Click to listen to radio interview
Interview aired on 1080 AM, Spartan Nation Radio (Michigan)
Hondo: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to Spartan
Nation Radio. I’m your host Hondo Carpenter. As you all know, I get literally
hundreds of requests to talk about books on this show. And I’ve told you this many,
many times that 99% I don’t…uh..first of all my answer to all of them is that
if you want me to talk about your book on the show, you have to send it to me
because I don’t talk about books I don’t read. And then we end up about 99% never
make it on our show. This is the first time that I actually contacted an author
and asked the author to send me their book, read it, loved it, and want to have
them on the show. As you guys know, my son is addicted to football and he’s
addicted to hockey. So when I saw my buddy Mike Caples from Michigan Hockey Now
tweeted about a new children’s book about hockey, and really it’s about a lot
more than that, I immediately got in contact with the author and she sent me
this book, and let me tell you. The book is called Cracking the Code: Spreading
Rumors. I want to say this: I fully expected a hockey book that was about goals
and hits and all of the things that come with hockey, and if you’re not a
hockey parent or a former player, you have no idea what I’m talking about and
that’s fine. And this book, is really..it will intrigue the hockey player, but
it’s really for every parent. And it deals with the pressures that come with
being a pre-teen. It deals with rumors. It deals with all those things. And how
she..and she’s a mom of two sons..but how she was able to do it, is pretty
fascinating to me. She’s on the other end of our line. Kris Yankee. Kris, how
are you today?
Kris: Oh, I’m really good. How are you, Hondo?
Hondo: Good. First of all, great job. You did a great job on
the book.
Kris: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
Hondo: I’ve got to ask, one of the things that I thought was
great about this book is every parent should have to read it because it
transcends hockey to me and it really sends a message why team sports, even
more than the winning and losing, are so important and why parents who don’t
let their kids play, or even make them play at an early age…even if they don’t
like it…to experience team sports are missing a lot. Would you agree with that?
Kris: Oh, totally. I mean, that was one of the reasons why I
wrote the book. As you said, I have two sons, one of them plays hockey the
other one is more cerebral, but over the years of watching him, the last seven
years of watching him play hockey, all I kept seeing was all of these life
lessons that he was learning from playing on a team that he was using outside
of the rink.
Hondo: I’m gonna tell you something that I thought was really
interesting about your book and I think you’re going to get a kick out of this.
One of the things that people don’t know and I cover NHL, I cover college
hockey. I cover all of it. Just like for football from the Super Bowl to the
pee wee games is what most people don’t understand--a locker room and a team
are really no different. The problems are different as players get older, but
they’re really no different. I really thought you did a good job of showing the
anatomy of a team sport. Now I have to
ask, did you play a team sport?
Kris: You know what? I was a diver on the swim team back in
high school, so actually no.
But I’ve spent a lot of time..I’m the manager of my son’s
team..have been for a few years, and you
know I think that being around the team and being really observant of how they
are together just kind of came out in the book.
Hondo: Yeah, it was an excellent job, so let me ask you
this…you’re the author, you wrote it, talk to me, to our audience if they’re
not a hockey family, why is this a great book for them?
Kris: Okay, well, here’s the deal the main character plays
hockey and because he learns all of these crazy things from hockey, well,
they’re not crazy—they’re life lessons—but because he’s ten, he takes those
things that he learns and he twists them and uses them in his everyday life,
because to him, hockey is life. But he’s in fifth grade, he’s going to sixth
grade and he has to deal with all the pressures of moving from elementary
school to middle school, he’s got friends that are bullies, he’s got friends that
are afraid of their older siblings, he’s got that whole situation of trying to
be a good kid and ends up being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and then
he’s gotta deal with all these rumors about him. And so, the hockey aspect of
it comes into play because he spends so much time outside of the book ..you
don’t see it in the book, he never touches the ice in the book,...but he spends
so much time saying to his friends, “well, you know when we’re on the team, I
gotta take one for the team meaning that you gonna have to put your head in the
toilet because you won’t fess up to that you lied or that you were the one who
caused this rumor.” And, just the whole idea of what you learn from a
team—working with difficult teammates, being able to be honest when you make a
mistake, being to listen to authority, being able to trust your teammates, and
that’s all people do in their regular life. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the
ice, on the field, in a Science Olympiad, it doesn’t matter. All of those things
that when you put your child into a group where they have to work toward a common
goal, those lessons seep into their life and they can use them when they’re
back in school, on the playground, in the cafeteria, while standing in line at
the movie theater. It’s just a really good idea to immerse your kid in some
sort of team activity. Not hockey, of course, but we love hockey.
Hondo: I totally agree. Well, I go back to I’m a hockey dad,
I cover hockey. My son is at home right now in the basement shooting goals on
his regulation goal in our basement, so that tells you where I’m at. But the
thing is Kris, the thing I love and I really want to compliment you on…my son’s
in third grade. And, so when you can get my son’s attention with a book that’s
about kids a little bit older than him that tells you what I thought. It was a
great job. You did a terrific job. Now, is it at Amazon yet?
Kris: It is! It’s on Amazon. You can get it there. You can
get it at my website, krisyankee.com. It’s at BarnesandNoble.com. It’s in
Barnes and Noble stores. It’s gonna become a Kindle book pretty soon so if you
have an ereader and you have a kid who’s into techno and wants to read it on an
ereader, that should be coming out in about a month. But yep, it is on Amazon.
Hondo: So go to Amazon, which is where so many people get
their books now. It’s called Cracking the Code: Spreading Rumors by Kris
Yankee. K-R-I-S. You can also go to krisyankee.com. Go to Barnes and Noble.
It’s a great book. Let me just say this to all of your parents who like sports
but you haven’t made your kids get involved in a team sport, you’re hurting
them. It is just as important as algebra or geometry or anything else because
it teaches them things about dealing with people, working with people, and Kris
Yankee did a great job. She hit the nail on the head. Kris, congratulations, you
hit a homerun! Keep up the good work, my friend.
Kris: Oh, thank you so much, Hondo. I really appreciate all
your kind words.
I learned several lessons from this first-ever radio interview:
1. Don't use headphones; just talk right into the phone.
2. Don't do the interview in a moving vehicle.
3. Don't start almost every beginning of the answer with "Oh"
Overall, though, I'm really happy with this experience. I was totally geeked when he was giving the set-up...I had no idea any of that he said. I was just flabbergasted that he contacted me and then wanted to have me on his show.
Now..since I'm a U of M grad (thank goodness Hondo didn't hold that against me), I need to find a U of M station to interview me. Any takers? :)
