Stay ConnectedTwo sisters, one in L.A. and one in NYC, both move to the Chicago area and start a podcast. The premise? Picture books and are they really that great? Join Kate and Fuse 8 (Betsy Bird) as they track down a picture book “classic” each episode and try to determine if it deserves to remain in the canon of children’s literature.
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Once an author up and dies on us, it's the perfect moment to attempt a read of that writer's best known picture book. So it is that Judith Kerr was the perfect subject to consider for this episode. This is a book that ignores the rather good advice that, "If you're in a picture book and a tiger says he's hungry, run the other way." Kate discovers that this may well be one of the MOST English picture book the show has ever encountered. She also identifies this tiger as a brat as a cat and you KNOW how Kate feels about brats. Meanwhile, Betsy shares her Jeopardy suspicions, my goodness Daddy's Guinness is gone, and the sisters get to say the phrase "there is nothing Nazi about this tiger." Here is an obituary for Judith Kerr for those of you with an interest in her life : https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/obituaries/judith-kerr-dead.html No. Really. What exactly IS "tea"? Here is the wacky Wikipedia entry I refer to. Clearly this is my favorite found about a children's author thus far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Kerr For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/06/11/fuse-8-n-kate-the-tiger-who-came-to-tea-by-judith-kerr/
Under normal circumstances, the entire premise of this podcast is that Betsy will present Kate with a picture book "classic" that she has never seen before and she will read it for the first time. To change things up, Kate suggested that Betsy bring a picture book that neither of them had read. At the same time, she mentioned in a previous episode that when it comes to classic Jewish picture books, the only ones the show has ever done were Hanukkah based. Add in the fact that this is a cult classic that came back in print two years ago, and you've got yourself a heckuva show. Show Notes: - Betsy keeps quoting from a Marjorie Ingall article in Tablet Magazine that was called Lore Segal's Warm and Weird 'Tell Me a Mitzi'. We highly recommend that you seek it out for even more background information: https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/193108/lore-segals-warm-and-weird-tell-me-a-mitzi -Lore Segal's family's story was told in the Academy Award winning documentary Into the Arms of Strangers. You can see the trailer for it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIXmLLBrNQY - See the full Show Notes here: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/06/03/fuse-8-n-kate-tell-me-a-mitzi-by-lore-segal-and-harriet-pincus/
Kate gave Betsy a challenge to go out and find a picture book that the two of them hadn't read. And in the end . . . Betsy completely and utterly failed to do honor the request. She decided to do Pete instead. So it goes. With this entry, Kate makes a VERY strong case for why this book missed an opportunity involving the color wheel. Kate also points out that the actual moral of this story is, "Watch where you step." Meanwhile, Betsy gets to riff on James Dean the actor (if he were ever to make a picture book), Kate tells Betsy that hedgehogs are super smelly (who knew?), and the two dive deep into Pete's confusing lineage. Show Notes: Here is Eric Litwin's interview with Line Up the Books: https://www.lineupthebooks.com/an-interview-with-ny-times-bestselling-author-and-former-special-ed-teacher-eric-litwin-2/ How do you sing this song? Here's how Litwin would do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUubMSfIs-U Here’s the Pete the Cat website in case you want to check out all those Pete videos: http://www.petethecatbooks.com/ And here’s the Pete the Cat television show. You know you’re curious. Behold the trailer. Is it just us or is it really painful to watch anytime you see Pete’s mouth? Plus we miss the messiness of the original art here. Seems like a lost opportunity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5w1F-_SDls For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/05/28/fuse-8-n-kate-pete-the-cat-i-love-my-white-shoes-by-james-dean/
"It's like the Where's Waldo of literature!" This week we're celebrating another cult classic picture book (the last one we did was The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright). There aren't a ton of them out there, but this one certainly does apply. The timing of this podcast has much to do with the fact that Mr. Stamaty has just released MacDoodle Street, a collection of his adult strips. In the course of things we discover that this book has 27 pipes, we discuss whether or not Mr. Stamaty really does suffer from horror vacui, and how you would sing the line "Who needs donuts when you've got love?". It fails the stranger danger test magnificently, sure, but we can all get behind its "inspired sense of the absurd." Want to read the original New York Times review of this book by Barbara Bottner? Go no further than here. I think it was keen of them to tap Bottner for this: https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/14/archives/who-needs-donuts-by-mark-alan-stamaty-illustrated-by-the-author.html Has anyone ever combined a donut and a pretzel before? I'm afraid so. But they don't get a catchy name: https://www.sweetrecipeas.com/2016/10/05/vanilla-bean-glazed-soft-pretzel-donuts/ Here you can hear Jesse Thorn discussing Who Needs Donuts? It's more an encapsulation than anything else, but it's always interesting to hear how other folks take this book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1\u0026v=W-BKWBbrCek And here is Kate's paint-by-number artist that she likes so much. Her name is Colleen O'Connor: http://www.colleenelizabethart.com/ Betsy's Grown-Up Thing I Like is the documentary Knock Down the House which she mistakenly keep scalling "Bringing Down the House": https://deadline.com/2019/01/knock-down-the-house-netflix-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-sundance-film-festival-documentary-1202544739/ For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/05/20/fuse-8-n-kate-who-needs-donuts-by-mark-alan-stamaty/
"Folktales! They don't end the way you expect 'em to . . . if they're authentic." If you are familiar with #ownvoices children's books, then you know that these are titles where a book is written by someone with learned experience from the culture they are representing. We might have quite a debate over what the oldest #ownvoices picture book published in America is, that is arguably famous to this day, and that also is written by someone who wasn't white and European. Our vote goes to today's book circa 1932. Sadly, it appears to be out of print. For that matter, ALL of Pura Belpre's books look like they're out of print, with the possible exception of Firefly Summer. Something wrong with that, people. In this episode Kate and I get to do all kinds of fun animal sounds. Particularly "Borom". We're very fond of "Borom" Lots of books get mentioned in this show. One of them that is discussed right at the top is the upcoming Goodnight, Bubbala by Sheryl Haft and Jill Weber. Coming this fall. Here's a link to that lamentable Washington Examiner piece The Baltimore Mayor Scandal Wouldn't Have Happened If Modern Children's Books Weren't So Dumb. You kind find Nick Bruel's response on Facebook. - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-baltimore-mayor-scandal-wouldnt-have-happened-if-modern-childrens-books-werent-so-dumb Just a quick note that if you want a cool picture book that features Pura Belpre and here Perez and Martina puppets, check out The Storyteller's Candle by Lucia M. Gonzalez. - http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2008/03/22/review-of-the-day-the-storytellers-candle-la-velita-de-los-cuentos/ For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/05/13/fuse-8-n-kate-perez-and-martina-by-pura-belpre-ill-carlos-sanchez/
Ramona's not the only one calling aspects of Mike Mulligan into question anymore. Kate and Betsy already tackled Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House, so now the two cover another story of the fast moving world and how it leads to obsolescence. In this tale of "a man obsessed with his steam shovel," they discuss muffs, dabbing, how precisely a steam shovel would work, and the weird placement of the acknowledgement to Dickie Birkinbush mid-book. As we mentioned, Kate and Betsy made a Randolph Caldecott music video about 10 years ago. That second pair of heels? That's Kate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMIjWQQavcY And here is Kate's Kei$ha video. She's one of the mohawked ladies walking behind the singer lady: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXvmSaE0JXA Kate looked up what a "selectman" is. It is, "a member of the local government board of a New England town." Who knew? For the full show notes, please visit us at http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/05/06/fuse-8-n-kate-mike-mulligan-and-his-steam-shovel-by-virginia-lee-burton/
We're not entirely certainly why Betsy selected this as today's book. Maybe she wanted a book that was merely 20 years old. Maybe it was the fact that earlier in the day, before we recorded, she had read this book to her son's preschool class. But it may be because, and we don't think we're spoiling anything here, it is one of the world's greatest readaloud picture books. And there are so many things to talk about here. Spontaneous interior canine generation. The doctor's disappearing/reappearing latex gloves. Why no one assumes that there isn't another dog inside of George at the end. Whether or not George has eaten the vet at the end. The list goes on. Show Notes: The documentary The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations, A Documentary About the Classic Children's Book has been mentioned on this podcast and blog before. Buy it for the Tollbooth fan in your life: http://phantomtollboothdoc.vhx.tv/ The term Betsy was having a hard time thinking of is "spontaneous generation". That's right, folks. This book came in at #9 on the Top 100 Picture Books Poll of 2012: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2012/06/17/top-100-picture-books-9-bark-george-by-jules-feiffer/ Here's a small selection from the Weston Woods adaptation of the book. We think they lost something when they added all that extra text, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwdQISGMvcs The French for "woof" is "waouh" so Betsy wasn't too far off. The artist that Kate likes so much can be found at @Karenhallionart The two adult comics that Betsy thought were particularly keen are Abbott by Saladin Ahmed and On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/04/29/fuse-8-n-kate-bark-george-by-jules-feiffer/
It's time for another update in one of our favorite series on this podcast: Classics From Other Countries. Normally on this show we like to consider children's picture books from America, determining if they deserve their "classic" status. But how fair is that? Why not consider picture books deemed classics in other countries? We did Duck, Death and Tulip via Germany. We did The Gruffalo via the U.K. So let's jump on a plane and fly ourselves to Australia for our first Mem Fox classic. What will Kate think when she encounters a book with a title composed entirely out of names? And how many children's librarians out there can remember the full name at all times? Inquiring minds want to know. To get a full dose of info on this book, there is no better place to go than Mem Fox's own website. Here's the Wilfrid page, chock full of fascinating info: https://memfox.com/gossip-behind-mems-books/wilfrid-gordon-mcdonald-partridge/ Bradley Whitford, everyone! Reading this book! Why? No idea! But it's there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dLCKYTbR5c And while we're doing videos, this one about a staged production with puppets is worth your time too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wu5ldoGd68 For the full Show Notes, please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/04/22/fuse-8-n-kate/
Kate set Betsy up with a challenge. They've been deeming too many books as "classics". What book could I produce that would engender more of a debate? Well, after all these episodes (82!) Betsy thinks she's figured out Kate's least loved genre. It involves childlike art. It involves kids who aren't entirely saintly. Really, it was just a matter of time before they got to this one. They've not done a David Shannon book before. Ultimately they determine that the fault at work here is not that of David, but the inattentive parents. Happily, Kate has provided the "Partysaurus Rex" video link. It is a delight: https://vimeo.com/51194871 And the Etch a Sketch is from 1960, if that helps date the kid in the book. Yes, Betsy. It was Hiawatha and the Peacemaker. For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/04/08/fuse-8-n-kate-no-david-by-david-shannon/
Tomi Ungerer died just this past year on February 9th so it seemed logical to us that we should try to do one of his books on the show. This begs the inevitable question, which one should we do? After all, there are so many to consider. Crictor? The Beast of Monsieur Racine? Moon Man? We decided to go with the only one Betsy ever saw adapted by Weston Woods. In the course of our talk we discuss whether or not giving birth is an adequate excuse for saying you have a "connection" to someone, who invented the name "blunderbuss", and why this book is like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Plus, isn't it interesting that all these kids may be attending a robber school by the end of the book? Show Notes: - Is a pepper blower actually a thing? Betsy did a bit of research on her end, and she doesn't think that it is. As far as she is concerned, Ungerer made it up. - "When is there ever a fun aunt?" in a children's book. Okay, people. Lay 'em on me. Who's the coolest of them all? - Our hero, ladies and germs: The Castle Real Estate Agent. "Now what can I do to get you fellas into this castle?" - Kate doesn't remember this Weston Woods video but I sure as heck do. I think it's probably my favorite Weston Woods video of all time. You'll see why immediately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbaDAtjCN0 For the full Show Notes, please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/04/01/fuse-8-n-kate-the-three-robbers-by-tomi-ungerer/
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