Fuse 8 n' Kate

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'...

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...

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...

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 (com...

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 man...

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 fi...

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 s...

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...

"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 room...

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 ha...

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...

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...

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...

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 brutal...

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...

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...

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...

"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....

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...

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 pos...

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 my...

In honor of Tomie dePaola, who left us last week, Betsy wanted to do one of his possible classics. The show had already done Strega Nona, but one other book might qualify for "classic" status. Trouble was, all the libraries are closed and Betsy couldn't get a physical copy of this book. Happily, Overdrive offered this ebook for borrowing. The title totally threw Kate off, and Betsy couched it by s...

For WEEKS Kate has been bugging Betsy to find her a celebrity picture book. The catch was that Betsy was insisting that the book be considered a "classic". So she asked the listeners what the most classicky classic was and they managed to come up with today's book. Published in 1996 this definitely falls within the 20 year rule (a.k.a. don't read anything that's younger .... in theory) so they wen...

Since Betsy's library is all closed up and she has no access to the books inside, she wasn't able to do a celebrity picture book with Kate this week. Such is the state of the world in which we live today. Not to worry! In this episode you will find a multitude of plover adjacent ideas, thoughts about developmental issues and when it's right to seek help vs. let things work out on their own, and wh...

To help out families stuck in their homes with small children, avoiding COVID-19, people have been creating videos of people reading picture books. And WHAT, I ask you, is a better readaloud than this storytime classic? Nothing, I tells ya! Nothing! Kate gets introduced to Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury for the very first time. Imagine showing someone, who has never seen this story performed for...