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World; She Persisted Around the World: 13 Women Who Changed History; She Persisted in Sports: American Olympians Who Changed the Game; Don’t Let Them Disappear: 12 Endangered Species Across the Globe; It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going!; Start Now!: You Can Make a Difference; with Hillary Clinton, Grandma’s Gardens and Gutsy Women; and, with Devi Sridhar, Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why? She is also the Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, where she works on many initiatives, including those that help empower the next generation of leaders. She lives in New York City with her husband, Marc, their children and their dog, Soren. Her latest book, published in September 2022, is Welcome to the Big Kids Club: What Every Older Sibling Needs to Know!

Clinton read She Persisted Around the World to the Yellow and Silver Clusters. The book profiles thirteen women from around the world who didn’t take no for an answer, and who were determined to change the world and the status quo for women. The students were enthralled by the women who were profiled, and also by the beautiful illustrations accompanying the text.

Chelsea Clinton (front, center) with students in the Yellow and Silver Clusters.

Chelsea Clinton (front, center) with students in the Yellow and Silver Clusters.

Here are just a few of the many questions Clinton fielded from the Yellow and Silver Cluster students: 

[Why did you choose these women for this book?]
Some of these women I already had known of and admired like Leymah Gbowee and Wangari Maathai. Many of these women, though, I didn’t know. And so when I decided I wanted to write a book about women from across the world, I asked for help. I asked other writers who my editor has worked with, I asked friends and friends of friends who had grown up and lived in different countries. I got hundreds of suggestions, and that was a real gift for me because then I got to learn about so many women from around the world. And then I selected a group of women who had all done amazing things but had lived and worked in different places, and had done different types of amazing things.  

[How did you think of the idea of these books?]
​​I wrote the first She Persisted book because I really wanted there to be a book about inspiring American women to share with my kids and I was looking for a book that I thought would really do that and I couldn’t find it, so I decided to write it myself. 

[When did you start writing books?]
I started writing books really when I started working on my dissertation, which was about a dozen years ago. But I have always loved to write, and I’m very grateful to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, who I am still in touch with. Because when I was learning how to write, she told all of us that we were all already writers and so I wrote my first book, which I like to think was three pages but probably had two sentences on each page and was stapled together, that my parents still have actually.

[What is your newest book?]
My newest book is called Welcome to the Big Kids Club and it’s really, not just inspired by, but kind of directly a transcription of, questions that my older kids asked when I was pregnant with their little brother, and so it’s like, why do babies poop so much? When will the baby be able to talk to me and what will their first words be? And it’s also about how we can know some things, and how a lot we have to wait for babies to share with us and learn how they’re going to communicate with us, and that’s part of the joy of having our family be expanded and the mystery of discovery.  

[How did being part of a presidential family affect your writing?]
How did it affect my writing? You know, I don’t know how it affected my writing except insofar as I have been incredibly lucky my whole life to be surrounded by lots of different people doing lots of different things to try to help make the world a better place and so I think probably the way that it affected my writing was that my horizons were so expanded as a kid through the choices my parents made and it was a real gift and I think that that gift also gave me a real curiosity about the world and about different sorts of people doing different sorts of things and that curiosity probably has been quite helpful to me in my writing.   

Chelsea Clinton (front, center) with students in the Purple, Pink, Red, and Orange Clusters.

Chelsea Clinton (front, center) with students in the Purple, Pink, Red, and Orange Clusters.

The younger students were treated to a reading of Don’t Let Them Disappear: 12 Endangered Species Across the Globe. The book introduces young readers to a selection of endangered animals, sharing what makes them special, and also what threatens them. The students were fascinated by the vignettes about each animal, and peppered Clinton with questions that revealed her deep knowledge and love of the animal kingdom:

[How did you make the illustrations and put everything together?]
Oh, I didn’t make the illustrations, I deserve no credit. I also deserve no credit for designing the book. I worked with this wonderful woman named Gianna who specializes in drawing animals. In fact, she has probably illustrated animals in some books that you may have already read. She illustrates lots of animals and works with lots of different authors and she also illustrates books that she writes. When I knew I wanted to write this book, I reached out to her and thankfully she agreed to share her time and her talents, and she beautifully illustrated the book. Then there’s another team at Penguin who figures out how to put all of the words and the pictures together. I don’t deserve any credit for that, I am very proud of and grateful for their work.  

[How did you come up with (the idea for) this book?]
I have always loved animals, since I was even younger than the youngest kids here, I have loved animals. I particularly loved elephants and I wanted to learn everything I could about elephants when I was little. I read lots of books and National Geographic issues. So when I was thinking about the next book I wanted to write a few years ago, I was talking to my kids and they helped me come up with this idea. And then I interviewed lots of kids about what endangered species they would like to learn more about, and then I worked with lots of different scientists and experts who study these animals for a living. And all of that came together into this book.  

[Why do giraffes have purple tongues?]
What a great question. So giraffe tongues are a range of very dark blue, dark purple to black and scientists think they’re that color because effectively, it’s natural sunscreen because their tongues spend hours out of their mouth. Can you imagine if we all just walked around with our tongues out? For hours a day their tongues are out of their mouth, because they need them to reach the leaves high up on the trees, to then eat them and fuel their bodies. Scientists think giraffe tongues are this range of dark colors because it helps protect their tongue from being sunburned.  

[What’s your favorite animal?]
Well, my favorite animal has to be our dog! But if you’re asking me my favorite species of animal, I love elephants. I’ve always loved elephants. I particularly love elephants because elephants are matriarchal, which means the grandmothers are often the head of the elephant herd, and so the grandmothers are the ones who lead the elephants to find water or more food, or if there’s danger, to lead them away from it. The grandmothers are also the ones who know where members of the elephant herd may have died and where their bones are, so they’re the ones who lead the herd to visit their lost loved ones. I was very close to both of my grandmothers, so I think admittedly, one of the reasons that I love animals is because elephant grandmas basically rule.  

At the close of the event, Head of School Dr. Scott Gaynor commented that his new favorite animal is now also the elephant, since his grandmother Dr. Mimi Michaels co-founded Stephen Gaynor School with Yvette Siegel-Herzog. 

Clinton ended her visit saying, “I shared that my most recent book for kids is called Welcome to the Big Kids Club, and I’m trying to come up with my next idea. So if you have any ideas, please tell your teachers and maybe they can then share them with me afterwards. And I mean that quite sincerely. I think the best ideas for books for kids come from kids.”