[00:00:00.970] - Dori Durbin

Hello, and welcome to The Power of Kids Books, where we believe books are a catalyst to inspire and empower change. I'm your host, Dori Durbin. We talk a lot about tools and information leading to empower kids to live happy lives, and my guest today is a living example of that. She became interested in being a registered massage therapist at the age of 13 and has been ever since. She's also the author of her first children's book, chirps Large Day, that includes messages of inclusion whimsy. And that there's magic everywhere. Welcome rebecca gladdy.

[00:00:37.550] - Rebecca Gladney

Hi, Dori.

[00:00:38.320] - Dori Durbin

How are you? I am doing great and so fascinated about your background. You knew at 1313 that's so young that you wanted to be an actual massage therapist. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:00:53.200] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, I had a really impactful adult in my life who was a family friend, one of my mother's friends, who, as I got older, became one of my close friends. And she was really great at putting me in leadership positions and one day complained that she had a knot in her shoulder. And I'd been really involved with sports, so I was like, oh, I think I can probably do something about that, and just started massaging her shoulder, and it had an impact, and it made her feel better. And my parents both worked in and around the health care sphere, so it was very kind of embedded in me to help the people who take care of you and to take care of them and to help people in your community. So this was a really great way for me to work in healthcare without being a nurse like my mom was or having to dive all the way into being a doctor and still give back and have a meaningful impact on people's lives.

[00:01:52.210] - Dori Durbin

That's awesome. And to feel that so strongly at 13, I think about that as an age group. Maybe it's just my experience, but I had lots of interests, but not really, like, a true passion, and I doubt my parents would have let me follow that true passion at that point. So I think you're so lucky that you were able to do that.

[00:02:11.370] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, they were super supportive. As soon as I graduated high school, I was exploring how I became a massage therapist and started almost immediately on that pathway and working towards the massage therapy diploma. And I was really lucky that I could do it here in my hometown as well.

[00:02:28.990] - Dori Durbin

And I love the fact that you have expanded your reach. So in my mind, a massage therapist kind of works in an office, sees patients coming, you're actually on the sidelines of sporting events, which I think is really fascinating, too.

[00:02:44.210] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah. In 2015, I became really interested in becoming a sports massage therapist, and part of getting that designation is to work with at least three different sports, and one has to be contact, and one has to be non contact, and then the third can be either of those two things. So I started working with hockey because I'm Canadian, so that just seemed like the most realistic contact sport you think of hockey. And I fell in love with it. I had never been on a hockey bench. Nobody in my family played hockey growing up. We all learned how to skate, but nobody played hockey. My parents and my siblings didn't really watch hockey, and I just totally fell in love with the world of it and being on the bench and helping players perform at their best and be their best selves. So it was really cool to get to be the safe space for kids in that environment too, because you don't control their ice time. It doesn't matter to you if they're playing a lot or playing a little. They're all treated the same way and you just take care of them when they need it.

[00:03:48.890] - Dori Durbin

I just had this vision of you seeing a kid being pulled off the ice because of whatever, and you walking up to them and knowing exactly where they're going to be tight because of the stress of the situation. Okay? Yeah, I got it.

[00:04:02.080] - Rebecca Gladney

I actually had a goalie, probably my second year with our provincial high performance program. I had a goalie who kept touching her back. And I had worked with her the year before previously, and I knew that that wasn't normal behavior for her. And when she came off the ice, I was like, so what's going on with your low back? And at that age, they're a little bit hesitant, especially in such a high performance tryout situation. They don't want you to pull them and them not to be able to try out because they think it's going to impact their chance of getting on the team, even though it doesn't, it's taken into consideration. So she was hesitant to say anything, that her back was hurting her. And as soon as I called her on it, you could see the look on her face and how did you know that? And I was magical that I could recognize it. And we were able to do very little work and give her some stretches and send her on her way and perform better than she had been because she no longer had the nagging pain. So it's always really fun to be able to recognize those patterns and the biomechanics behind it and get to know the kids really well and know what's their normal and what isn't their normal and kind of make them think that you're a little magical even though you're just paying attention.

[00:05:12.770] - Dori Durbin

So those are the kind of details that you really thrive on, is seeing some of the patterning, some of their emotional and physical reactions that you can kind of key in to help them get better.

[00:05:24.950] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, and that's honestly, I guess, recognizing those patterns and seeing those reactions has been one of the coolest things about the book because I didn't expect that, but going into classrooms and actually sharing it with students in person and seeing the joy on their faces, and it's just been the loveliest part of the book. Journey is a continuation of my massage therapy journey without having anything to do with massage therapy.

[00:05:53.090] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, because your book is really an adventure type of book, right?

[00:05:58.450] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah. So I love being a tourist at home, and my first book is very much centered around the downtown core of my hometown, which is a little bit magical all in its own. Right. I live on an island on the eastern coast of Canada, and our town is very influenced by the fishery, especially fishery of previous years, and the color. So there's a lot of even the first page has these really colorful houses. They're called jelly bean row houses, and that actually exists in the town. And yeah, it's kind of a magical little place that people love to visit but don't know exists.

[00:06:50.990] - Dori Durbin

We were talking right before the podcast. I didn't realize you were a half hour different. Even you have your own time zone.

[00:06:57.210] - Rebecca Gladney

That's all part of the magic.

[00:06:59.750] - Dori Durbin

I had no idea. That's amazing just in itself, for sure. Okay, let's go back just for a second. We started to talk about your massage career. I want the listeners to know what your future career might be.

[00:07:14.350] - Rebecca Gladney

I am actively working towards getting into med school so that I can become a doctor, even though it's not what I wanted to do when I was younger. At 29, I decided that that was the pathway that I wanted to take and went back to university and did a degree so that I'd be eligible to apply and have been working towards that ever since.

[00:07:32.400] - Dori Durbin

I think that's so cool because really, like, the same skills that you've acquired from being an author and from being a massage therapist, you're going to take those and channel them into a higher level of education, but you're still going to be doing the same, focusing on those patients and really reading those emotions, feelings, symptoms, et cetera. So I think that's amazing.

[00:07:53.350] - Rebecca Gladney

Thank you so much. Yeah, it's really kind of become an interesting pathway, and I'm really fortunate that my life hasn't been on hold waiting to get in. I still have a career. I still have passions that I've been able to pursue, and my family and friends have been really supportive about everything from me pursuing my passions to the act of getting into med school and the process that's associated with that. I've been really fortunate.

[00:08:17.490] - Dori Durbin

Were they surprised you wrote a children's book?

[00:08:21.170] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, it just kind of happened. My two best friends laugh about it all the time, and my parents are really supportive. My family is really supportive. But these two women in particular who've been with me since we were young kids, one day, I was just kind of like, so I have this book and I think this is what's going to happen with it. And they've been unbelievable. So we joke that one of them brings it up in conversation all the time with anyone that she can, and we'll often go, have you heard about Chirp? So we've promoted her to his head of PR and the other is a police officer, but is also just like telling anybody she can about it. So we've jokingly said that she's his head of security.

[00:09:09.070] - Dori Durbin

I love that. Does she have a book in her car?

[00:09:14.530] - Rebecca Gladney

I should ask her. If you ever have to deal with a child, it might be nice.

[00:09:20.500] - Dori Durbin

Have it in the car, ready to go. I love that. That's awesome. So what inspired you to actually write the story and then even to follow through and self publish it?

[00:09:32.710] - Rebecca Gladney

So I saw a photo of a magazine cover that a friend had designed and posted on Facebook. His name is Judd Haynes, he's an incredible graphic designer. And somebody had commented below it saying, you're halfway to a kid's book. I was lying in bed next to my nephew, who was probably two and a half, three at the time. He's now five. He just turned five, which is crazy to think about. And I just started writing a book based on this puffin who was on the magazine cover named Chirp and basically combined things that me and my nephew had done that morning together around downtown St. John's and some of the iconic locations. So there's a couple of things in the book that we didn't actually do that day, but that we do regularly and that tourists often do when they're in town.

[00:10:25.680] - Dori Durbin

That's really neat. I love that it's based off of something that you've experienced and experienced with a kid that gives it a new kind of appreciation, new perspective, too.

[00:10:36.430] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, well, and in the dedication, I dedicated the book to him for the obvious reasons. And one of the things that I say is that he's the teacher of all things silly, because I really don't think that I appreciated how silly I could be and how whimsy life could be until he came into my life and taught me that skill.

[00:11:01.650] - Dori Durbin

The kid that was already in you.

[00:11:03.330] - Rebecca Gladney

He brought back out for sure.

[00:11:05.460] - Dori Durbin

Yeah.

[00:11:05.750] - Rebecca Gladney

And just that ability to not really care what's happening around you and just focus on his laugh and his entertainment and his joy and what he's actually seeing and experiencing and the questions that he asks about what you would consider the simplest thing. But his mind is learning and growing and he doesn't know those things yet. So it's been really fun.

[00:11:27.930] - Dori Durbin

I hope you're taking notes as you're spending time with him so you can continue your series.

[00:11:33.550] - Rebecca Gladney

I actually am continuing the series. So I've decided to make Chirp a series all about adventure. So instead of branding as chirp's Large Day. I started branding as Chirps Adventures, and the hope is that he'll go all the way across Canada and then eventually into the United States and across to the UK and basically travel the world. That's awesome.

[00:12:00.140] - Dori Durbin

I'm sure that your nephew will want to chime in a little bit into some of those adventures then.

[00:12:05.160] - Rebecca Gladney

Do you know what? So the book is dedicated to him and he's a child who hates having attention focused on him. So I knew that he didn't actually like the book, but I couldn't figure out quite why. And recently, my second book is about to be published. It's in pre orders right now. And I told him that it was dedicated to his cousin, my other nephew, and he said, oh, that's really nice. I said, Will you like the book better because your name isn't in it? And he said yes, I think so. So he thought that because his name was in it, all of these people knew him and were focusing their attention on him and his name, and that's why he didn't like the book. So he does actually like the book, he just doesn't like that his name is in it for right now anyways. When he's an adult, he might enjoy that and to be able to show him the animated trailer of the drawings. And I like to put little Easter eggs in the book. So in the second book, my dog is actually in it and his dog is in it because they're best pals and they walk down a trail together.

[00:13:06.860] - Rebecca Gladney

So in the animation, they're walking down the trail together and when he saw it, he just lit up and said, Kim wasabi and rue. I was like, yes, that's been really fun.

[00:13:16.030] - Dori Durbin

That is very fun. So, Rebecca, I would love to have you read some of your book, if you wouldn't mind doing that for us.

[00:13:23.640] - Rebecca Gladney

Oh, my gosh, I would love to. I'm actually just going to start right from the beginning. It's a Rhyming book, so I did that purposely. A because my dad has always sung little limericks at us that he would make up, so it's naturally embedded in me and B, because Rhyming helps language development, especially in young children that are being read too, so they learn to anticipate sounds. So it was one of the considerations that I made with it. So I'll just start. That'd be great.

[00:13:55.740] - Dori Durbin

Thank you.

[00:13:56.830] - Rebecca Gladney

Chirp the Puffin has plans for a big day. Let's follow along. What do you say? Chirp stops for breakfast treats in a really special store. They've got tea and hot chocolate and at night even more. It was once where the fire trucks went to sleep, but now it's where us townies like to meet. With a full belly, chirp Climbs Signal Hill at the top, he Hears ringing. Not a phone, but church bells. I'm just going to stop there and I'll explain a couple of things. If that works for you?

[00:14:28.200] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, for sure.

[00:14:29.220] - Rebecca Gladney

Okay, so the first place that he stopped it was once where fire trucks went to sleep. It actually used to be a fire hall. And when it stopped being a fire hall, it sat vacant for a long period of time. And recently several people bought it and turned it into this really amazing cafe and brewery. So there's actually a brewery in each book without saying that it's a brewery for the parents, because I have read thousands of children's books to the kids in my life, and I hated that it was all focused on them and that it wasn't necessarily as entertaining for me. And I find that that's changing a lot in some of the recent books that are coming out. That's kind of the line of it was once where the fire trucks went to sleep. So it gives an opportunity for parents to engage with it, especially if they're from here and they know the history of it. They can talk about how it used to be a fire hall and it was repurposed. And I'll show you the drawing.

[00:15:28.650] - Dori Durbin

You guys can't see it on the podcast, but it's adorable. Love it.

[00:15:32.250] - Rebecca Gladney

And then the second location that he stops, Signal Hill, is actually where the first transatlantic phone signal was sent from. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that's why it's called Signal Hill. And that's why the line is at the top here is ringing not a phone, but church bells because there's a really large church in the background located in downtown St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. And it's kind of iconic within our skyline. We don't have that industrial skyline. We really have kind of a mishmash of colors and building shapes, and nothing is more than three or four stories high. That's starting to change a little bit, too, but for right now, everything is a little bit lower.

[00:16:14.020] - Dori Durbin

I love it. I love the fact that you have included the history of where you're from. So when you read this, do you have the kids guess where you're talking about?

[00:16:24.430] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, it's been really fun with school visits because I tell them that they're allowed to be excited. You're going to see places that you recognize and you're allowed to be excited by it. And I asked them to hold their comments till the end, but that they can kind of woo and exclaim during the reading. And they're all really excited to see Signal Hill because even if they don't live here in town, most of them have at least visited town. Our island is quite large. There's a couple of places in the book that aren't quite as familiar to them, but Signal Hill and something I didn't read, the Geocenter, is they're often field trips for them when they come to town.

[00:17:06.110] - Dori Durbin

That's really neat. Do you have a chamber of commerce there?

[00:17:10.490] - Rebecca Gladney

We do. Yeah.

[00:17:11.870] - Dori Durbin

They should have your book. I'm just throwing that out there.

[00:17:15.210] - Rebecca Gladney

So actually the businesses in the book. I think there's four businesses in the book and two of them sell it. So bannerman Brewing Co. Which is where the fire trucks used to sleep, they carry it there. And the geocenter is all based around the geology in the area and some other science things, talks about space and things like that. They carry it in their gift shop as well.

[00:17:41.760] - Dori Durbin

Just saying it's excellent marketing for you both.

[00:17:44.950] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, they were all really quite happy that they were featured. Nobody's been mad about being in the books yet. And in the second book, the Lamb Wash Brewery is in it. Again, without saying that it's a brewery because it's a children's book and they're really excited about the fact that they're featured in it as well.

[00:18:03.530] - Dori Durbin

That's really cool. I love that. And I don't know if you did that intentionally, but I think that's, like you said, that's brilliant marketing on both of your parts.

[00:18:10.690] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, it wasn't intentional as a marketing perspective. It certainly worked in that way, but it wasn't intentional. It was really just about like, here are the things that I like to do and that me and my nephew like to do together. And that if people are in town visiting that have never been here, the places we're going to take them.

[00:18:29.560] - Dori Durbin

That's awesome. Well, speaking of your business, I know one of the questions I usually ask is how your book has influenced your business, but you have a different take on that. Do you want to share that?

[00:18:39.900] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, for sure. My business has actually been more of an impact on my book, so I'm really fortunate to have an incredibly loyal clientele and an incredibly supportive clientele along with my friends and family. And when most of them found out that I had a children's book, or when it was precariously positioned on my desk as they were checking out, they would ask about it. And a lot of them have either picked it up themselves or sent it to friends and family who are from Newfoundland but don't live here anymore, or friends and family who have never been here but have small kids and that they'd like to kind of entice to come here. So they've been really supportive.

[00:19:24.210] - Dori Durbin

That's awesome. Yeah. Because usually your book kind of drives business, but I think it's great that your business is driving the book. And I can imagine as a doctor, I mean, I think that to have a series will be pretty amazing.

[00:19:37.930] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah. And I've actually been thinking about how I can transition not just to doing the Chirp series, but actually to doing an anatomy book for children or something that pulls in my expertise into children's literature and gives them something to explore.

[00:19:56.250] - Dori Durbin

I absolutely love that because kids are already curious about their bodies, and if you can funnel some of that into even considering the career, not that you're trying to make a bunch of doctors, but you could open the door to maybe they could be. So that would be a huge deal.

[00:20:12.000] - Rebecca Gladney

Well, and for a child who isn't hearing that at home, that can be significant. Right? To read it in a book and say, you can be anything that you want to be, maybe this is something that you want to be.

[00:20:22.950] - Dori Durbin

I think there's a significant hole in the professional world as far as kids books, and I definitely feel like there's going to the doctor books, but there are fewer and fewer books about what the experience of being a doctor is or what the experience of learning to be the doctor is. So there are definitely holes. I'm curious to see what will happen. I want to have a follow up on this.

[00:20:48.350] - Rebecca Gladney

I never thought that I would be an author. I kind of stumbled into it. I wrote that book in the afternoon on my notes app on my phone and pitched it to JuD, who ended up being way too busy with his normal design work to be able to illustrate it. And he gave me his blessing to go find another illustrator. But that was, like, months down the road. And really early on, when I had written the book, I think I wrote it in December of 2019 and in January of 2020, I was talking to my friend Dave and was like, I kind of wrote this book. Do you want to hear it? And he was the first adult that I had read it out to besides JuD. And I never knew that I was a creative person. I've always liked to sew, but I never thought of that as being creative. And he had some very encouraging words for me about how creative I was and how I could do anything that I wanted to do. And that made a world of difference and was why I decided to actually leap into it and self publish it and be able to do it on my own timeline instead of sending it out to publishers and hoping that somebody would like the idea.

[00:21:54.690] - Dori Durbin

I am definitely biased for the self publishing world just because of that. I think if you can move at your pace and get the book that you envision, it feels so much more of, like, an accomplishment, and it's you out in the real world.

[00:22:09.340] - Rebecca Gladney

Right? Yeah. And it's authentic to me then, too. Right. So I was able to feature things that I wanted to feature. So along with the locations, I had full creative control over approval of the drawings. I got to artistic direct it. I got to include elements of inclusivity that I probably would have been able to, but maybe not to the same extent. So my font was designed by a behavior analyst who deals a lot with children with children with autism or on the autism spectrum. And it was done in such a way so that there would be no big twirls at the end of the letters and that children with processing disorders or people with processing disorders would be able to pick out the letters and read it the same way that anybody who's neurotypical would be able to pick it up and read it. And then one of the other things is there's a page that talks about boats in the harbor and I wanted one of the boats to have a Pride flag on them. It's really small. It's not done in such a way that's kind of showy to be like, this is a pride book, but I just wanted it to exist within Chirp's world because it exists within our world and a lot of children aren't getting that same recognition unless it's a book specifically targeted towards the queer community.

[00:23:25.570] - Rebecca Gladney

So in my second book, chirp actually makes a new friend named Chick, and Chick uses they them pronouns. And again, it's done in such a way that it just exists there. So if you're looking for it, you'll see it, but if you're not looking for it, you might not even notice that it's there.

[00:23:39.220] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, that's really fascinating. I love the fact that you are able to well, first of all, you have the ability to do that because a lot of people don't have the foresight of trying to see what all they could put into the book. But then the fact that you're working with an illustrator that's willing to do that as well, that's awesome.

[00:23:57.210] - Rebecca Gladney

Yeah, I've been really fortunate and I was really hoping to find a local illustrator for the first book and wasn't able but for this second book, she's matched the style of the first book so that it has the continuity of a series. But Lisa D. King is her name, so this is the second children's book that she's illustrated and she totally matched his style and nailed it and was totally willing for any of the edits that I wanted or the things I wanted to add in. She was totally on board for that's.

[00:24:27.680] - Dori Durbin

Awesome. Well, congratulations on finding her. That's awesome. So let me ask you, what do you hope that your story, not only your book, but your own personal story, can help parents to let their kids follow their passions?

[00:24:42.250] - Rebecca Gladney

I guess the fact that their passions can change and that it's okay that things ebb and flow again. I never thought that I would be an author, and then one day I wrote a book and now I have a second book coming. So my parents have just kind of stood by my side and asked, what can we do to help you with this? Which usually the answer is tell whoever.

[00:25:05.420] - Dori Durbin

You can tell, buy more books.

[00:25:08.940] - Rebecca Gladney

But, yeah, they were always really supportive and yeah, I guess the biggest thing really is that your passion can change and that you can have more than one passion. So I love my job. I love my career, but I also really love this journey that I'm on. And they're two totally separate things that really interact and come from the same place of wanting to help people and make people feel welcome and safe.

[00:25:34.930] - Dori Durbin

Yeah. That's beautiful. Well, where can they find you and where can they find your books?

[00:25:40.310] - Rebecca Gladney

I'm on TikTok at Chirpsadventures. I'm on Instagram at rmgladney M, as in Mary and the website, if they'd like to preorder the second book or pick up the first book is just Chirpsadventures.com. And I think we can put a link so that they don't miss the s's.

[00:26:00.770] - Dori Durbin

Yes. Perfect. And definitely we'll put that in the show notes for them as well.

[00:26:05.460] - Rebecca Gladney

Perfect.

[00:26:05.940] - Dori Durbin

Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for sharing your story, literally, your own personal story and your story. And I am so excited for your future.

[00:26:14.900] - Rebecca Gladney

Oh, my gosh, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you. Thank you.

[00:26:18.590] - Dori Durbin

You too. Thank you.