RUSH: We’ll go to Kenowa, Michigan, and Vickie. Vickie, hi. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you for having me, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Mega dittos. I have been listening to you since the late 1980s. My dad introduced me to you, and I just had to call because my 11-year-old daughter received your book for her birthday in December right before Christmas, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims. I just had to call and tell you that the second my mom gave it to her for her present she sat down and started paging through very fast. I said… Her name is LaShetta.
I said, “Shet, you have to finish the book you’re reading right now for school,” which is Little House on the Prairie. She said, “Mom, that’s boring. It’s from the old times. It’s so boring, I don’t want to read that.” I said, “Well, I think Rush Revere is about, you know, the 1600s. Let’s just wait. Let’s just finish your book that you have.” So we got home that evening, and I saw her sneaking under her bed with a flashlight sneaking your book again, and she just wouldn’t stop reading it, Rush, for a couple of days.
RUSH: What a great story. I mean, I’m envisioning this. What was the book she was reading for school, do you know?
CALLER: Well, it was the Laura Ingalls Wilder set of books, the Little House on the Prairie set.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Little House on the Prairie.
CALLER: It was for, you know, her Accelerated Reader Program. Our schools have Accelerated Reader, so she had to finish it.
RUSH: Do you know that Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims has been authorized, approved, whatever, for Accelerated Reader Programs?
CALLER: No, I did not.
RUSH: Yeah, we just found out last week.
CALLER: I didn’t know that, no.
RUSH: Yeah. It’s awesome. We just found out last week. I think last week.
CALLER: Great.
RUSH: Maybe a couple weeks. Time’s flying here. So your daughter liked Rush Revere and was sneaking under the bed with a flashlight to read it?
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Was she afraid of getting in trouble with you?
CALLER: Yeah. Well, she’s supposed to be in bed at a certain time, but it was immediate. My mom gave it to her, she opened it up, and then my mom and I started chatting and she immediately just started paging through it. Of course she wanted to look at the pictures, and she just wanted me to tell you. I had called previously before Christmas, and she was home from school but I couldn’t get through. I had to get off but she’s not home today with me. She wanted me to tell you she loves Liberty, your horse, which is her favorite character. She wanted me to pass that on to you.
RUSH: That’s good. That’s always my question, and I guess that’s probably 80% of the kids reading the book love Liberty.
CALLER: Yes. She just wanted me to tell you, and my husband and I wanted to tell you personally. We just wanted to thank you for telling the truth — and when you tell the real story of Thanksgiving, we make sure they listen to that every year. You know, but this is the kind of thing that they can read themselves and they don’t have to listen to somebody in a preachy kind of way. It tells a story, you know, that kids love also. I hope that it does. I mean, I know it was in our school library. My kids go to a Catholic school and they got it there. I was surprised to see they got it, but it’s not set up for Accelerated Reader yet.
RUSH: Well, we found out that it’s been accepted for that. I don’t know everywhere it was accepted. It’s a couple of specific places, but everything that’s happened with this book for us has just been over-the-top great. There’s a mission behind the book, which I’ve explained, and you nailed it. It is the truth. It is to counter what young people are being taught about the first days of the country, the Pilgrims, the arrival of essentially “white Europeans.” We don’t refer to them that way in the book, but multicultural curriculum is trying to distort and lie about them, and it’s just the greatest present in the world to hear feedback like yours. I really can’t thank you enough.
CALLER: Well, great. Great. We’ll be reading it, too. My husband and I, we’re gonna pass it around and read it, and I hope the school, our Holy Name school, does get it as an AR book.
RUSH: I’ve been kind of surprised — and, again, pleasantly so — that there have been parents who’ve told us that they learned things in this book that they didn’t know about the Pilgrims in the early days. It’s all been gratifying. It really is. Well, I’ll tell you what, Vickie. What I want to do, if you’ll stay on hold, is send you the audio version of the book. It’s read by me. It’s, I think, six CDs, and it’s about 4.5 hours, but it’s entirely new. It’s the same book, interpreted by me, the author, and it’s a great way to read it again while driving around in the car.