Fuse 8 N' Kate

We don't care what any of you say. Sweet potatoes shall never cross these Thanksgiving plates of ours. To celebrate the season, though we all know it's pared down terribly this year, Kate requested a Thanksgiving picture book classic. We got some great suggestions from our readers all of which Betsy is placing on the back burner for next year. That's because this year she's doing a book circa 1971. In the course of things, Kate creates a shocking backstory worthy of V.C. Andrews while Betsy deep dives into Agatha Christie territory and starts speculating about how the incipient murder would take place. In other words, Thanksgiving fun for the whole family! Show Notes: Betsy could not be more pleased. After mentioning on the podcast that she suspected that as a child she saw a film based on Wendy and Harry Devlin's book about a witch, she looked it up on YouTube, found it, and in the show notes it says "The life of a witch is disrupted by the arrival of a boy and his mother. The intruders' presence makes her

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 time goes on, it just seemed weirder and weirder to her that the podcast hadn't done any Donald Crews yet. Listen in then as Betsy crows over the importance of books where you can bounce a small child on your knee while making "chugga-chugga" noises while Kate imitates the call of the zebra. For full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/11/16/fuse-8-n-kate-freight-train-by-donald-crews/

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 a bit of a deep dive. Just not an extensive one. For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/11/09/fuse-8-n-kate-animalia-by-graeme-base/

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 Betsy in the same way that the ending of the movie of The Wizard of Oz does. Show Notes: If you missed it before, here is Betsy's interview with Ludwig Bemelmans' daughter Barbara: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/10/13/sunshine-on-my-bookshelf-makes-me-happy-a-classic-returns-and-an-interview-with-barbara-bemelmans/ For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/11/02/fuse-8-n-kate-madelines-rescue-by-ludwig-bemelmans/

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. Show Notes: A whole slew of different variations abound at AppLit's Annotated Index of Folktales. This is where you can find a large number of different names for this story. My favorite is Chunk o' Meat: http://www2.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/index.htm If you heard Kate discussing "In Search of the Sanderson Sisters: A Hocus Pocus Hulaween Takeover", and you wanted to join in the fun then you can purchase tickets for the event here: https://watch.eventive.org/nyrphulaween/play/5f8cae40eec5900148cd44f8 For the ful

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://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/what-marketers-can-learn-from-home-depots-12-foot-skeleton/ If you would like to read Chris Van Allsburg's Caldecott acceptance speech for Jumanji you can do so here: https://www.hmhbooks.com/chrisvanallsburg/speeches-and-interviews.html For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/10/19/fuse-8-n-kate-the-stranger-by-chris-van-allsburg/(opens in a new tab)

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 always tries to find spooky classics for Kate during the month of October, this sounded like a perfect opportunity to invite Christian to the podcast. If you'd like to hear the true origin story of Scary Stories for Young Foxes, this podcast is a must-listen. As for Kate, she has her own take on things. "She's letting her kids go out in the middle of the night . . . to die?!?" Show Notes: Here are Kate's freaky deaky ghosts, visible on my Instagram page. They are quite . . . the thing: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGO

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 and Betsy have done only one other Steven Kellogg book before. If you're interested, check out the episode of The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash here: https://soundcloud.com/user-745466600/episode-73-the-day-jimmys-boa-ate-the-wash Curious about the adult novel adapted from Goodnight Moon? It's out Feb 23rd and called The Upstairs House by Julia Fine: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-upstairs-house-julia-fine For the full Show Notes please visit us at: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/10/04/fuse-8-n

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 covers there: https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?aid=9166 For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/09/28/fuse-8-n-kate-it-could-always-be-worse-by-margot-zemach-with-special-guest-erica-s-perl/

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 get to sing the "Toldja So" song. Show Notes: Is there a podcast called Cake Talk? No, but there is a podcast called Let's Talk Cake. As far as I'm concerned, that's close enough. Listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-talk-cake/id1499854971 When standing before HUAC, and told to name names, P.D. Eastman objected and proceeded to say, "The second reason why I decline to answer is that I consider you are bringing me here under subpoena to an unreasonable search and attempt to seize the contents

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, we make exceptions to the rules. Show Notes: If you have a chance, please consider reading the AERA (American Educational Research Association) April-June 2017 edition article Understanding the Puzzle Behind the Pictures: A Content Analysis of Children’s Picture Books About Autism. The article is a good encapsulation of some of the issues with this particular book: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858417701682 Now as Betsy mentioned on the show, she thought it might be a good idea to include a vi

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 flies are. One thing Kate and Betsy do agree on though: This woman is capable of unhinging her jaw. Awesome. Show Notes: Okay. Here is where the polling comes in. Do people "wolf" down their food or "woof" down their food? We need YOUR vote on this matter: http://www.strawpoll.me/20899100 The Weston Woods video is read by Cindi Lauper. Look at an excerpt here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCaYt1KxZiY&t=3s Check out this extensive Wikipedia page for this song. A hat tip to the number of versions here. The Judy Coll

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 Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book category. That's enough potential classic status for us! But trust Kate to find a way to turn this sweet little wordless book into a bit of a horrorfest. No small feat. Show Notes: Betsy quotes a Marla Frazee and Roger Sutton interview quite a lot in the course of this podcast. Check it out here: https://www.hbook.com/?detailStory=marla-frazee-talks-roger If you'd like to see Natalie Portman's interview with Daniel Lavery, you can find it here: https://www.natalieportman.com/2020/08/1

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 he goes, a new tattoo contender, and more. For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/08/17/fuse-8-n-kate-giraffes-cant-dance-by-giles-andreae-ill-guy-parker-rees/

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 the show, "Imogene's most defining quality is her lack of freaking out over pretty much anything. This is a real go-with-the-flow kind of kid." Show Notes: The blog Don't Read This to My Kids has many thoughts on the book and they're worth reading here: http://www.drttmk.com/books/imogenes-antlers This Imogene Halloween costume is brilliant. Two thumbs up! And it comes from the post Five Super Simple Halloween Costumes from the blog This Picture Book Life: http://thispicturebooklife.com/super-simple-picture-book-h

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) Betsy couldn't find it on the library shelf and grabbed this instead. Eh. That's okay. Show Notes: Susan Guevara's vision for this book goes far and beyond anything Soto could have included in the text. Her interpretation covers a wide swath of influences and references, making it one of the most interesting picture book reads out there. Read the transcript of her interview or listen to it on Teachingbooks.net here: https://www.teachingbooks.net/book_reading.cgi?id=11932&a=1 If you'd like to read Gary Soto's essay "

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 Jacqueline Woodson's Show Way or Papa Had a Little Overcoat, even. Show Notes: I'm not kidding about the fact that Polacco went to school with Frank Oz and babysat Tom Hanks. Read all about it here: https://lifechums.wordpress.com/tag/tom-hanks/ If you would like to see the additional pages that Patricia Polacco made for the 25th anniversary edition of this book, take a gander at this video by the Mazza Museum. Our sole objection to this vid is that you never get a good close look at the quilt itself: https://www.yout

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 York Times article that talks about Peggy Rathmann's new life and grand good life is Can Dirt Save the Earth: Agriculture Could Pull Carbon Out of the Air Into the Soil: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjlhueW79rqAhWCBc0KHSyDDM0QFjAAegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F04%2F18%2Fmagazine%2Fdirt-save-earth-carbon-farming-climate-change.html&usg=AOvVaw0JURB7VQVvxWEtlVnZXr8O This book came in at #40 on the Top 100 Picture Books Poll: http://blogs.s

"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, Drew, the resident Penguinologist, put together this quickie video on a whim. It's haphazard but fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP3f_UtbXK0 While we appreciate that The Book Hound took the time to draw a connection between the Dionne quintuplets and the publication of this book, the assertion that, "While it is possible to conclude the illustrations in The Five Chinese Brothers are ethnic stereotypes, although not everyone agrees with that, it is impossible to make a case that the text contains or implies a ra

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 mothers. Show Notes: Josh Funk is correct. Splash Mountain will indeed be redone: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/media/splash-mountain-disney/index.html The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore was, I believe, an Oscar-winning short animated film. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad3CMri3hOs For the full Show Notes please go to: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2020/07/06/fuse-8-n-kate-owl-babies-by-martin-waddell-ill-patrick-benson/