Last week Betsy gave Kate a book so chock full of details that one listener said it was the literary equivalent of The House on the Rock. In other words, just STUFFED full of stuff. This week, Betsy went an entirely different direction. She'd been avoiding doing Freight Train by Donald Crews on the podcast for a while. Why? Because it is an exceedingly simple title. Almost pure in its limited elements. And, to be frank, she couldn't figure out what Kate could possibly think to talk about. But as...
Nov 16, 2020•29 min
Betsy's attempts to break Kate go nowhere this week, even when the book is being discussed is the most detail-heavy title of this podcast to date. Now Kate starts off this episode saying that she does NOT want to talk about the presidential race. Indeed, this was recorded on Thursday, and you all know how different the world was then. Quote Kate, she just wanted to do a book about "cute cats and slugs". And for the first time ever, that is a request Betsy can accommodate. The end result is still...
Nov 09, 2020•29 min
The first time Kate encountered Madeline, she did not care for her. But what if she encountered yet ANOTHER Madeline title? Would she like it better? Before selecting this week's book, Betsy hadn't remembered that there is significantly less Madeline inside of it. Will that help or hurt the book's chances of becoming a classic? Betsy and Kate spend an inordinate amount of time saying "Lord Cucuface", discuss "the happiness of a father of a husband", and tackle why the ending of this book bugs Be...
Nov 02, 2020•30 min
I've saved the scariest book this month for last! "I'm not saying that Spooky Old Tree doesn't give you the jim-jams (because it doesn't), but ..." It's our very first Paul Galdone too! Took us long enough to get to him. As Kate says of today's book, "Well, THAT didn't end how I thought it would!" We discuss how this book relates to the film Best in Show, why my Tailypo imitation is a little too Gollum-esque, and why this may be the first book we've ever done on the show that ends with murder. S...
Oct 26, 2020•31 min
Spooky season continues here on the podcast. Interestingly Betsy had never done a Chris Van Allsburg book with Kate for October before. Every year she has to come up with spooky classic picture books, and today's was a recommendation from one of the fans (that would be their mom). It's less spooky than it is autumnal, but that's okay. Show Notes: The 12-foot-tall skeleton that Home Depot was selling is not something Kate made up. May we all be worthy enough to own it someday. See it here: https:...
Oct 19, 2020•31 min
Not long ago Betsy ran across an article in the Deseret News that was called "How a breakup led to winning a Newbery Honor for this Utah author". It's all about Newbery Honor winning writer Christian McKay Heidicker (who created Scary Stories for Young Foxes and this year's Thieves of Weirdwood by "William Shivering"). In the course of the article it mentions that Mr. Heidicker has been and continues to be a huge fan of The Spooky Old Tree by Stan and Jan Berenstain. And, naturally, since Betsy ...
Oct 12, 2020•32 min
The spooky season begins with our first October surprise! Kate points out that this book is definitely relatable in 2020. "I'm tired of living in a hole." Aren't we all? Who wouldn't want to escape to a tropical isle? This is the book that also contains the world's saddest sentence: "I decided it was better to be alone than to be afraid." Oh, honey. Kate and Betsy talk about everything from how a mouse could milk a goat to the surprising cameo of Slimer from The Ghostbusters. Show Notes: Kate an...
Oct 05, 2020•31 min
Good Yuntif! The show has never celebrated this holiday on the show before, but this week Kate and Betsy decided to do something extra special. That something special comes in the form of special guest star, Erica Perl! And when it came to suggesting a book, the answer was this 1977 Caldecott Honor winner a.k.a. The Official Picture Book of 2020 (we hope). Show Notes: Alas, TeachingBooks.net didn't have a pronunciation of Margot Zemach's name, but you can find a nice display of some of her book ...
Sep 28, 2020•33 min
Another book by the man who spit in the face of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (not literally, pretty close). Our love of P.D. Eastman continues. Kate delves real real deep into the marital status of dear Mr. and Mrs. Bird here (including Mr. Bird's "extracurricular activities", if you get my gist). The women discuss how this is like a "very small version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds" (their reign of terror is swift and tiny). They wonder about color layering, and finally they ...
Sep 21, 2020•31 min
Betsy and Kate can say with complete confidence that this is the first picture book about a Black kid on the autism spectrum either have ever seen. Recently Kate saw a list from Black Education Matters listing several books that featured Black children with disabilities and she asked Betsy if any were possible for the podcast. And lo and behold, My Brother Charlie is ten years old this year. That's ten years younger than we usually permit for a podcast, but when the topic is as important as this...
Sep 14, 2020•31 min
Happy Labor Day! Or, as we say on the podcast, Merry Labor Day! Today is not the first song-turned-picture-book we've done on the show (that honor went to The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night). However, it is most certainly the first (and quite possibly last) to include die-cuts. Kate wonders whether or not the "old lady" feels pissed off about being called "old" (as we attempt to sing "There was a spry lady who swallowed a fly") while Betsy launches into any number of tangents, like how gross fli...
Sep 07, 2020•32 min
First and foremost, happy engagement to Kate and the Penguinologist! She'll soon be a Coronabride with her very own microwedding. Now just to catch the rest of you up, Kate is not a huge fan of clowns. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. She HATES clowns. Naturally that meant that Betsy had to find a classic clown book for her birthday. She's nursing a theory that they don't exist, though, so Betsy decided to get the next best thing. Marla Frazee's The Farmer and the Clown won the Bosto...
Aug 31, 2020•25 min
Today's book has been on Publisher Weekly's top selling picture book list for 240+ weeks. Even so, it is not a household name here in America by any stretch of the imagination. Betsy had been seeing its name on the bestseller lists for years, so she finally decided to bite the bullet and hand the title over to Kate. What results is speculation as to whether or not Gerald is dancing to dubstep (complete with dubstep imitation), notes the fact that Gerald is followed by bugs and turtles everywhere...
Aug 17, 2020•30 min
While this may not be the first time we've ever covered an illustrator that I've collaborated with (remember when we discussed Dan Santat and After the Fall?) this is one of the few cases where we've done a collaborator of mine who has an honest-to-goodness classicky classic. We discuss the strength of Imogene's neck muscles, you get to hear an impromptu jingle for the Emergency Hat Service, I manage to work in a tiny reference to Gregor Samsa, and we marvel at Imogene's good nature. As I say on...
Aug 10, 2020•28 min
When we consider classic Latinx picture books that would qualify as #ownvoices, only a few have been covered on this show. I mean, sure we did Pura Belpre's Perez and Martina a while ago, but let's get a little more contemporary, eh? Today's book premiered in 2000, which means it just barely squeezes in under the 20 year rule for inclusion. Now, granted, we probably should have started with the first book in the series, Chato's Kitchen. The only problem with that is (A) It's not as good and (B) ...
Aug 03, 2020•30 min
A lot of this show consists of Betsy thinking up an author (say, Patricia Polacco) then saying to herself "What's their most famous book?" In the case of Ms. Polacco, she was a bit stumped. This book was definitely in the top five, and she figured it would make for an interesting choice. Particularly since its shiny Sydney Taylor Award on the cover was intriguing. With its 1988 pub date, there's still a lot to really enjoy about this title. It's aged nicely, and ties in well with stories like Ja...
Jul 27, 2020•30 min
If you had to pick all the Peggy Rathmann books that exist, you probably wouldn't begin with her title The Day the Babies Crawled Away (which Kate and Betsy did do on a previous episode). Instead, you'd probably want to do today's book! Is it her most famous? Dunno. Probably a toss up between this and Office Buckle and Gloria. Today Kate and Betsy dig deep into a title that certainly contains the world's most short-sighted escape plan. The Great Escape, this is not. Show Notes: - Here is the New...
Jul 20, 2020•30 min
"Bring me a bad book. Like, a really good bad book." So Kate asked Betsy. Well, we don't want to give anything away but Betsy may have hit on something. If you were born in the late 70s or early 80s, the odds are good that somebody you know read it to you. And this all ties in quite closely to current discussions of picture books with racist elements that sit blithely on shelves in children's rooms anywhere. Show Notes: In case you've ever wondered what this show's recording set-up looks like, D...
Jul 13, 2020•31 min
Betsy didn't want to have a whole conversation about elongated eye tubes. She really, really didn't, but that's the price you pay when you show Kate the book Owl Babies. Today the two tackle the ebook edition of the picture book (rather than board book) version of this title and it makes for an interesting read. They end up wondering about where the gutter falls on certain two-page spreads, and have a lengthy talk about repetition in picture book texts and what this book has to do with working m...
Jul 06, 2020•27 min
Funny to think about the authors and illustrators we've never quite gotten to on the show. Sometimes the trick behind selecting a book isn't so much which artist to do but what book to do from a given artist. After much soul searching Betsy decided that George Shrinks trumps Dinosaur Bob and the Family Lazardo in terms of sheer fame. It's a funny kind of book, and you can trust Kate to winnow out every possible detail on the page. Hope you like your kids short, your cats cruel, and your teddy be...
Jun 29, 2020•31 min
Betsy broke the rules. Under normal circumstances she won't consider a children's book for this podcast unless that title is less than 20 years old. But since she made that rule in the first place, I guess she's the one who gets to break it. And today's book is, in its blood, a rule breaker. In the course of this episode Betsy attempts to encapsulate all of Jacqueline Woodson's major awards (this is a difficult thing to even try, by the way), Kate and Betsy honor Juneteenth, and they try despera...
Jun 21, 2020•30 min
In honor of Pride this month, we figured it would be a good idea to check out one of the first big-time LGBTQIA+ picture books published in America. We've already covered Heather Has Two Mommies in a previous episode, so what's left? Well, if Heather Has Two Mommies came out in 1989, Daddy's Roommate followed just a year later in 1990. It was on ALA's top 10 banned list from 1990-1999. Researching it, we had no idea this would be such a fruitful book to explore. Above and beyond little things li...
Jun 15, 2020•30 min
Kate gave Betsy a tricky challenge this week. She wanted her to find a book worth discussing that was pertinent to the times in which we live. So, after a great deal of soul searching, Betsy decided to focus on a book by a Black author. Even better, a book that was ahead of its time when it came out and may only find its true audience today. And few books for kids tackle the issue of police brutality as honestly as this one does. Reprinted two years ago, James Baldwin's 1976 title (the only book...
Jun 08, 2020•44 min
For whatever reason, Kate and Betsy spoke for a whopping 45 minutes about today's book. Somehow, Kate (who is our editor on all this) cut it down to mere 28 minutes, which is a feat worth remarking. The sisters tackle whether or not "Helen Palmer" was or was not Dr. Seuss (the answer is far more complicated than you might think). They delve into what kind of reputation Mr. Carp must have to be on the watch list of both the police and the firemen. And now they have to research when fluoride enter...
Jun 01, 2020•30 min
Kate and Betsy haven't done a cult classic picture book in a while. Really, the ultimate compliment any book can receive from its fans is that their love allows it to see life once more, decades after publication. This was one of the rare titles from the 1950s republished by the publisher Enchanted Lion. Betsy has always been a big fan of this book, but as we have learned time and time again, just because she likes something, that is NO indication that Kate will as well. Show Notes: Here is the ...
May 25, 2020•31 min
Today's 1981 classic turned out to be a surprise to Kate. She, like many people in America, had no idea that Jumanji was a picture book before it was a movie (or two, or three). Thanks to her read, a lot of questions about this book were cleared up. For example, there is the fact that the parents must be going to a matinee (which explains why the kids eat dinner after their return later). And did you know that the two kids at the end of this book are the ones in the sequel Zathura? But here's th...
May 18, 2020•30 min
"I'm giving myself extra points for doing this springy book in spring . . . which I did not realize until this moment. Patting on the backy of me!" Prior to today's episode the only Jerry Pinkney title Betsy and Kate had done on the podcast was Sam and the Tigers (as part of their Little Black Sambo round-up). As for Ms. Patricia McKissack, they'd never even done a single one of her books to date. Consider this a wrong now righted. This episode taught us about how folks change picture books to m...
May 11, 2020•30 min
Because it was recently Betsy's birthday, she got to choose a book that was her favorite when she was growing up. And let us say this about Tasha Tudor. The Queen of England herself is second only to Tasha Tudor in terms of corgi love. Tasha was the original corgi lover. The sisters spend a great deal of time trying to explain some of the oddities of the book by saying, "It's New England!" Like it helps or something. The best way to put it is that this book is 70s/1870s. Show Notes: If you ever ...
May 04, 2020•30 min
Seems to us that bats are shouldering a great deal of the blame for our current COVID-19 crisis. Considering the fact that their P.R. wasn't all that great to begin with(Batman aside), Betsy decided this week's episode would combat this problem with the most famous bat-related picture book in America. It doesn't hurt matters any that this entire episode is pretty much just an excuse for her to post cute videos of baby fruit bats in the Show Notes. Show Notes: Betsy mentions that her falcons are ...
Apr 20, 2020•31 min
True Fact: The longest book written in the English language is the easy book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss. Other True Fact: That first fact is untrue, but it's certainly what Kate believed in her heart when she finished reading that book during this recording. While many people remember all too well the title of today's book, its plot (such as it is) remains, for many, a mystery. Kate certainly didn't know what to expect and, to be fair, how could she have? Can anyone tru...
Apr 13, 2020•31 min
