Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!

00:00:00

00:00:01

Play next

Queer Graphic Novels With Jody in MN

The Checkout Stack

81 Plays2 months ago

Introduction and Background

00:00:17

Speaker

Hello, and welcome to the Checkout Stack, where we talk books with a new librarian every week. I am your host and the world's biggest library fan, Maria Skogin, and I'm so excited to introduce our guest today, Jodi Escrow. Hello. Hello, Jodi. Jodi is very special because she is my sister. Little sister. her My little sister, and she has agreed to do this dry run of the podcast with me.

Jodi's Work as a Collection Management Librarian

00:00:46

Speaker

Yes, and you will have to thank me with some grand grand gesture. Yes. As being your first guinea pig. Yes.

00:00:56

Speaker

Jodi, thank you so much for being here today. It means so much to me that you wanted to do this. Do you want to introduce yourself to our imaginary listeners and tell us a little about your work with libraries? Yes, of course. Again, my name is Jodi Escrow, four years the younger of Maria Escrow. And like many of the Escrows in our family, I am I'm a librarian. I've been working in libraries for the past four years. I worked in different public elementary school libraries throughout Minnesota for about two years, got my library media specialist license through St. Cloud, and am actually currently working for a company that sells books to school libraries as a collection management librarian there.

00:01:49

Speaker

So this role is a little different than what I did before, but basically my job is to recommend books to school librarians and really help them curate the kind of collection that they want and that will best suit their own school community's needs. That's kind of the name of the game when it comes to school libraries because every school community is different.

00:02:09

Speaker

So for example, a librarian might come up to me and say, hey, I really need to find some good romance books for my middle school readers, right? Nothing too spicy, but still has that romance plot line that they're really into, because that's really popular right now. And then I would put in the work, do some research, and find some books that we sell that they don't already have in their collection that might be good for them.

00:02:33

Speaker

Yeah. Uh, so yeah. And Jodi, you have, uh, the way that it works is they give people different specialties. So you have a specialty that if you get requests from this, they always come to you. And what is that specialty?

00:02:48

Speaker

Most likely they come to me. One of mine is graphic novels. And that is one of my favorite types of books. And yes, they are real books. And I will fight anyone who says otherwise. They are for sure. Yeah.

00:03:05

Speaker

I love graphic novels. I actually fell in love with them when I was in grad school to become a library media specialist because my brain was so fried from reading so many textbooks and writing so many essays and lesson plans that it was just hard to enjoy.

00:03:25

Speaker

reading like a text anymore, just for fun, which was hard, because that was like one of my favorite hobbies. Obviously, books are our love. But so I really kind of fell in love with graphic novels, because I was able to still enjoy the stories and also fall in love with the, you know, illustrations and pictures. And I really like how they interplay with each other to really make an accessible and engaging story for anybody. So, real reading, not just for kids.

The Role of Graphic Novels in School Libraries

00:03:57

Speaker

They might not be what they you think they are. They're not just superhero comic books or, you know, manga. There's a whole wide world of every conceivable genre at every conceivable grade level for graphic novels. Yes. So at one point, at one point when we were talking about the recommendations you had mentioned, you wanted to do all graphic novels. Is that what you ended up with? The interesting question, taking a look yeah kind of yeah Most of them are graphic novels. One or two are more like illustrated comics slash books, but yes, all of them do rely heavily on visual component. Fun.

Book Reviews: 'The Beasting' and 'One of Us is Dead'

00:04:41

Speaker

I love it. so

00:04:43

Speaker

OK, Jodi, well, let's get into our recent reads. So I will kick us off. I just finished The Beasting by Paul Murray. The Beasting is a 650 page literary fiction novel, and it's set in small town Ireland, and it switches back and forth between the perspectives of each of the four members of the Barnes family as they deal with the slow unraveling of the family car sales business.

00:05:13

Speaker

The main theme of the book is the consequences of living a lie and what that does to a person and to a family. I really liked the book. it is experimental in its construction. And specifically, it doesn't have quotation marks in the entire book, which I've done a few books without quotation marks, not a big deal for me. But there is one character that when the author writes in this character's voice, they don't use periods at all.

00:05:44

Speaker

I know.

00:05:47

Speaker

That sounds difficult to read. Yes, it took maybe it took me like 100 pages. It was it was such a mental effort to like, take the breath, even though there wasn't a period there in my brain, it really messed with my head more than i was there was no capitalization either of like, beinging new words is capitalization.

00:06:08

Speaker

Oh, so it's like a new sentence. Yeah, that's how you can tell it's a new sentence is the capitalization. But then there's like proper nouns. So it can sure it got confusing. I feel like that really tells a lot about the character's brain. Right? Well, now they're very like,

00:06:27

Speaker

wish bloweth the go yeah I wish I was in like an English class so someone could tell me what it tells you about the character's brain. I like i know books like that. that i and Sometimes I read a book and I'm like, this would be better in an English class or with a book club. Yeah. Maybe we should call this book club books.

00:06:44

Speaker

Right. Professor books. Yep. I do know that the audio recording for this is a full cast narration, so I'm sure that's a very different experience. But if you're reading it on paper, get ready for no periods for a section. I want to know how they narrate that. Yeah. Yeah. Probably just like regular, right? Just a regular voice. Okay. But Jodi, why don't do you tell us what was your most recent read or the read you want to share?

00:07:10

Speaker

A recent read, I recently finished an audio book called One of Us is Dead by Geneva Rose, recently published in 2022. And I actually just came across this book while I was looking at available audio books at my public library.

00:07:26

Speaker

So it's about an exclusive salon owner named Jenny and her group of rich housewife clients in Buckhead, Georgia. And the book opens with Jenny being interviewed by the police for a murder. Dun, dun, dun. And the story switches back and forth from the point of view of her being interviewed by police telling the story.

00:07:48

Speaker

and to the past with the different characters narrating kind of how they perceived things happening leading up to that. One of my favorite things about this is that we don't know who got murdered until the very end. We know one of these characters is going to die, but we don't know who or when or why or how.

00:08:10

Speaker

If you are looking for a book as high drama, twists and turns, betrayal, and ultimate rich people snobbiness, I would recommend this book for you. Very Desperate Housewives. I was just gonna guess that. This book is very Desperate Housewives meets cold blooded murder. Rich people behaving badly is one of my favorite subgenres. It is a good subgenre. yeah It's juicy and you can just you can look from far away and be like damn that money corrupted your soul.

00:08:46

Speaker

But this was actually kind of an interesting book. one One of the reasons I wanted to talk about it was it's been one of my first forays into murder mystery type of books. Usually I'm someone, I'm i'm not a scary movie fan. I'm not a true crime junkie. I like my happy endings. I like my pictures with my books graphing novels and end school kid, you know, school age books for kids and young adults.

00:09:13

Speaker

But I actually really enjoyed this mystery kind of deeper, darker book. It's it's not gory, so you don't need to worry about any like violent depictions. But it is twisty and shows you the complicated web of relationships, getting into like the unique perspectives of them. So it really kind of inspired me to try out some other mysteries in my reading life, which I have been enjoying.

00:09:41

Speaker

I love it. That's awesome. Definitely a compelling sell, Jodi. I think I've added that on

Book Recommendations: Art and Graphic Novels

00:09:47

Speaker

my TBR. I think I added it when you talked about it at the Family Book Club, but now I double. Family Book Club represents.

00:09:57

Speaker

Okay, so now we're going to go into the segment of the show where we just get recommendations. So we're going to go through several categories and give a book in each category. First, I want to hear about a recently published book. What's hot and new that you want to recommend?

00:10:19

Speaker

My recently published recommendation is called House with a Story by Seiji Yoshida. The full title of the book is House with a Story, a Dragon's Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 more amazing places to explore.

00:10:39

Speaker

so Again, it's by Seiji Yoshida. It's actually translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash. The English publication date is 2023. I think it was originally published in, I want to say Japanese earlier than that, but it recently came across the ocean to in English to us.

00:10:57

Speaker

So this book is more of an art book than a novel. Each page tells a different story through an illustration of a building. So I want you to picture like a witch's cottage and she creates potions from things in her garden.

00:11:16

Speaker

or one of them is a post office for a dragon tamer who uses his dragon to deliver mail to across the city. And each page is one picture? Each page is one building. One of one of the spreads of the page is a full illustration. And then on the other page, it's like a dissection of this building with notes drawn out.

00:11:39

Speaker

Interesting. It is so it'll have it's very lavishly illustrated and it has like these really intriguing notes. It has like these cross sections of the building so you can see the blueprint of it and like what's behind the corner and what's inside. And then each page also has the character that lives there. So not all of the buildings are fantasy based. A lot of them are, but they're not all, but each of them is just beautifully drawn.

00:12:08

Speaker

In the foreword, the author talks about how they were always drawn to illustrated settings in the books they read growing up. if you can picture like you're reading a book and then there's a picture of where Huckleberry Finn like hid out, you know his hideout spot. And he just really like pouring over those illustrations and creating his own stories in his mind about what takes place there. And i could I can really relate to that because I love pictures with details and the little secrets, things hidden in it. That is fascinating. I've never even heard of a book structured in that way.

00:12:43

Speaker

Yeah, it's it's really gorgeous. So definitely would recommend. That was House with a Story, a Dragon's Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a library of lost books, and 30 more amazing places to explore by Seiji Yoshida, translated by Jan Matsuko Cash. OK, next.

00:13:04

Speaker

let's go into the backlist. So the purpose of this section is to try and get a book that maybe our listeners have a chance to pull right off their library shelves and the whole list won't be six months long. So Jodi, what is a backlist title that you picked for a recommendation? The title I picked is called The Tea Dragon Society by Kay O'Neill, published in 2017.

00:13:32

Speaker

So travel back just a couple years ago. And for this, I'm going to make you go to your children's section to get this book. Check out their graphic novel section. But I firmly believe that any person, whatever age, would enjoy this book.

00:13:49

Speaker

So welcome to the adorable cozy fantasy world of the Tea Dragon Society. The main character is a blacksmith apprentice named Greta and she saves a lost tea dragon in the marketplace one day and returns it to its caretakers.

00:14:07

Speaker

The caretakers are named Ezekiel and Eric, and they have this beautiful life with this beautiful animals or creatures, the tea dragons, living throughout their house. And Greta learns what it means to take care of these tea dragons, which are very rare and delicate creatures that have horns that grow leaves to make the special teas.

00:14:32

Speaker

yeah that's not when i was magical that have magical properties. Very, very cute illustrations. If you're a cottage core obsessed like I am, this is a cottage core dream. It's a very gentle storytelling. So we're not we're not looking at a lot of action. We're looking at a lot of glimpses of the life in this magical world.

00:14:59

Speaker

In the back of the book, there's this extracts from the Tea Dragon Handbook, which is kind of like a fictional textbook for these marvelous creatures. And they have a breakdown of the different species, which is really fun to look at. For example, there's like a Jasmine Tea Dragon versus a Hibiscus Tea Dragon versus a Chamomile Tea Dragon. And they all have their own personalities and different looks. There's a lot of casual diversity in this book that I really love, you know,

00:15:28

Speaker

the different gay couples and different races and different ability types throughout the book. And everyone has some kind of magical property to them like a tail or some horns or some fur, which is very cute. Who doesn't love that? And best part is maybe there's two additional graphic novels in the series. So once you finish this one, you can go back and get the next two.

00:15:55

Speaker

Awesome, that was the Tea Dragon Society by Kay O'Neill. Thank you for that backlist pick. Okay, next is a segment I'm really excited about. It is a local book. So every episode I'm hoping we'll have a different person in a different place and they're gonna just pick an author local to their state or area and share a book about it. So Jodi, where is your local author from?

00:16:26

Speaker

uh, Minneapolis, Minnesota, I believe is where they are stationed. Okay. And you live right outside of that area. So yeah very, very close to home. Twin cities represent twin cities. Okay. What's the book? The book is called the magic fish by Trang Linh Nguyen, uh, published in 2020. Uh, this,

00:16:51

Speaker

If you were to have heard one of these graphic novels, this is probably the one you might have heard of. I think it really has kind of this instant classic kind of feel I would describe it as. So the main character is a boy named Tien. And he really feels a gap between him and his parents who are refugees from Vietnam, struggling to learn English, kind of learning this new country. And he's kind of has this communication gap between the two.

00:17:20

Speaker

him and his parents and the book the graphic novel flashes between his real life and also the fairy tales that he's reading. Tien is also struggling with trying to figure out how he wants to come out to his parents as gay because He can't fight the right words in Vietnamese, but by sharing his love of fairy tales, which he has with his parents, they're able to find, spoiler alert, a happy ending.

00:17:52

Speaker

which is something I always look for. So one of the things I really like about this book is that it, you know, it switches between the fairy tales that he's reading and his real life and they have different color palettes. So the fairy tales are kind of in these lush blues and his real life is in these pinks and reds.

00:18:11

Speaker

And it's really, you know, themes of exploring their own identity, growing up, becoming independent, kind of the classic Beldungsroman, I think. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. But I love stories.

00:18:29

Speaker

especially graphic novels that have multiple threads that kind of weave together to create this tapestry. it's I think it's reminiscent of American-born Chinese, if you know that famous graphic novel. So definitely a pick. And fun fact, he was at Teen LitCon, which I worked at, which is a Minnesota YA literature convention represent.

00:18:58

Speaker

Nice. Did you meet him there? I did not, but I sold his book. I was working the table, unfortunately. I did not get to meet any of the authors, but I did get to talk this book up to a lot of Minnesota teenagers and try to convince them to pick it up. Give it a go. The thing about the color palettes is really interesting. It's it just graphic novels add so much dimension to a book.

00:19:24

Speaker

that you would never even think about normally, like, I think, I say it a lot of times, like a book is blue, because it feels like sad, but with a graphic memoir, you can really just have like a whole blue page and it gives this whole impression. I think that's really fascinating. So I love that idea. Did you say, was it that his normal life is more colorful or that the history was more colorful? I think they're equally colorful, just different shades. Okay.

00:19:52

Speaker

So the fairy tales are blue and his life is red. And I think there's some flashbacks to his mom growing up and her past is in yellow tones. Interesting. So kind of the three primary colors there.

00:20:06

Speaker

Awesome, well, that was The Magic Fish by Trong's How I'm Doing. Okay, the last section of our recommendations is the one I am most excited for. So this is called The Book End. So in this segment, Jodi is going to be able to pick any topic that she feels like and recommend three books on that topic. So if you think about going into a library or a bookstore,

00:20:32

Speaker

And you see like a shelf that's specially set aside and it usually has some kind of like title on it like Cozy Fall Reads or just anything that the author or that the librarian feels like and then they've pulled books on that. That is the idea for this segment. So Jodi, what is your book end topic?

00:20:56

Speaker

I decided on queer graphic novels that either center queer characters or and are written by queer authors. Okay. And why don't you give us a rundown of the first book you picked.

00:21:12

Speaker

right The first book is called Magical Boy Volume 1 by The Cow, published 2022. That's right, I'm coming at you with a manga. Please don't run away. Manga is one genre of graphic novel that I've been recently exploring. i have i don't I'm not that super familiar with, but I'm really enjoying kind of this whole other world that's opening up to me while I'm reading these books.

00:21:37

Speaker

But the magical boy, the main character is Max, a trans boy who was a assigned female birth, and he's in high school. On top of his normal high school problems, classes, crushes, coming out to everyone he knows, his mom reveals that he and their whole families actually descended from a long line of magical girls.

00:22:01

Speaker

whose destiny and duty to defend humanity from evil. So for those who might not know, magical girls is a huge trope in shoujo manga, which is kind of the manga genre for young girls. It's kind of their main audience. The most famous example would be like Sailor Moon, if you can picture, you know,

00:22:22

Speaker

They have these magical powers and they do this beautiful transformation and they save the world and fight the bad guys and all that beautiful fun comic cartoon stuff. So this book really likes to play with that trophy kind of trope is kind of a riff on that. Very fast paced, very adventure. There's a cat sidekick, a ragtag team of friends. They save the world and Max becomes the first magical boy.

00:22:49

Speaker

Don't know if he's the first, but becomes a magical boy. Just a quick, I have a content warning. I don't know if you want to cut this and put it at the beginning or keep it here at the end. No, at the end is fine. Here's just a content warning for this book. There is some dead naming.

00:23:06

Speaker

of the main character, some transphobia and some religious bigotry. I think his parents aren't totally supportive. I'm not entirely sure. But if you're sensitive to those areas, just know that those are themes in the book. So Jodi, what is the main difference between a manga and a graphic novel? Is it just like the artistic style?

00:23:32

Speaker

That is a great question that is highly contested. ok If you were to ask my co-workers, they would say a manga is specifically written in Japan by a Japanese person. I am not an expert on it, but there are many graphic novels that adopt the style of manga art that personally I would also place under that category.

00:23:58

Speaker

But, yes. And manga is the book form. We won't hold you to that. Don't come for her. Thank you. I don't want any angry, angry people coming at me. But manga is the book form. Anime is the show. You might be familiar with more anime than manga if you're newer to it.

00:24:17

Speaker

but Right. And I just learned recently that a lot of anime is like it's not moving. So it basically is every screen would be like a like a page of the manga book.

00:24:32

Speaker

It is moving. it's It's kind of like they take a picture and they slide it across right that kind of movement versus like fully animated every single frame. Right. But you could have like an anime and a manga then that are essentially the same art, but one has reading behind it and one has pages. I think that's so interesting. And then also is our all manga's book read I'm trying to think backwards from what I would normally read from right to left. that would A lot of them, yes, true manga, some would say would be read from left to right, starting at what we would consider the end of the book. Reading that way because that is how traditional Japanese is is read. I think most English translations of original Japanese manga are also printed that way. Is the magical boy printed that way? Do you remember?

00:25:25

Speaker

I believe so. Okay. So start at the end, everybody, or else you'll be really confused. Most, most, most, uh, mangas do have a little page of expert. If you open it the wrong way, it'll be like, you're reading it wrong. Turn it over. Especially like first volumes for people who might not be, who might be a noob to manga. So yeah.

The Impact and Importance of Queer Graphic Novels

00:25:48

Speaker

Awesome. Okay. so that was magical boy volume one by the cow. could you tell us what is the second book you picked on this book end? Second book is called save me.

00:26:01

Speaker

parentheses from myself, Crushes Cats and Existential Crises by Solazzo, published 2022. And I picked this book partly because I relate to the title immensely, save me for myself. But also, Crushes Cats and Existential Crises is the story of my life.

00:26:25

Speaker

but this book is a beautiful comic collection, uh, kind of shows the emotional journey of the author and their creative introverted world. I was really drawn to this book's artistic style, which is very vibrant, colorful, kind of simplistic doodlesque, but also a wistful, kind of almost Lisa Franky, I might say. I'm trying to figure out how to describe it in words since you can't see the pictures. kind of Explosions of color, very like gauche, paints maybe, saturated. yeah And it's a collection of comics, you know short pages, just a couple panels that tell the story. And it's a great mixed bag of

00:27:19

Speaker

stories in comics that capture kind of the human existence, what it means to be queer. I believe the author is non-binary and I'm pretty sure they delve kind of into that in different parts of the book. And it's just it's just a beautiful, beautiful book. Awesome. That was Save Me From Myself, Crushes, Cats, and Existential Crises by So Lazo. Jodi, what is the third book on the bookend?

00:27:47

Speaker

The third book I have on the book end is called other ever afters new queer fairy tales by Melanie Gilman, published 2022. This was another graphic novel that I came across through my work.

00:28:02

Speaker

And it is, again, a collection of stories rather than one continuous novel. But it is graphic novel retellings of fairy tales with a queer twist. So it really kind of takes the classic kind of stories, not like specifically Cinderella or Snow White, but kind of that that vibe of grim fairy tales.

00:28:24

Speaker

And they kind of turn them around, give them a little queer flavoring. The Giants, instead of being mean and want to eat you, maybe they're kind. you know maybe you don't Maybe you don't automatically fall in love with the handsome, popular suitor that comes calling who's actually kind of mean. But in a traditional fairy tale, you would be married right away to him. right So they're pretty short collection of stories. I think there's a fair amount of them, maybe and I want to say, don't quote me on that. But they're beautifully illustrated, again, kind of a running theme in all my picks, but enchanting a colored pencil drawings for each story.

00:29:10

Speaker

And are those, are any of those scary or are they pretty like what you would expect from a Disney storyteller? Great question. I don't think, I think they're kind of in between Disney and original grim fairy tales. If you know Cinderella, the stepsisters actually cut off their foot and bled all over the slippers. If you kind of know the original fairy tales are very violent and gruesome. This is not like that. I don't think it's like a too cutesy woozy Disney vibe though. Kind of in between, I would say. I don't think there's any like scary parts, I would say.

00:29:54

Speaker

but definitely more mature than maybe a a third grader could handle. Right. Okay. So that was Other Ever Afters by Melanie Gilman. And then I wanted to add one bonus book to your bookend on queer graphic novels.

00:30:19

Speaker

you kind of said earlier, if you'd heard of a graphic novel before, this might be one, this is another one of those that I think a lot of people have heard about because it's been very popular on the band book lists. Uh, and that is Gender Queer by Maya Kob.

00:30:35

Speaker

Maya uses AM air pronouns and a wrote this graphic memoir to help explain to air loved ones, air identity as a non-binary and asexual person. I really loved this graphic memoir. I think it's so great when you get to kind of learn about the way someone thinks about themselves and their experiences when you don't relate to those things necessarily. I just think it helps build your empathy so much.

00:31:05

Speaker

I can see why this made some of the banned book lists, specifically because I think we touched on this a little bit, but people assume that if it is graphic, it's written for children. This book is not written for children. This book was written for Maya's adult loved ones to understand our journey. and so it it It does have graphic depictions of body parts. you know They talk about going to a gynecologist and like discovering their sexuality for the first time.

00:31:39

Speaker

but nothing like reprehensible. it's just you know it It was written for adults, so I really loved it and I'm glad that it was put on the banned book list because nothing makes me want to read a book more than the fact that it was banned, so I might not have picked it up if I hadn't seen it.

00:31:56

Speaker

Yes. Read Banned Books. 10 out of 10. Read Banned Books. Banned Books Week is coming up September 28th, I believe, 22nd to 28th, something like that. So, highly encouraged. Go to your library and check out a Banned Book. They will probably have a bookend of entirely whole group of banned books there, or they might, they might not. Yeah. And this will probably be if it's ever released long past that date, but you can read banned books anytime that you feel like it. Anytime, all the time. The book everything might already be banned and you wouldn't have even known. This this is book has also been on my TBR list. So now that you've brought it up again, I will have to put it on hold at my library.

00:32:44

Speaker

Okay, well that wraps up our recommendation segment of the show. So Jodi, I wanted to leave some space here at the end. Is there anything that you want to talk about related to your job or libraries that you think might interest our listeners? I would like to raise awareness to queer graphic novels, which is why I chose it as my bookend, because A lot of my work, there are a lot of librarians who message me who are not open to having those books in their library. And that makes me very sad because representation is important. And I know if I had had these, you know, books available to me,

00:33:30

Speaker

As a kid, I think it would have changed how I viewed you know people in my school, how I viewed myself, how I viewed my family and my loved ones, and maybe it made me more empathetic at that stage in my life, and that would be really important. So check out queer books, check out queer graphic novels, check them out from your public library so they know to keep them in rotation, and they know that you're interested in them.

00:33:55

Speaker

Well, hold on. Check them out. Put them in your checkout stack. Hold on a thought there, Jodi. This maybe isn't obvious to people who don't work in libraries. does Is that a thing? like if If a library notices no one's checking out this type of book, they're just going to stop.

00:34:11

Speaker

getting i know I know if they don't check out a book, a certain book, if it hasn't been checked out in a while, they will get rid of it. And that is actually a practice that is helpful to curating a good and alive library. You don't want a library that's full 80% of books that nobody wants to read and 20% of really good ones because then you're going to have to dig through all the old ones to get to the new ones and no one wants to take time to do that. That being said, you know, you also want to keep the good ones that might not have been checked out. So I don't know, I don't think there's any harm in checking books out from the library if you're not sure if you're going to get to it.

00:34:55

Speaker

But just check it out anyways, maybe you will. And if you're not, then you can just return it and it will be there for years to come for you to check out again. Yeah. Depends on the library, obviously. Yes.

00:35:08

Speaker

Okay. Well, I think that wraps up the show pretty much. First ever podcast recording. I feel like we did a good job. Listeners, if you are a librarian and you want to be on my podcast, I would really love that. Do it, do it, do it. So if you're interested, you can reach out to me at the checkout stack at gmail dot.com.

00:35:34

Speaker

and just send me an email or if you have feedback about the show. I just am doing this as like a passion project right now, but I love it and i I really want to keep going. So if you are interested, please, please, please let me know.