- As I mentioned, we have a very special guest this hour.
She never does interviews. Like, never.
So I'm feeling super special right now.
She's a fellow Texan, a teacher, a mother, a loving wife,
and the creator of
the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries,
which supports access to books
for all kids across the nation.
Please welcome former First Lady of the United States,
Laura Bush.
(audience cheers)
Hello!
- Hey, Kelly.
- Hello, it's so nice to see you.
- Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
- Oh my gosh, thanks for joining us.
I'm very, we're honored to have you,
and obviously we're very honored
because we're going to be honoring teachers today.
So, who was the first teacher who had an impact on you?
- Well, I had a second grade teacher that I really loved.
I wanted to be just like her.
Her name was Miss Nagy, Charlene Nagy,
and I stayed her friend for the whole rest of her life.
I got to invite her to the White House.
There's, there you see her, right there.
And she was really the influence on me
that made me want to teach second grade.
- Wow. I bet, then she did have an impact.
What was your first teaching job?
Cause my, I remember when, my mom's a teacher,
and I remember even when she started student teaching,
those were hard days,
especially middle school was really rough,
the kids in puberty, all of that,
but were you nervous or was it hard?
- Sure, I was nervous.
I taught my very first year I taught in Dallas
at Longfellow Elementary,
which happened to be the school on my street.
I could walk down to the school that was there and, yes,
I was very nervous.
And then after that year, I thought,
I think I need to go work downtown.
I'd moved to Houston the next year.
And I got a job downtown in a brokerage firm
and found out that nothing is as entertaining as teaching
because with all those little personalities in the room,
there's never a dull moment.
There might be some bad moments that you'd like to skip,
but in general it's really very, very fun.
- But what made you want to move from teaching
to being a librarian?
I love books.
Is it just your love of reading?
- That was it.
I mean, that was my favorite part of teaching.
And that was reading stories to kids, working,
talking about literature, children's literature.
And so I went back to graduate school
and got a degree in library science
and worked at a public library in Houston
and then worked in school libraries.
That's what I was doing in Austin when George and I married.
- Oh my gosh, I loved our public library.
I support them wholeheartedly right now.
It's so hard cause they're struggling,
a lot of the public libraries,
but that is where I got, because we were so poor, there,
we didn't get, we didn't have money to buy books,
so I'd get all my books.
They'd have, like, tapes.
So I'd get all my music.
They had like a catalog section for that.
I loved our public library, and I just love reading.
My mom really invested that in me at a young age.
But what were some of the first books
that you remember loving as a kid?
- Well, of course I loved all the
Laura Ingalls Wilder books,
"The Little House on the Prairie,"
and "The Little House in the Big Woods,"
all those Laura, you know, she was, had my same name
and she had brown hair.
And so you get to, I got to sort of grow up with Laura.
- That's amazing.
My, the book that changed me
cause my mom would always try and get me to read,
and until a certain age in middle school,
I was kind of like, I don't want to read.
And then I read "Matilda,"
and I thought it was the most magical thing ever.
And I always say, from that book, I kind of,
I figured out your imagination has no budget,
but movie sets do.
And so you can create the most magical places,
like with books.
And I fell in love with that,
and "The Box Car Children" was my thing as well.
But, you've just read -
- I remember "Boxcar."
- Yeah? Oh, I love those.
But you've just released a summer reading list for kids.
So what are a few of the books on it?
- Well, of course we had to put on a Beverly Cleary book.
We just lost Beverly Cleary,
and we put on "The Mouse and the Motorcycle."
But I remember when Barbara and Jenna were little,
Barbara would, wanted to learn to read so badly,
and she would read Beverly Cleary's book "Ribsy,"
about the dog.
So we have Beverly Cleary is one of the books
on that book list.
- But speaking of books, I said
this was our biggest giveaway show ever.
So let's get to it.
- Great.
- As Mrs. Bush knows, a school is built on books.
And so does Scholastic, which, oh my gosh,
I loved this little magazine so much.
It was like the best time of the year when I was a kid.
And it was the one-time my mom would let me shop,
because we were poor, but she was like,
I'll invest in the book.
So anyway, for a hundred years,
Scholastic's mission has been to serve teachers.
So to help teachers transition back into the classroom
and build their classroom libraries,
Scholastic is donating $5,000 worth of books
to every teacher in our house seats.
What? That's 500 books each.
- [Laura] Yay, that's great.
(audience applauds)
- Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how happy I was
every time my mom brought those Scholastic things home.
I was like, which ones can I get?
I was like, I loved that little magazine.
So, Mrs. Bush, I have to ask you, like,
how did your love of reading and books
influence your work as a First Lady?
- Well, I did, I started a foundation that gives books
to school libraries.
Because, of course, I'd visit schools all over the country
and many schools have, and of course,
usually in the parts of town where kids need books the most
need to have books in a library,
would have so few books, very few reference materials.
And so I started a foundation that gives books
to, or money for books, to school libraries.
So school libraries can build their collections
for their kids.
- [Kelly] That's -
- [Laura] The Laura Bush Foundation.
- Absolutely, I love how your foundation provides
such opportunity for kids that would never have that.
But since your mother-in-law, Barbara Bush,
also had that job, you had an advantage
no other First Lady ever had.
So did she ever give you any advice?
- Well, I did have a huge advantage.
I mean, you can imagine having Barbara Bush
for a mother-in-law, and I do remember
when she talked about what she wanted to do,
which was also literacy.
She had started the foundation,
the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy
that gives, supports family literacy providers.
And I think that was terrific, but she did,
she really knew that daughter-in-laws didn't want advice
from their mother-in-laws.
But one time she told me, she said,
"Listen. Don't criticize George's speeches."
She said that she'd criticized her George's speech,
and he'd come home from, for weeks afterwards
with letters saying it was the best speech he'd ever given.
So, I took her advice.
This is when we lived in Midland, Texas,
and George was running for Congress,
and, which he didn't win.
And I took her advice.
So we were driving in, down from Lubbock to Midland,
driving, turning into our driveway.
And George said, "How was my speech?"
And I said, "Well, it wasn't that good."
And he drove into the garage wall.
- You know what, though? We need those people.
You need the, we don't want yes people around us, right?
You want people that are going to keep it real.
- Well I tried not to criticize him after that in speeches.
- Well, Mrs. Bush, we asked Dr. Jill Biden
and Michelle Obama the first thing
they want to do post pandemic.
Dr. Biden wanted to go out for a martini and fries,
which I loved.
So what have you checked off your post pandemic to-do list?
- Well, hugged my grandchildren.
- [Kelly] Oh yeah.
- When George and I were in New York a couple of weeks ago,
we got to go by and see all three of them,
Mila and Poppy and little baby Hal.
And they were so wild jumping off the couches
and acting so wild with us that we decided
maybe we were too old to be grandparents.
- That's amazing.
Well, the good part about being grandparents,
you get to give them back after you play with them.
- That's right, that's right.
- Yeah, so, well, speaking of family,
your husband just released a new book
featuring immigrant paintings and stories.
When he started painting, he wasn't as good as he is now,
I've heard.
So how did you, as a teacher, encourage his work,
or was this like the speeches and you just laid low?
- I laid low.
But actually, he's really gotten good.
I'm shocked.
I mean, he was not interested in art at all.
The White House has a major collection of American art,
and, of course, he never really looked at it.
So I was very surprised when he took up painting,
but he's gotten to be really good.
That was one of his first paintings.
- [Kelly] That's amazing.
- But now, of course, these are the portraits
of immigrants that are at the Bush Center in Dallas.
And I want to invite everybody,
come to the Bush Center and see the paintings.
They're immigrants that you know, like Henry Kissinger
or Madeleine Albright, or then people that you don't know
that have immigrated to the United States,
and it's their paintings, their portraits and their stories.
- Oh man, they're beautiful.
I have tried so hard to paint.
I tell you what, I am the worst at it.
So, well, we've found this quote of yours, and I love it.
You said, "When you're married
to the President of the United States,
you don't worry too much about him leaving his wet towels
on the floor, but in Dallas, things are different.
Memo to the ex presidents,
turmoil in East Timor is no longer an excuse
not to pick up your socks."
That's amazing.
Note to self. You can do it now.
So has your husband gotten used to picking up his own socks?
- No, not really.
- I love you. That's awesome.
Okay, well, we had Jenna on this show.
I love your daughter by the way.
She's so fun.
I kind of feel like we were separated at birth
every time we hang out.
But she mentioned that the White House was haunted.
Did you ever experience that?
- No, we'd never,
I think Barbara and Jenna were the ones
that felt like there was, that it was haunted,
and pretended like they heard voices,
and it's probably just the Secret Service
talking down the hall in another room that they heard.
But we didn't think it was haunted.
We loved living there.
It's a magnificent house,
and it has a magnificent art collection,
which was also fun to have the chance to live with
those beautiful paintings.
- It's definitely a beautiful house.
I will say, though, I've been there a few times,
and living there would have been a little daunting
for a kid, I think.
I think I would have been terrified.
Okay. So I'm not sure if you know this,
but today is national no dirty dishes day.
So who washes more dishes in your house?
I think I know this answer.
You or President Bush?
- Well, you know the answer.
- I know the answer.
- Yeah, of course, I do. Of course I do.