We’ve published a lot of young creators here at Catalyst Press, but none as young as Kendra Powers, my awesome fourteen-year-old niece whose photo book, Bait the Toad, comes out this month. Featuring photos of Kendra’s pet toad Bait, whose sassy photo shoots became an overnight TikTok sensation, Bait the Toad is a side-splitting, quicky gift book that would make a great holiday gift for animal lovers of any age. I sat down with Kendra to chat about Bait, her new book, and her impressive crafting skills.
JP: The interesting thing to me about your crocheting and embroider is that you do it without patterns. How do you do that?
KP: I don’t like following patterns. I like doing my own thing and seeing how it turns out. My grandmother showed me the first stitch and how to make a hat, then I figured out how to make smaller hats, and how to make them even smaller and turn them into earrings.
JP: What do you enjoy most about DIY (“do-it-yourself”) projects?
KP: I like that they give me something to do at home. I like listening to audio books while I do them. I also like that I’m good at them and I can sell them.
JP: You have a dog. How does the dog handle Bait?
KP: When Bait was younger, and I’d let him hop around, Katya [my dog] wouldn’t even notice him. But now that Bait is really big, she’s scared of him. She keeps her distance. The first photo shoot I did, Bait was on her paw, and it was super cute because he was so little. Then I did another one when Bait was big, and she was side-eying him the whole time, glaring at him. Sometimes she’ll lay next to his cage and she’ll be wagging her tail, and he’ll think it’s a giant worm so he’ll try to eat it.
JP: Bait does not seem scared at all.
KP: No, he’s not scared of practically anything. I got him as a baby so he didn’t understand what things to be scared of.
JP: What do you love the most about having a pet toad?
KP: I like that he’s very low maintenance and I don’t have to do a lot of things but he’s still a really fun pet.
JP: What’s something about having a pet toad that would surprise most people?
KP: It surprises most people how big he got, or the fact that he eats your fingers. The other day, somebody told me that toads have an itchy spot by their neck, and I tried, and he closed his eyes. Now my friends will try to itch his itchy spot and he’ll bite their fingers. When I got Bait, my friends would look at him and he had a tiny container at the time, big enough for him at the time, and they’d look at him and call him Tiny Toad. Now they call him Big Fat Toad, and I think they’re surprised how big and fat he got.
JP: Do you have other pets?
KP: I have a pet rock called Polemicus. He’s very popular at my school. I was worried in eighth grade that I wouldn’t have any friends or anybody who would talk to me, so I wanted a little buddy that physically couldn’t leave me. So I decided to pick a rock and then I would have something to do when we have recess. I started kicking him around in the summer, and I made him a mushroom house that was really cute.
In like a week or so, people were asking what the mushroom was that was hanging off my water bottle. I showed them Polemicus inside the mushroom house. I got him rounded out enough that he shrunk, and the mushroom was too big for him, so I made him a new mushroom house, but before that, my friends also spent time smoothing rocks and making them rounder and smaller. So at recess, my friends and I just kick rocks around or scrape them on cement to turn them into flat rocks. One of my friends, they got a rock that they really liked, and I gave them Polemicus’s old house to keep their rock in, and people saw it, so later they got their own rocks and asked me to crochet mushrooms for them.
One of my friends saw that I was “abusing” my rock and kicking it around, so she said she was confiscating him for the weekend, and fell in love, so we split custody. I get him during the weekdays and they get him on weekends and some holidays. I think that’s pretty funny. I don’t even know how it happened but now Polemicus has like three grandparents, five mothers and fathers—he’s related to almost everybody at school. Yesterday, I had to gather a group of lawyers, because somebody tried to take custody of Polemicus. I got five to ten lawyers just to argue that I get to keep my rock. I won by the way.
JP: What type of career are you interested in?
KP: I would it would be really fun to do taxidermy. Or working at a library would be fun. Or even an oil rig, because they make lots of money, but that would also be really exhausting. I still do want to do something with animals but this might change later.
JP: Besides toads, obviously, what are your favorite animals?
KP: I really like bunnies. They are super cute. Also dogs. I really like geckos.
JP: You helped train my dog Happy. You helped train her with tricks. You seem to have a real way with animals. You’ve helped train your sister’s dog too. Can you talk about that?
KP: I’m good at training tricks, but not regular things. I do really like animals a lot. I don’t know if we have a particular strong connection or anything, I just really like them. When I was younger, I obsessed over animal videos.
JP: Who do you think will love this photo book the most?
KP: Little kids. Because there are a lot of funny pictures of this weird toad guy. It’s like a picture book. There aren’t a lot of words in it so it’ll be fun for kids.
JP: What kind of books do you like reading? Do you have any favorite authors?
KP: My favorite author is Christopher Healy, The Hero’s Guide. I like reading Webtoons a lot.
JP: If you could create a book about anything, what would it be?
KP: I think it would also be about Bait, and it would be made-up stories about him. Not realistic fiction.
JP: Can we expect more modeling photos of Bait in the future?
KP: I hope so! I took most of those photos when I was homeschooled or during the summer. Life has started getting hectic. I sure hope I can.
JP: Kendra, thank you so much for chatting with me. I can’t wait for the world to meet Bait! Readers, Bait the Toad releases worldwide October 17th and is available now on Bookshop and directly through us at our IndiePubs site. We’re also selling Bait the Toad “toad-bags” totes, a hilarious gift for animal lovers of any age. Check them out!
