[00:00:00] Hey friends. Welcome back to the Firstieland Podcast. I’m your host, Molly Schwab, and today I have a really special guest joining me on the podcast. I’m chatting with children’s book author Susan Fairchild, who’s the author of The Turkey Hands. It’s one of the cutest books I’ve read in a long time, and I don’t want to give away the plot because I want Susan to tell you all about it, but make sure you stick around to the end of the show so you can hear all the fun ways that you can use this book in your classroom.
I’m really excited to welcome Susan to the podcast and hear all about her inspiration for writing this book. So let’s get started.

Hi Susan. Welcome to the show. I’m really glad to have you here. I have to tell you first, I love your book. I really was—I’m—I was really taken by it, and so I was really happy to have you on the show.
Thank you so much. It is, it is a [00:01:00] delight to be here. Thank you for inviting me, and I just can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you like The Turkey Hands, so—oh, yeah.
I just—you made my day. I just love it.
That’s great. I just love it. Before we talk about the book, tell me a little bit about yourself and your journey into becoming an author.
You know, I just want to say, first off, that I love your—I love your blog. I love your podcast, and part of the reason why it is close to my heart is because I am the product of a first grade teacher.
My mom taught first grade for probably 30 years, and I’ve just been surrounded by children’s books, by art, so she was just an incredible part of this journey that I’ve been on in terms of writing children’s books and just the work that she and first grade teachers, preschool teachers, second grade teachers—the importance of this work just can’t be understated.
So [00:02:00] I really have an incredibly soft spot for the hard work that all of you guys do.
Thank you. I appreciate that. And I did notice when I was reading your bio that your mom was a first grade teacher, and I was wondering if she was, like, any of your inspiration behind this book or anything?
Well, it’s interesting. This book in particular has—I have been working on it for over 30 years, probably for 35 years. And at different moments in time, I have gone back to it and I thought, well, how do I get it to the next level? And then there was this one point where, okay, my career has just gone in a different direction. I’m done. I’m done.
And then COVID hit, and my wife was on the front lines in New York City. You know, in those early days, New York City was the epicenter, and I have some way of dealing with the fear, the unknown, just the trauma of that moment in time. And I went to this cabinet that [00:03:00] had been shut for, I don’t know, half decades probably, with all of my children’s books I had worked on when I was younger.
I thought, ugh, am I really going to open this can of worms again? I did. And that really sort of launched me back into, okay, I’ve got to figure out The Turkey Hands. They have been gnawing at me for over 30 years. I have to figure out how do I unleash them into the world? And so for the last five years, let’s say, I’ve been really working hard on them, and I was really sort of at this moment of I can’t figure them out.
I would trace my hand, I would look at my hand, and it just—no, that doesn’t capture the spirit of these little sprites. And there was this one day where I was walking along the Hudson River, and my mother died about 20 years ago, and I was having this conversation with her. I was like, I can’t figure it out. I just can’t figure it out. I’m just going to have to, like, forget this story.
And no sooner did I say [00:04:00] that than there is this crow that comes out of nowhere. It just swoops down, and if I don’t duck, I am sure that crow would’ve hit me in the head.
I think that was your mother. I think she was telling—
Must have been. I think so. She was telling you, get that book written, and—
And no sooner did that happen, then everything fell into place and the rest is history.
That’s great. I love it. And they do kind of have a look of a little bit of a crow kind of look. They’re kind of—they think that they’re mischievous, they’re clever, they get into all sorts of things, and I—but I also just felt like, oh, this is them. You know when you’re on a road trip and you’re searching for the right channel and the signal maybe is coming in faintly and you’re just like, no. But then when you’re driving through and the signal just comes in, like, whoa.
That is how that [00:05:00] all felt when I finally figured out this is what The Turkey Hands look like. This is who they are. Oh, everything just came together. It was very exciting after all of those years.
That’s great. I always get my—it seems like I get my inspiration for things either in the shower or when I’m driving in the car—sometime when I can’t write it down, you know, and I’ve got to, like, remember it in my head because I’ll forget otherwise. So I’ve always got my phone handy where I can, like, voice in there things that I’m thinking about doing or whatever.
So—
Hmm. Yeah, I understand. It comes in mysterious ways, right? But when it comes, it comes, and you just know it.
Absolutely. That’s for sure. So tell us what the book is about. For anybody who hasn’t read the story yet, just give us the story of what happens in it.
Well, so this is a story about cutouts—paper cutouts—you know, the sort of traditional Thanksgiving activity where kids trace their hands, they make a little turkey out of their hands, they color in the feathers, [00:06:00] and then the teacher leaves for the night. And these little sprites, they just come to life, and they do what any kid would do, right? I mean, these hands are so symbolic of children, right? And the way that children explore the world with their hands and express themselves with their hands.
So naturally they get into all sorts of things, and they’re making a little bit of a mess along the way. And then they get into this one situation, which sort of is a shock and—
I have to stop you because that’s one of my favorite parts of the book. I mean, you know, can we say it?
No. No, we can’t. We can’t. We can’t say it. It has to be a surprise, and I think it has to be a surprise—that there is this moment of true, genuine shock that really gets these little turkey hands flying, right?
And then, of course, you know, it also is about how kids need to—and turkey hands need to—sort of, like, recognize, wow, we made a little [00:07:00] bit of a mess, and we need to right this situation, and they’ve got a limited window of opportunity before the teacher comes back in the morning.
Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many parts of the book that I really love. The minute I read it, I was like, oh, I’m not in the classroom anymore, but if I was in the classroom, this would be on my list of books to read in November for sure to my class, because it’s very magical.
That’s what I would say about it. It brings magic to these little handprint art projects, right? And I think that’s one of the things that makes any story really special, is when you can get that little bit of magic into it—especially for this age level of kids who are making those turkey handprint art projects—right there, that preschool to, you know, maybe second grade where they still believe in the magic of everything, you know?
So the fact that these turkey hand [00:08:00] prints come to life, they might actually believe that that could happen. So I just love it. Can I read one page that’s, like, one of my favorites?
Oh, please. Yeah, please.
Okay, so this was what I really love—where this page where it says, “The teacher leaves for the night, shuts the door, turns off the light. She doesn’t know the secret rule. Things come to life in an empty school.”
I love that page, Susan, because kids are going to, like, go, oh, things come to life in an empty school. You know, it’s great.
But you know, there’s magic in our classrooms. There’s magic in school, and I—you know, we hear a lot of things about how things aren’t right with school. But I mean, just amazing things happen in classrooms every single day. The interactions between teachers and kids, the interactions between kids and other kids, the interactions between kids and the books that they’re reading—it is unlocking so much [00:09:00] magic—ordinary magic—every single day, that classrooms are just filled to the brim with magic if we just have the eyes to see it.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think picture books do that—part is part of what does that in the classroom. One of the reasons that I’m doing this podcast is because I’m trying to bring the magic of picture books back into the classroom, because I think that we’ve gotten away from it a little bit with the kinds of curriculum and stuff that teachers are required to do.
There’s literally no time sometimes for them to read a book to their students, you know? And I’m like, no, no, no. We can’t be having that. We need to be reading to our kids, because that really is part of what brings the magic into the classroom—is those stories that you read, and then the activities that you do afterwards that go along with those books, you know?
And so that’s one of my biggest goals for this podcast, is just to get teachers reading aloud to kids again. So this book is—it’s got to be on the list for [00:10:00] kindergarten, first, second grade teachers to read to their kids in November, because everybody’s making a turkey handprint. Everyone’s doing it. I don’t think there’s a kid in the world, you know, at least in the United States, that hasn’t traced their hand on a piece of paper and colored it in to look like a turkey at some point, you know? Every kid’s doing it.
So the nostalgia, I think, runs deep with this one. The parents, the teachers, brothers and sisters, young kids who are being inducted into the turkey hand-making experience—it just runs deep.
Yeah, for sure. And I feel really strongly—like, I love Thanksgiving. I think it is always sort of second to Christmas, and there’s something just wonderful about Thanksgiving. For me personally, I grew up in a small family. I have two sisters. My mother was an only child. My father had a [00:11:00] sister but lived out in Washington State, so our extended family were really grandparents, and Texas is a huge state. They lived 12 hours away, so these holidays were really special,
and I just feel like just spending time at a table with people you love—that’s just underrated. And there’s just something so wonderful about that for me as a kid. And I thought, you know, turkey hands are to Thanksgiving as elves are to Christmas—that we need these little sprites to, like, really be emblematic of this moment in the year.
Yeah, I think that’s a great way to think about it. I love Thanksgiving the same as you. I think part of it is because it is nothing more than this meal with your family. It’s not all gift-giving and overshadowed by all of presents and craziness, you know what I mean? It’s just a beautiful meal with your family.
And so I agree, and that this book just [00:12:00] brings that to life—the whole magic of that, of the season and everything. You know, one of the things I liked about the book was that you wrote it in rhyme, and was that always part of the story in your head, or how did that come about?
That’s a really good question. As I was working on this story, as a kid, I always liked to draw hands, and then I put a beak on it.
I was like, huh. That’s interesting. What happens? And then I was like, ooh, turkey hands—what happens when they come to life? And then there was this gobbledygook thing, and then it was when the gobbledygook—that’s when I think that triggered, oh, this is a rhyme. Right. There’s a rhyme somewhere in all of this.
So it was an interesting sort of process that got me to the rhyme. But I think rhyme is very hard. I took a wonderful rhyming course a few years ago, and boy, the things that I learned about rhyme—and it looks so easy and it looks so simple, but it’s tricky. Every word matters, [00:13:00] and so, yeah, it was tricky.
Yeah, I know what you mean by that. And it does matter because when you’re reading it, it has to have this sort of cadence to it, you know what I mean? And so the words have to be correct, right, to make the rhyme sound right. And it does—it sounds great. You are also the illustrator, right?
I am.
How did you do these illustrations? I think I noticed on your—I was looking at your Instagram maybe, I can’t remember—and I noticed you were doing printmakings. Are these—did you do it with printmaking?
No, these in the book are digital—a program called Procreate—and basically I cut out everything in Procreate. Like, you can have digital brushes, you can have digital paper, but I’m literally cutting things out. I’m moving things around. So it’s digital art, sort of, but it’s also collage in lots of ways.
Yeah, I can see that. It kind of reminded [00:14:00] me a little bit of, like, Eric Carle where he, you know, paints paper and cuts it out and puts it together and creates the—it was a sort of a similar kind of feel to me, you know, in your book with that collage feel.
Well, that’s a nice compliment.
Well, yeah, I mean—yeah, he’s the master, isn’t he? If you know Eric Carle—you know, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and all of those. Absolutely. You know, if your mom was a—extraordinary—was a first grade teacher, I’m sure you know that.
One of the things I really liked about the story too was that the turkey—when they come to life—they are getting into all these things in the classroom, and I think that kids will really appreciate it because they’re finger painting and they’re drawing all over the board, and they’re just doing all these things that the kids would do in the classroom too. So when you’re trying to think about how you’re going to use this as a teacher in your classroom, kids are going to be able to relate so much to all this stuff that the turkey hands are doing at night. What’s [00:15:00] your thinking behind the story and using it in a classroom?
So all of you know better than I do. I imagine you all would have amazing, wonderful things and ways of using this book. And I would love—I would love to hear, like, the fun things you all are able to do. I think there are different entry points to it that lend themselves to activities. Like, the first is just traditional Thanksgiving—the turkey hand.
I think there is another entry point, like we’ve talked about, about kids’ hands and—you know, we express ourselves when we’re kids through our hands. We explore the world with our hands. And our hands are also some of the first things to be controlled by adults. I can’t tell you as a kid how many times my mother said to me, “Don’t you touch that. We’re going into this nice place. You keep your hands to yourself.”
Right, right.
So there’s this interesting tension between the creative process but also control. And that said, there still have to be rules. [00:16:00] And what are some of the rules that involve hands and that turkey hands maybe can help kids understand a little bit better? If you make a mess, you can actually, like, pick up after yourself. You have a sense of agency—you can do that, right? And then I think another entry point is just—we can use our hands for good.
Yeah. One of the things I liked about the story was that the turkey hands made this big mess in the classroom, but then they, like, realized, right, that they needed to clean it up, and so they cleaned it up at the end, and they made it right. So I liked that—that it kind of showed kids that, you know, yeah, we can make a mess, but we have to clean up our mess when we’re finished.
We’re struggling with that with my four-year-old granddaughter right now—like, making lots of messes but not wanting to clean up her mess, you know? For me, when I read the story, immediately what popped out to me—because I’m always looking at picture books and how I can integrate that picture book into other subjects within my classroom, [00:17:00] right? How can I use a picture book to teach a math lesson or a social studies lesson or whatever, right? So for me, this book—what popped out was a writing lesson, 100%, which I envisioned after reading this story, that of course the kids are going to make the turkey handprint art, right? The teacher has to have them make this and put them on the bulletin board, and then they’re going to come to life, right, in the classroom—like, teacher’s going to make this happen.
So make a little mess that the turkey handprints have left in the classroom, and then the next day, the kids come in and they find this, and of course this is where the magic comes in—that our handprint art really did come to life. And so in my mind what the kids can do is they need to become detectives.
Right. I love that.
Yeah, they need to become detectives, and they have to figure out, well, what were the turkey hands doing in our classroom last night? And so now we are going to [00:18:00] write about that—write about what did they do? And then I’m thinking that this could be kind of an ongoing thing, maybe like several days where each night the turkey hands come to life and they make a little mess in the room, and each day the kids come in and put their little detective caps on and figure out what happened last night.
In fact, I was so excited about it, I actually made a resource for teachers to use so that they can read this book to their class and then have the kids, you know, write about what the turkey hands do and stuff, because I just loved it. I just think there’s so much that teachers can do with this book. It’s fantastic.
Well, thank you. I’m very appreciative. Thank you so much.
Yeah. And that’s a great idea. And I know that your audience and the teachers who you are connected with are going to have even more ideas that they’ll be able to share. So I’m super excited.
Yeah, absolutely. So have you written other books—other children’s books?
There will [00:19:00] be more to come.
You do have some little more things in that cupboard of yours—
Yeah.
—that you opened up in 2020.
You’ve got to dust it off.
That’s right. So, Camille and I—Camille, who is part of Turkey Hand Press—she and I are now working on a sequel to The Turkey Hands that will be out next year. And I have been working on a series of books with my big sister. So the first of that series will probably come out in the spring.
Very good. I’m excited to see what you’ve got cooking.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, that’s great. Well, it’s been great having you on the podcast. I’ve really enjoyed it. Where can people connect with you if they want to get to know you a little bit better?
So on social media, the best place to get with me is Susan K Fairchild on Instagram, and I think also to connect with Camille [00:20:00] at a05gallery.com.
And then they can grab your book on Amazon.
Yep. They can get it at Amazon, or they can go to a05gallery, and it’s a woman-owned business. They can also purchase it for a discounted price from the gallery.
Okay. Very good.
Well, thank you very much for joining me today. It’s been a lot of fun. I think the teachers are going to love your book, and I’m really glad that we had you on today.
Thank you very much. I’m so appreciative. It’s been great.
That was so fun having Susan on the podcast today. I know when you read the story of The Turkey Hands, you’re going to really love it. I love the book so much that I actually made a resource that you can use with the book where your kids can become turkey detectives. They can make a little detective headband, and then each day you can make a little mess in your room from the turkeys the night before—nothing huge, maybe some spilled crayons or toys left in the middle of the floor.
And then when the kids come in, they get their detective casebook, and they can [00:21:00] write the clues that they found each day and what kind of mischief they think the turkeys got into the night before. So it’s a very cute activity to add to your November lesson plans.
I will put a link to it in the show notes, or you can grab it at firstieland.com/detective. I’ll also link to Susan’s book, The Turkey Hands, in the show notes, and to her Instagram if you want to connect with her online.
Okay, friends, that’s it for today, and as always, remember to make learning feel like play, and I’ll see you next week.
Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you’re walking away with some great tips that you can use right away. Be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love it if you’d leave a review. You can find the show notes and links for everything mentioned in this episode at Firstieland.com.
I’ll see you next week in Firstieland. [00:22:00]