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Hello, and welcome to the New Heights Show on Education. This is Pamela Clark, and I'm the founder and executive director of the New Heights Educational Group and the owner of this podcast. Today, we have a very special show. It's our Christmas special, and we're actually featuring Heroes of Liberty.
Before we introduce our guest, who will tell you about Heroes of Liberty, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning into our show for the holidays. Christmas is always a busy season for most, but a good Christmas radio show, whether you're busy shopping for gifts or for loved ones, or even for those who are not so busy, there's always time for a good radio show like ours, especially with this Christmas special. So talking about shopping, for those shopping who can't seem to find the right gifts or want a Christmas stocking stuffer for their children's Christmas stockings, how about some good books? Which will take me to my guest, Bethany Mandel, who is editor and board member of Heroes of Liberty.
Bethany, welcome, and thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and why you're on our show today? Sure.
So, I mean, the short story is we would love you to buy our books and sort of make us part of your bookshelves and your grandchildren's bookshelves and your friends' bookshelves. So my name is Bethany Mandel, and I am editing a series of children's books called Heroes of Liberty. The first three books that we've produced so far are about Thomas Sowell and screenplay justice Amy Coney Barrett and former president Ronald Reagan. And the idea behind Heroes of Liberty is we wanted to create a series of biographies about great Americans and sort of teach morality and teach morals through these wonderful stories because I think that that's the best way to sort of share what we believe in as a people and as individual families.
And so we created these books with that in mind, sort of thinking back to, you know, the wonderful children books of my childhood and your childhood, beautifully illustrated, really just artistically done very, very beautifully. And the prose is also really challenging and really just extremely well done and captivating. And that's sort of what we wanted to do. We wanted to hook kids in between ages of around 6 to 12 and sort of share with them these wonderful stories and sort of share our morals and our love of freedom and liberty through stories, which we think is the best way to sort of reach kids where they are.
And that's great. And you guys have donated to our organization, originally donated a saw cover and one of the little figurines that come with it. And I love that. And then recently you guys sent out one of each, or actually two of each of the books that you're talking about as hardbacks.
And I thought they were just beautiful. They're just beautifully done. So who's your founder? Who was the creator of this idea of Heroes of Liberty?
So it was a group of us. And we sort of sat down and decided, you know, there's this hole in the children's literature market. And we're sort of concerned lovers of liberty and lovers of freedom. And we decided, you know, we're watching what's happening with children's literature, with Scholastic, but with, you know, a lot of other New York Central publishing houses where they're sort of pushing an agenda that we're not comfortable with and we don't think is appropriate for children.
And we're just kind of like, well, why don't better books exist and why don't both in terms of quality and also in terms of sort of the morals and the values and the stories that they tell, why don't better books exist? And, you know, that we sort of set out to create that. And so these first three books are our first venture into this market, but I don't think they'll be the last. We've had tens of thousands of books sold so far and we've only been selling them for a month.
So we've been, yeah, I mean, it's really sort of proof to market that there is a hunger and a thirst for this kind of content. And so we plan into 2022 to start releasing more books. And so the next book that we're hoping to release in February is John Wayne. And we have, we have Margaret Thatcher in the works.
We have Douglas MacArthur, Mark Twain is in the works. We've been talking about doing C.S. Lewis as well. These sort of wonderful figures from, from our past and also present.
I mean, Tom Stoll and Amy Cunberg are in our present, but, but yeah, I mean, they really simplify everything that we want our kids to grow up believing and who we want our kids to be when they grow up. So you do have a CEO though, right? Because then you said there was a group of you. Is there a specific CEO?
Yeah. So there, yeah. So it's based out of, there's a publishing house in Israel and there's an Israeli publishing house. It's sort of, you know, you have to, you have to have a publishing arm.
So they're sort of providing a lot of that heavy lifting with finding printers and illustrators and all those kinds of things. They're, they're the experts in the actual publishing arena. Wow. So how did you find out about them originally?
So it's a small world. And I am sort of really well-known among conservative circles as someone who's really passionate about education and children's literature. I separately, you know, for a while now I've had a YouTube channel about the homeschool philosophy that we follow. I'm a mother of five as well.
I probably should have mentioned that. And I homeschool my oldest children. And, and so I have a sort of, you know, longstanding YouTube channel that I don't, I don't post very frequently, but it's a labor of love for me. And it's called Jewish Charlotte Mason Homeschooling.
If anyone's interested. And I talk about, you know, my love of children's literature and the importance of children's literature and sort of the decline in quality, both, you know, storytelling illustrations and just sort of morality. I've talked a lot about that in the past. And so mutual friends sort of hooked us up and said, we know this publisher who wants to do this.
Do you want to be involved? And I was like, oh my God, that was like created for me from God. Yes. I'd love to be involved.
And so, so now I'm editing books because more than anything, I love to just critique children's books. And so now I get to do it and get paid. Right. Well, that kind of brings us to our next question about your previous experience and knowledge and training.
You know, did you bring to the heroes of liberty in order for the company to be a success? Yeah. So, so I'm a writer. That's sort of what I've been doing for the last probably 10 years or so.
So I'm a conservative writer and I write a lot about the intersections between the intersection between politics and parenting. And so I've been writing a lot about sort of COVID and kids for the last two years, but I've written pretty much any publication you can think of. I've written there, the New York Times, the New York Post, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Atlantic. I'm right now I'm contributing writer at Deseret News based out of Utah.
And so, and also the spectator as well. And so I've written for every major publication in America pretty much. And, and I also own literally thousands of children's books and I homeschool my children. And so, you know, this writing and children's literature, this is, you know, this is what I've been doing for the last 10 years of my life.
And I've been homeschooling my children. They've never really gone to school. And so I'm not sure when you sort of count when I've become homeschooling, but my oldest is eight years old. So I don't know, I don't know how long I've been technically homeschooling, but yes.
So I, you know, I've been, I've read thousands and thousands of children's books over the course of my parenting life for the last eight and a half years. And so, yeah, it was, it was really perfect because, you know, I'm, I'm very immersed in that world of children's literature just because of homeschooling my the rotten quality as well. And, and so those sorts of things, I feel like I was quite uniquely positioned to, to sort of take on this role. And it's, it's one that I'm really excited for the sort of end result that we would like to accomplish is sort of creating a more moderate and wholesome version of scholastic and having all a whole bunch of series of books.
And, you know, this, this, and I think that we will, we, we've sold tens of thousands of books in, you know, the last three and a half weeks. So there's definitely hunger for this. Yeah, I know. And there is for, for just learning in general, but in our history, and I know we're partners with Hillsdale college and they're doing a fantastic job as well.
I mean, I've been there a few times. Oh, it's like wonderful to work that in. Being on campus is like stepping back in time in the best way possible. I, one of my favorite stories about Hillsdale, I went there with, I went there twice.
I went there when I was nine months pregnant with my third child. And it was like the last possible week that I was technically allowed to fly. He was nine months at birth, so I was very big. I had like 35 weeks pregnant.
And everyone opened the door for me. And it's, it's really sad that this is notable, but I, I want to say it. Every single person made eye contact with me, which is something that doesn't happen anymore with college students. Everyone called me ma'am.
Everyone held the door open for me. Everyone was really kind and thoughtful. And then I went back to campus with that baby because he was nursing. And so I was sort of tied to him and he was about four months old.
And my phone just died. Like I, when I landed in Chicago, my phone just stopped working and I had a whole day of meetings there. And I couldn't access my email. I couldn't access Facebook.
I couldn't access my text messages. And I had had a babysitter set up there and I had no way of contacting her. And so the only, the only thing I had access to was Twitter. And so I posted a tweet and I have, I have a large number of Twitter followers.
And so I said, if anyone is at Hillsdale and wants to babysit my baby today, please send me a message privately. And I got like seven or eight messages and I gave him to a group of young women who were, who were all living together right off of campus, like steps away from campus. And they figured out what their schedule, how they could pass in between them, depending on, you know, who had class or whatever. And we sort of sat down with their schedule and coordinated when he would come to meet a nurse.
And I was in meetings with all these Hillsdale senior administrators all day. And, you know, the girls would keep on popping in with him to nurse. And I sort of told them the story over the course of the day, because he had all the meetings and they were like, how did you find these girls? I'm like, I just posted a tweet.
And they were like, I need Hillsdale kids. It's like, if they're admitted here, I trust them with my baby. So yes. And they did a great job.
And, you know, everyone was good and happy and, you know, survived the day in a beautiful way. But it's just like that, that really speaks to just how much faith I have in Hillsdale and the students. But I just handed my baby to people that sent me a message on Twitter, but I had never interacted with prior, but they were Hillsdale students. So I handed them over.
They're wonderful. They're wonderful. I just love them. But we offer all their courses through our site, through our friend of counted course page on our annex.
And we've been a longstanding partner with them now for years. I don't even know how long, but I don't think I mentioned to you that I was a homeschool mom for 13 years. So I know exactly what you're talking about. I totally get it.
There's a lot of books. Yeah. And I love, I love books. Love the school book.
Love having a book. And that's something that I love about the curriculum at Hillsdale too. So we follow the Charlotte Mason curriculum in our house. And so it's literature based.
Like that's, that's all we do is read out loud. And that's something that I love about the Hillsdale curriculum. I wish, you know, had I known where the conversation was going, I would have dug it out, but I have the entire, you know, 300 page curriculum printed out and I had it printed and I had it spiral bound because I refer to it all the time. And there's a ton of overlap between the books that we're reading in their curriculum.
I'm basically following their curriculum. And it's, I mean, the bedrock of, of an education is literature and they do it beautifully. And I mean, I kind of, I wish I could go back in time and get a Hillsdale education myself. And I mean, that's what's amazing about the courses, but you can, but they have, they have such a focus on great books.
And, you know, these are the books that you have to read to be sort of a literate American. And we don't care what your major is. You have to read these books. And that's something I really love about Hillsdale.
So now they're featuring these. Is that what you're saying? No, they're not. I mean, if you want to call them and tell them they should, I'd love that.
I'm just saying, I think we're, I think we're reading from the same script. We all love literature. We all understand the importance of literature and the importance of great stories and the importance of, of sort of having the right kinds of heroes. And history in general.
Yeah. And speaking of Hillsdale, Dr. Arn's favorite person in the whole world is going to be one of our heroes, Winston Churchill. Oh, how neat.
I'm so excited for that one. I should, I should email Dr. Arn directly and be like, hello, Dr. Arn, I have a children's book made for you, sir.
I'm sure they would welcome this. I would think it's when I was looking at it, it really reminded me of it. I mean, there's only, you know, a very small handful of people that are advocating for our history right now and for teaching the truth and, uh, against indoctrination. And so, I mean, I can count them on literally one hand.
So yeah, yeah. It'd be Hillsdale college, the classic learning test. Love. Fan of that.
I'm going on his podcast actually. Oh, he's wonderful. Yeah. That's almost the beginning.
I'm going on his podcast in a couple of weeks. Yeah. And right after he partnered with homeschool legal defense, I think they had hooked us up. Okay.
And, yeah. And as soon as I seen it partner with them, I was like, looked into it. I know, I know that the classic learning test was an answer to many parents' prayers because it was really different. And I, I really, I don't care for the SAT or ACT or any of those tests.
I really advocate strongly for the classic learning test. And we were, before the pandemic, we, we were giving the test in this area and they're wonderful people. Yeah. And like, but literally you can count on one hand.
So I just think the top four that advocate for parent rights, liberty, and, and sharing knowledge and history of what's made America great. But because it also teaches you know, the mistakes that have been made by other cultures and so forth. And also things that we can learn from them that were successes. But so I'm backing up a little bit.
I know you said a group of people got together and talked about creating these books. Were you part of that initial group or how did you get involved with? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I was involved pretty much from the start and we, we sort of, I mean, exactly what you said, like we, we saw this really gaping hole in the market. And, you know, it's, it's hard as a parent with young children to sort of, I mean, so the book that I love talking about most is the book. And so I own a lot of books about young women. I have an eight year old daughter who has a list of things of future jobs.
That is like my launch. She wants to be an entomologist, a geologist. She wants to be an entomologist. nurse i honestly couldn't even list the current list because it's ever evolving and um and one of the things she says she wants to be is a mom of six she's put the number at six uh we have pockets so i think that she's trying to just to make some hints but we'll see um so she she we own a lot of books about like really impressive women um women who were like oh there's a woman called there's a book called shark lady that we love and it's a woman who studied sharks um we have a story we have a book that's about a woman from 100 years old who was uh sort of the entomologist in some like london zoo or something i should know i should remember more because i read this 300 times uh we have a lot of books about captain johnson who's you know the famous scientist and we love all of these books and they're so wonderful um but none of them i think if they were none of them are mothers and if they were the books never mention it and for me personally and my motherhood i mean i do a lot of impressive things like i write for the new york post in your daily news and the new york times and your post like i do all these things but when you ask me what my job is i will tell you i'm a mother first because that is the most sacred duty that has been trusted to me um and so you know when my daughter's reading all these books about um about careers and sort of picturing her life and the future of her life none of them mention motherhood and this amy coney barrett book it talks about the fact that she's a very successful uh spring court justice and sort of the trajectory of her life from the beginning to now but it places a strong emphasis on her motherhood and it talks about how she prioritizes her family and how on you know every birthday of her children she bakes them a birthday cake which is something i don't do she's seven children um and it's just it's a really powerful sort of message that young girls are not getting now that you can do it all and also be a mother and that motherhood is important and that motherhood is sacred and it's holy and um and that really that was the thing that she took from that book more than anything and um and i just i love hearing her talk about it because she says yeah she's she's a judge and she's a mom and she's really excited about talking about amy coney barrett's motherhood um and i think that's really powerful yeah that's really neat well we're going to take a commercial break and then we'll be right back welcome back everybody this is family clark and i'm here interviewing bethany mandow who's with heroes of liberty and um we were just before the commercial break we were talking about motherhood and um the uh the book i'm sorry the coney what was it the title of it again so we were talking about the amy coney barrett book um and that's one of the first three books that we released right so um yeah i haven't i haven't read that one yet i'm i'm excited to do so like i said they're just beautiful but i haven't had a chance to read it yet so that's exciting to hear that it has that element in it yeah yeah it's a really it's a strong undercurrent and one of the things i really loved about that book was um it talks about her decision to adopt from haiti and um and after reading that book um we spoke a little bit about the concept of adoption and foster care and all those things just because we have people in our lives that have have done those things they fostered and they've adopted um but it's not appropriate to ask those people um sort of specifics of what you know what happened what went into that decision all those things and so this was a really wonderful and it made me realize that that's something we actually should be reading more of also um this is a really wonderful introduction to the idea of um of adoption and after we read it my eight-year-old daughter was like maybe i want to adopt maybe i mean i think it's such a wonderful thing that she took him out of that um that really just difficult situation uh in his home country of haiti after her after the earthquake and gave him a home and loved him like his mother like she loves all her children the same and um and that was a really powerful message for my daughter um and it made me realize that uh that there's a hole in you know what we've been reading to her and we need more of that kind of content wonderful so um what skills do you have which helped launch these books so my personal skills are talking i know you're talking about a little bit very good at talking so uh i've spoken to fox news megan kelly uh most recently um and so that's that's sort of i'm on the public face of the company and um you know it's a bizarre skill to have but i think it is a skill talking and um and my other skill is being critical and so that's my job as the editor to sort of sit down and say i don't like this scene i think the scene needs to be expanded i think that this this topic jumps too quickly and we have a fabulous team of writers and i'm merciless and i say i don't like this part i don't like this part i love this part this is great um what is this illustration going to look like i think we should have a map here um and so i get to sort of just uh critique everyone else's really hard work until i think it's perfect so it's really perfect for me i can um i can be critical of other people and then i can just run my mouth in the media there you go those are all skills you're right so um did you did here's the liberty face any obstacles when they were starting up yeah so i think that the biggest obstacle for us was finding illustrators um we this is something that i believe very deeply um children's books need to be really beautifully illustrated and i'm going to absolutely massacre this author's name um he's a japanese writer gaio fugiama is that do you know who i'm talking about i know i don't i'm not oh gosh if you have young children in your life um you have to um you have to grab his books so uh fuji kawa that's that's his name and he's a writer and he's an illustrator and he's a very classic writer and illustrator and i own literally every single one of his books and they are um it's actually funny my mother this part isn't funny but my mother died when i was on the younger side and so i have a big tote box from my childhood and i opened it up and i had accidentally duplicated a lot of books that i owned from my childhood just because i found them and i was like my god this is beautiful and i opened the box and realized like oh that's probably why i thought it was beautiful because i grew up reading that i didn't remember it um so now i doubled up a couple of these books um but he's a very classic beautiful illustrator um some of my books of his are a child book of poems an a to z picture book fairy tales and fables mother goose um and they're my favorite books in my childhood and they're my children's favorite books now my kids even my two-year-old gravitates towards his books in a way that she doesn't with the others she slept with one of them for months um so i own all his books and the underlying thread of all his books are they are some of the most beautiful illustrations you'll ever see in your life and so this idea that illustrations in children's books are just as important if not more important than the prose is something that i really strongly believe and so when we were trying to find illustrators we said this is not something we're going to skimp on uh if we were going to do it right and it's going to cost us a lot more money but that's that's okay because this is the product that we want to put out and so we approached you know the best illustrators in america and they heard that they were going to be illustrating books about tom stole and ronald reagan and barrett and they said no thank you we do not want that and um yeah they were scared about being canceled and so we have to go to illustrators and so as a result we have illustrators from around the world we have illustrators from brazil from nigeria from bulgaria uh and they're incredibly talented and they're not afraid of the american cancel culture um but that i mean that was a really really big challenge in the beginning was sort of stepping out of the english-speaking world and stepping away from people who might have familiarity with ronald reagan or amy barrett and sort of trying to find um the best illustrators from around the world and having to overcome really significant language barriers to do so um and now we sort of have a stable of illustrators that we love uh there's another book coming out i don't remember the release date but it'll be early in 22 um about alexander hamilton and that book the illustrator is just stunning um some of i mean this guy has no business illustrating children's books but i would like no one to tell him that because i want to illustrate all the children's books um but i mean it's just beautiful i mean i i want there's one scene um from his childhood on the on the island he grew up in the caribbean and um and there's one scene where i was like oh my god like you can see the facial expression on that woman in the background like that that you can't look away from her face and she's just you know she's right in the background you know you're not really focused on it but it's um it's a really powerful uh illustration uh just all the illustrations are just really wonderful and we're blown away um and you know i think that i think that there's a reason for everything and you know why it was hard in the beginning i think that um we found the right people and we did the right work and um you know it presented us challenges in the beginning but you know our hard work paid off i mean that's kind of the same console book you put the hard work in and then you reap the benefits um so i think that's what we did one of the things i noticed with that book one of the things i noticed with the thomas old book was that there were two different writers like you have two versions of that book two different authors oh so those are pen names we because it was such a sort of collaborative group effort um every book has a pen name at one day university we feature hundreds of top rated professors from stanford harvard michigan texas ucla and other schools across the world to explore history music politics art science and much more every wednesday our weekly scholar newsletter includes five fascinating short video clips for most notable professors discussing a brand new topic plus special reports and topical debates as well sign up for free at one day you.com that's o-n-e-d-a-y-u.com at one day university we feature hundreds of top rated professors from stanford harvard michigan texas ucla and other schools across the world to explore history music politics art science and much more every wednesday our weekly scholar newsletter includes five fascinating short video clips for most notable professors discussing a brand new topic plus special reports and topical debates as well sign up for free at one day you.com that's o-n-e-d-a-y-u.com so there's i don't even know who we who we get credit for that book but um but i would like to mark just sort of put one name on it so we just kind of like Oh, that's very interesting.
So you talked about the challenges in development or with the illustrators. Was there any challenges in launching it? Or getting a publisher to pick it up? So, I mean, that's why we sort of, we went with the Israeli publisher because he had the sort of capability to do that.
I don't think we had the normal supply chain issues that everyone in the world is currently having. We wanted the figurines to be out by Christmas time and they're not. So that was frustrating. And, but yeah, I mean, I think that, I think every company has sort of hiccups, but I think the wonderful thing about what we're doing is everyone is really ideologically on the same page.
We understand the mission that's in front of us and sort of the trust that parents are putting in us to sort of share our morals and our ideas about the past and the future. And so we're, it's been easy to work together. That's important. Yeah.
Really important. So here's a Liberty publisher's books about famous people considered to be heroes. And I guess you've already named some of the books that you've already published. So it's just those three, correct?
Yeah, so far. And then the next book that we're planning on coming up with is John Wayne in February. So that'll be a fun one. There's a lot of talk sort of in popular culture about toxic masculinity.
And this is sort of, we chose John Wayne as sort of direct response to that. And he has a non-toxic masculinity and, you know, I think it's, as much as I love the Amy Coney Barrett book for the messages that it sends my daughter, I love the John Wayne book for the message that it will send to my sons. It's, you know, how a man should be and how a man should behave and behaving in a moral and upright way. And it's a really, it's going to be a wonderful message for young boys as will, I think, honestly, the Mark Twain book because it introduces Mark Twain to this audience who, I mean, we're seeing Mark Twain getting canceled a little bit now and not just canceled, but also people are just not reading him enough.
And so this is sort of an introduction that I plan on using, like me personally, my homeschool. We're going to read Mark Twain book and then we're going to read Huck Twain. And I hope other parents do too. I think for me personally, my grandmother raised me through formative years.
She was pretty conservative. I mean, she was raised a Mennonite, which in turn I was going to raise a Mennonite. But then she became a Baptist, which is such a difference, you know, there. But she still had these root ideas of what America was.
And if you saw something that you didn't think was right and if you could change it, that you had a duty to do so. And, you know, I've kind of inherited that in a sense from her. But being raised by someone, you know, like a generation, you know, I was a grandmother, you know what I'm saying? I was kind of raised on all of those classic stories.
And she had like this beautiful fairy tale book. I can't remember. I have it. I have it still.
And I just loved it. It had all the classics in it. Very beautifully done. And actually I had it looked at one time for just to have an appraisal on it.
And back in the, it would have been around 89 or 90 when I had it appraised. They said it was worth like a couple hundred dollars, just one book alone, because it had colored pages in it when it went up at the time when that was illegal to do. But I still have it. I'm going to buy another one because I'm going to have grandchildren and I want to make sure that each of my grandchildren have a copy of this fairy tale book that's very colorful and have a lot of different stories in it.
But there was like these biblical children's stories too. I can't think of all the names of all the authors and all the publishers who put one out, but they were very much part of my childhood. So when I finally had a chance where I look at Heroes of Liberty, I was really blown away. And then when the books came, they were just beautiful.
My husband, he was here at the time that I opened them and he's like, wow, those are gorgeous. So I tell everybody, you should really check these books out because we're not exaggerating the beauty of them and they're just gorgeous. I'm looking forward to even sharing them with my grandchildren and whoever else wants to have a story. Yeah, I think that's the thing that excites us the most that we've had such a successful initial launch, but we know that readers like you are going to go to their friends and say, you have to pick up these books.
They're fantastic. And so I think that we're just going to grow exponentially once word of mouth hits and people start talking about it. Where we all talk about books, Facebook groups and at play dates and I think that there's going to be a really slow burn on these for a while where people are just catching on more and more until eventually we start to hit the mainstream. So how many do you think you'll be publishing a year?
I mean, the goal is 100 a year. Wow, that's healthy. Yeah, we have a business plan in mind, but for now, for the initial probably two years, the goal is one a month. And so starting in February, we're starting with John Wayne in February and then we're plugging through one a month.
And I know I personally had laid eyes on six or seven in the future, six or seven future books after John Wayne. So we're definitely going to get through 22, I think, with all the content that we already have and we're not even into the year yet. Are you looking for help? Are you looking for more writers?
A little bit. A little bit, not quite yet. I think that our main writer is getting a little burnt out and so that's why it's sort of been a team effort. So we've brought on a couple of fellow homeschool moms, honestly, that I'm friendly with and they heard us working on this project and they were like, can I get involved?
So we have a couple of writers sort of coming down the pike that we're going to work with in the process. And, you know, the goal is, goal eventually is to you know have a whole whole stable of writers um but for now um we're starting slow and we're trying to be really deliberate and really careful because we want the quality and we want the content to be just you know what we what we want on our library and our library shelves and our bookshelves that's what we want to produce and so we're trying to be really careful and really deliberate at the outset you want you want the truth of the history of each person yeah yeah and just well done books and that you know that takes a lot of time and attention to detail um and so you know we're um we're i mean i think i think the harder thing for us is trying to pinpoint who we want the heroes to be and so um you know i've talked about a couple of them um mark twain john wayne margaret thatcher winston churchill i think c.s lewis is in there i've heard rumbling of c.s a few times um but i think there's you know conversations about who who constitutes a hero of liberty and um and so that that is those are fun sort of conversations to have fun debates to have because um we're kind of like talking about abraham lincoln well he did this well he did this and he will be one of our heroes of liberty but uh because we're gonna have a president's series and a founding father series but um but it's uh it's their fun debates i'll say that have you ever thought and i know this is kind of out there a little bit as i i'm listening to you you talk things come to mind of course because no i'm a banker and a player kind of like you are but um have you ever thought of doing the stature of liberty oh that's interesting no no we've stuck to humans but that's a really interesting yeah because what symbol has been greater in calling the you know our ancestors here so i think i think a lot of it is also like who do we feel like i mean we are a for-profit we're trying to make profit and so i think we're also kind of looking at the children's book market and seeing where the holes are um and we are we've produced the first children's book about thomasole uh the first children's book about amy barrett and you know there's like 27 about ruth bader ginsburg um and i mean i've i've never come across children's books about margaret thatcher or winston churchill um i think that some i think that there might be some variations of those in the who is books but i don't find those to be very well produced to be totally frank um i feel like they're sort of just um they're xerox they kind of like pick a couple facts i mean that's just my impression there's there's a line of books called who is and they just kind of list facts they're not very well written they're not well illustrated they're not they're not what child mason homeschoolers um the term that we use is living books uh they're not living books they're not they're not captivating they're not they're not telling a lesson they're not teaching a moral it's just a bunch of facts and a few pictures um and so if there are books about winston churchill and margaret thatcher it's that kind of stuff um and so we're sort of really producing the first books of this kind yeah i can see that so i know you said that you have a publisher in israel so they they create everything there and then ship them to you here in the united states or how does that work i think that they're printed physically somewhere here i honestly don't know where they're actually physically printed but um it's a really fun sort of collaborative effort that uh is very google doc based uh because we have illustrators all around the world we have illustrators in nigeria and balkaria and brazil and i think six continents now is where is what we're you know we just gotta get somebody on antarctica maybe a mcmurdo station somewhere we'll write a book about shackleton and somebody will write a draw a picture from us from antarctica from mcmurdo station um but uh yeah i mean we have writers and editors and illustrators from every continent so um it's a real collaborative effort worldwide and the hardest part about that is the time zones yeah and we did look out here at new heights educational group because we have all volunteers that work here and they're from all over the world i think there's 92 of us right now and um and literally from all over the world um so we do that on a regular basis but it's um you build relationships and they become like family they're just yeah i work with the greatest bunch of people that you could ever ever hope to work with and they're also positive and and loving towards each other and excited to work with different people from different cultures and but i understand what you mean completely and also and and the languages as well but that kind of stuff it's helped me become a better person because it's helped me with patience and and not and not just assuming like if you misunderstand something i mean it could be a cultural thing you know but you really can't have an ego you know you can't have an ego you can't have because you're dealing with people from many different beliefs and i i try never to like take anything personal and i try to like make time to talk to each person if there's ever an issue which is pretty rare actually because volunteers are a special bunch of people you know they're they're not like the regular you know for profit we're not 511c3 non-profit but um volunteers are just special they're a special breed of human you know so we got to take another quick commercial break and we will be right back this podcast is brought to you by silicon valley high school the world's fastest growing video-based self-paced teacher-supported audio-created online school that's recommended by more than 96 percent of students pick individual courses at just 95 each or earn your high school diploma at any age check us out at fhs.co welcome back everyone this family clark and i'm with bethany mandel and we're talking about heroes of liberty which is an all-new series of books that are coming out and we're learning about each other as we we go through and through the interview and i hope you're enjoying the show so far i think it's pretty exciting and i'm excited about these books and um i know that you talked about uh different people from all over they're helping with illustrations and these writers um how many people in all are working on these and is there anybody you want to name so honestly i think so i think everyone wants to stay behind the scenes because um and i also don't want to name anyone because i don't want to insult anyone um but gosh i mean uh i couldn't even put a number on it um probably probably a dozen sort of core people between you know the accountants to the illustrators to the sort of project coordinators to the ceo to myself um sort of different like media um arms or whatever i would say probably like 15 15 people is probably a good guess um and we um and i think i i want to rewind for a second to answer one of your other questions um you know what what challenges that we face one of the other ones is uh we've had a little hard time getting on amazon and so we're selling the books directly um directly on our website heroesofliberty.com yeah yeah it's a complicated process with um with you know how you're categorized and all those things and um and so we've yeah so just yeah so we've just been selling on our website heroesofliberty.com that's it um and so that's it's even more impressive when you consider the fact that we've sold as many books as we have and not on amazon which amazon sells 80 percent of books now um and we've sold zero on amazon so only about wow man and it's because of the topic is that the issue of why they don't know i don't know i i haven't been involved in that those conversations directly because um because they just don't really relate to the work that i'm doing but um i think that there was some debate about um how we're categorized and they've sort of categorized us as political uh and we're not political like if if we're political then children's biographies of ruth better ginsburg are also political uh they don't characterize them as such um so i think there's been a little bit of a debate about sort of how we're categorized and also just sort of the technical um you know on the back of every book um you can see me but your viewers can't but there's supposed to be like a usb thing on the you know on the corner and so um or ispn that's what i'm looking for yeah yeah wow so yeah so um yeah that's not cool that's really not that you have those issues i mean yeah yeah so that's a big challenge because amazon owns the market um but in a way i think i mean i think everything is a blessing in disguise and i think that was a blessing in disguise because um we have you know the contact information of every person who bought our book whereas we might not have that if we were selling on amazon um and so we can sort of re-market what we're doing that's like a technical term we can re-market to all the people who bought our books and tell them about you know you bought our three books we hope you enjoyed them uh now john wayne is available now margaret thatcher is available and so we can sort of send those emails and say you know check out a new book you love the first three we hope um and here's the next one and so i think it honestly might have been a blessing in disguise because we can keep in touch with our customers in a much easier way yeah well you know this is interesting i don't know if you've ever it's way off topic sorry but um have you ever heard of slave city no well it's something i follow and i love and he's a person that's kind of he talks about nutrition what's good for you and what products stay away from why to stay away from them things that are good for your body you know and so forth and him and his wife are just freaking fantastic but anyways they they originally went to hgtv and pitched their idea he does all these videos during the week sometimes they're cooking with their little two-year-old daughter who's rose and um she actually has her own workstation and she's quite a little cook for being two years old but um he pitched his idea to hgtv they said no and he just does it all himself through his own site play city and he has like three million followers three million on his own so like when you're talking i'm like thinking of these types of stories that i know of that people will turn their nose at that and they're like well no because they don't get it just because somebody tells you no does not mean you should stop you know you should follow our dreams and our passions we should see projects through because we don't know why we're called to do those things but the good lord does yeah we got to follow our paths no matter what those look like and doors will open doors will open when we do that so that that says a lot about what you guys have already accomplished on your own you're going to reap the benefit and amazon just like hgtv you know they're kicking themselves yeah i mean i think i think eventually i hope eventually we'll get there but i think i think it's honestly in our best interest at least in the beginning to um to have as much contact as we can with with our customers and um i think it'll help us with the launch oh oh definitely i'm sure so uh along with the books um you touched a little bit on the figurine we received one the tonical but um tell us a little bit about the figurine idea and you know who thought that up and and why they thought to include that with the book i mean what's the vision for the figurine i mean i think that we just we were thinking you know what would be a great gift and to be quite honest with you i haven't really seen the figurines because my husband stole them and brought them to work with so i feel like it was a good decision because my husband sold them um and so i think the thinking is and i think it's correct that you know that it's a it's a product that is interesting to the whole family um and the books are wonderful for the kids and um i mean i don't know maybe we're strange maybe we're a strange family but my husband just loved the figurines and i love the figurines too and my kids also my kids are very imaginative and they love um they love sort of imagining things i think i probably would have gone with like a plush doll versus a figurine but the difference i think and i think i think that it was probably the right decision is that the figurine sort of appeals to everyone whereas it all only appeals to children but um it's sort of it's a whole family gift and um and you know people might not have kids in their lives that they want to buy for but i mean who doesn't who doesn't want a figurine on their desk so so was that part of the initial talk between all of the people that that that one of these books was it part of the vision the original vision or did it come later i think we just were trying to make it a field to as many people as possible and you know thomas all and amy barrett and marlon bragan are heroes of you know adults and we want them to be adults we want them to be the heroes of children as well for children as well and you know we uh we wanted a way to sort of make an interesting fun product for adults and so um and we thought we thought that the figurines might be a fun way to do that and we've seen sort of the success of figurines um sort of the general market and so we thought it would be a fun way to um you know reach reach another audience with the same sort of message of you know these are heroes and you know there's someone who you want to figure on your desk so and i know that for the plushies for the idea of plushies i mean i know that the kohl's they already do that where they sell a book a plushie that goes with the book so that's kind of been done so it was really brilliant it was a smart idea to do a figurine i mean and there is definitely a market in general because every movie now even video games like characters they make these you know they make the statues the the you know what i'm talking about the figurines yeah yeah yeah the actual figures yeah so that's been a market for years or they wouldn't be doing that yeah yeah i think it was the right decision um my husband happens to have a figurine collection that's like the most you know eclectic figurine collection in the world he has jeff goldblum you know the guy the actor and he has uh ysak robin and um mayor gold mayor and uh now he has thomas toll and ronald reagan and uh he has a million figurines of queen elizabeth he's like a big monetist yeah he's my husband's a really funny guy i like him a lot and it's funny because you know you look at his desk and it tells you a lot about who he is um who he wants to collect the figurines and it tells you a lot about who they are and um and i think it really sort of made his figurine collection a little more full circle because you know he's got jeff goldblum he's got the queen and uh but you know these figurines didn't exist um and i got him there's a there's an israeli company um that produces a whole bunch of sort of israeli heroes and so i bought him that for hanukkah last year that was his birthday present i don't remember um so now he has for the american ones too um and he that's why they came and he instantly stole amy barrett and ronald reagan and he was like this will go on my desk at work alongside elizabeth i'm like okay great wow now uh my next question is about audio books or even the idea and i have this this week because we're having um we have an online reading program virtual reading program it's in different tiers and we're growing it from our third tier to our fourth and fifth so now every age group of student is covered and we have like a list of books on that page of what we'd be pulling from to read to the public online and we'll create the you know the video it'll be a video and then people can go on youtube and they can watch it and follow along with the book but have you thought about doing audio books but maybe even online reading to introduce people to these stories so a little bit but not quite yet because one of i think 50 percent of of what we we want to accomplish is the illustrations and we think that's such an important component um but i love audio books my daughter has a um it's not it's not an alexa it's not connected to the internet i can control it on my phone it's called a sonos um but my daughter has a sonos speaker in her room and she listens to audio books in there all the time um and so i love the idea of i mean eventually you know one of my my long-term visions for heroes of liberty when we become like a real substantial publishing company is to do sort of young adult literature and in that circumstance the illustrations are not as critical um and so i'd love to sort of get into the audio world with that as well okay that'd be great and even books on braille has that been discussed yet not yet not yet that's a pretty tough um it's a pretty tough market to get into um that's a whole other series of um of expertise and from a technical perspective yeah i'm sure i'm sure it is so was there any inspiration that you draw from authors or books or or something that somebody else was doing um that kind of inspired you you know kind of like hillsdale or or um some of the other things that we mentioned i mean where's the inspiration from do you think yeah so some of it is just the fact that we saw a really big hole in the market that this just doesn't exist and i think the closest um connection would probably be title twins which is libertarian it's run by an organization called libertas and they've had wonderful success uh teaching about um economic principles to children uh they've sold i think it's like over a million books now and um and that's like really kind of it um and none of the none of books of this nature exist and so we saw we sort of saw the success of title twins and said you know there is a market for this if they're selling books about economics to kids why can't we sell books about thomas soul right right so um we're kind of coming up at the end of our our show um is there anything else that you'd like to share with the audience maybe the website and and where to go and i know that we're just working on a partnership with you guys so people will be able to go to our website and and find you as well that's not set up yet but can you tell people just a little bit more for the closing and how they can learn about yeah yeah absolutely so um we've done a little bit media so if you if you kind of uh look on our social media you can see a segment i did on fox and friends and pete heyseth was really enthusiastic and he showed a lot of the illustrations and so you can kind of get a peek through the books um by watching that clip uh but that's why the only way to get our books right now is zeros of liberty.com that's it there you go everyone so we hope that you enjoyed the show i certainly did i've learned a lot and um i'll link to some resources when this is published on december 24th and we should have this up by 6 p.m um on that date and we hope you share it with friends and family and we wish all of you a safe and happy merry christmas and happy holidays stay safe and we wish you a happy new year careful thank you thank you for joining us we hope you enjoyed today's show don't forget to rate us and follow us on your podcast player check out our show page radio.newheighteducation.org for monthly announcements and other happy at one day university we feature hundreds of top-rated professors from stanford harvard michigan texas ucla and other schools across the world to explore history music politics art science and much more every wednesday our weekly scholar newsletter includes five fascinating short video clips of our most 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