Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton has written a book to help empower children to get involved in social issues. It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going (Philomel) hits bookstores on September 15. This reporter met with Clinton at the offices of the Clinton Foundation in New York City to discuss the book, motherhood, and family.   How did this book come to be? I really wanted to write a book for young people who are the age I was when I realized that I could make a difference in my community and globally. My editor, Jill Santopolo, had seen me on Jon Stewart talking about non-communicable diseases. She said,“You seem to be able to take these big complicated issues and distill them down. Would you have any interest in writing a book?” I explained that I was interested. We hit it off and that was the beginning.   What’s the book about? The book is about some of the big issues facing the world today that are particularly relevant because either they disproportionally affect young people or they affect our world so profoundly like climate change. If you don’t fix them they will fall harder on kids as they grow up. I hope that if there are kids that feel strongly about something that is not in the book, they will seek out other resources. I wrote this book because I do believe it is a kid’s world; I do believe that kids can make a difference. I do hope that kids will use the book to get informed, get inspired, and ultimately make a difference locally or across the world.   Which social issue do you remember feeling most strong about when you were growing up? I was particularly drawn to climate change and endangered species. I cared intensely about the oceans and what was happening in the oceans to whales and to coral. I can’t tell you why I cared so much about that as a kid from Arkansas. It isn’t like we had oceans close by. I read 50 Simple Things that Kids Can Do to Change the Earth when I was 10, and it had a profound impact on me, partly because it made me feel empowered and that I could make a difference. I was lucky enough to have parents, teachers and grandparents that also believed that no kid was ever too young to make a difference.  

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

You started early as an activist. In the book there is a letter that you sent to President Reagan. Tell us about that letter. I was 5. I remember hearing that President Reagan was going to stop at Bitburg Cemetery on his trip to Germany. I didn’t believe it should be a stop for an American president because of the Nazi leadership that is buried in Bitburg. I had seen the movie “The Sound of Music,” and one of my good friends was Jewish and her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. So I wrote him a letter telling him that and I included a favorite sticker on the letter and a sheet of stickers behind the letter. He wound up going to Bitburg Cemetery. I found that very disappointing. I learned that sometimes, you try to make a difference and it doesn’t work. But it is always better to have tried than have not.   You parents made a photocopy of the letter, did you ever get an answer to your letter? No, I did not get an answer to the letter. When my father was elected in 1992, my parents asked me if there was anything that I had hope for in this new experience we were embarking on as a family. I said that I hope that every kid would get a response (to their letters). My parents set up the first Children’s Correspondence Unit in the White House, which is something that President Bush and President Obama continued. So I like to think that every kid does get a response.

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

  Much has been written about your grandmother, Dorothy Rodham recently. What influence did she have in your life and on this book? I am grateful to have had my grandmother Dorothy in my life for more than 30 years. She had a profound influence in my life in a few ways. One was being very candid and not morose about her life. She had the very real specter of being homeless, having to make her own clothes and get herself to school. She felt that she had been blessed to have adults that believed in her even though her parents and grandparents didn’t. She had teachers who really believed in her. She had employers that supported her desire to go to school and graduate from high school. My grandmother believed that every child deserved to have those same opportunities. The sense of engagement from an early age was something that she passed on to my mother and through my mother, directly passed it onto me.   In the book you mention how Beverly Cleary’s Ramona and her Father helped you to be an activist with your paternal grandmother. Ramona made these signs that said N Smoking because she could not get No Smoking to fit on the same line of her cardboard paper. She ultimately got her dad to stop smoking. I thought I could do the same for my Grandma Ginger. When she asked me what I wanted for my eighth birthday I said I wanted her to quit smoking. Thankfully she said she would try. She more than tried, she succeeded. If she hadn’t tried I was ready to launch an all-out Ramona-style campaign with signs and throwing out the ashtrays and cigarettes.   You use some examples from your own life that illustrate such issues as gender equity and bullying. Will you share those experiences with us? I remember vividly the first time being bullied for being a girl. I was in first grade and my mother was at a PTA meeting (in another room). There was a boy who kept on mercilessly teasing me for being a girl, an ugly girl, a stupid girl, a silly girl—everything was mean adjectives in front of being a girl. It was such a moment for me to know that he thinks that is OK. I have been really lucky to have had extraordinary teachers in my life. But there wasn’t a great teacher there that night. She walked in and said,“Boys will be boys; get over it Chelsea.” It was for me to get over. She did not recognize that I wasn’t the one who done anything wrong by being born a girl.   You mention many organizations in your book.  One was Room to Read.  I think SLJ readers would be interested in knowing more about that organization. There are a couple that would interest your readers, Room to Read and Worldreader. Room to Read builds libraries and schools with libraries in them around the world. Room to Read fills those libraries with books in the kids’ local languages. Room to Read encourages literacy in any and every language in the countries where they work. Worldreader is taking books that are in the public domain and translating them into text-based platforms. Even if you have a pretty simple phone, generations before the iPhone, you can download via text messaging the Nancy Drew books, the Bible, or Dickens. A lot of the people in the developing world have not had access to a cellphone until now. Imagine all of the books that kids and families will be able to read on their phones.   You dedicated the book to your daughter, Charlotte.  I am sure SLJ readers would love to know the books that you are looking forward to sharing with her. We read books that I loved reading as a child such as Each Peach Pear Plum. We read all these wonderful books that didn’t exist then, like Click, Clack Moo, Hoot Owl, If I Build a Car and If I Build a House.  It is fun to revisit books that I loved when I was a little kid and to discover new books that have been published since I was little. Then when she gets older we, of course, look forward to reading Charlotte’s Web with her.   Speaking of Charlotte, it has been reported that her room has been decorated with elephants.  Do you have a soft spot for elephants? Yes, I do. It is important that we save our endangered species for reasons that I discuss in the book. There are some animals to which I feel closely connected. Elephants are at the top of the list. Elephants embody so many of my favorite characteristics, such as their strong family bond and their resiliency. They play an important role in the community by building water holes that other species can use. They protect their family and communities. They have emotions very similar to our emotions. They love and laugh, grieve and mourn.   Is the rumor true that Will and Kate actually named their daughter after your Charlotte? I don’t know. It is a name that clearly means so much to us. It is a beautiful and special name.