Fuse 8 n' Kate

"There are fish literally everywhere in this book!" We meant to do an Ed Young title a little closer to his death last year, but life interfered. As a result Betsy has been sitting on this particular copy of Yeh-Shen for a couple months now (sorry, library). You can imagine Betsy's utter delight as she discovers that, like Lon-Po Po, Ed Young hid one particular animal on these pages: Fish! Betsy h...

It's rare that we do a picture book from Betsy's old Top 100 Picture Books Poll from back in 2012, but today's the day, we guess. This book came in at #96 and reading it today we were surprised at how well it had aged in spite of its 1972 publication date. You probably know Bernard Waber best as the creator of Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. Today we're talking about Joe the Button Pusher, the Irish Republi...

We are so friggin' psyched!! It's not every day that we (A) Celebrate our 300th episode and (B) Have the very first National Ambassador of Young People's Literature JON SCIESZKA as our special guest! We asked Jon what classic picture book he wanted to celebrate, and do you know what he selected? Not one but THREE Grimm Brothers fairy tales. Not the well known ones either. Three short ones. Weird o...

"Ah, Kwame. He's going to get tired of winning Caldecotts one of these days." As track records go, we don't want to brag but the Fuse 8 n' Kate podcast does a particularly good job each and every year of selecting potential winners. Just look at last year's picks. Of the three books we discussed one (Hot Dog) became an Award winner and one (Knight Owl) became an Honor. This year, once more, we've...

Here we are in a great glorious new year, and what are we doing? We're directing your attention backwards in time to 1998. Heck, technically we're going even farther back in time with one of our rare nonfiction considerations on this podcast. Travel to the late 19th century and meet a controversial figure. Citizen scientist or man who mucks with the scientific record? Only you can judge when you l...

Hiccups or no hiccups, the podcast must go on! Betsy and Kate strive to once again provide a holiday-related picture book. Now Barbara Cooney was much on our minds since Betsy premiered the cover of an upcoming Barbara Cooney picture book bio coming out in 2024. Today's little book is actually still in print (not always a given) and it's an interesting consideration of the effect of WWI on small t...

Kate challenged Betsy to come up with a Hanukkah classic we hadn't done before and Betsy . . . turned right around and asked social media for their thoughts. And let me tell you, social media had some GOOD suggestions! So many that we're saving a long list to consult next year. The ultimate winner for today was selected because (A) You can trust author Eric A. Kimmel to present an original Hanukka...

Do you know the mushroom man, the mushroom man, the mushroom man? Well you're about to! Here's a question for you: Is a piece of cultural entertainment a "Christmas" title if the holiday only makes a brief cameo appearance? Is the film Meet Me In St. Louis a Christmas film just because it includes the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"? Likewise, is The Mushroom Man, now being re-releas...

Is it just us, or did someone miss a trick by not creating a new version of Stone Soup for the post-lockdown era we currently live in? Sorry, we're just thinking out loud, but after Kate and Betsy read two different versions of Stone Soup this week (one by Marcia Brown and one by Jon J. Muth) it seemed to us that this story is a lovely metaphor for growing connections and community after harrowing...

For the very first time in the history of this podcast, we have taken a request... from a publisher. That's right! You know as well as we do that there are reprinted picture books coming out all the time. Well, New York Review of Books sort of specializes in that industry. Their Children's Collection division has a tendency to find old and shockingly beautiful titles worth bringing back to life. A...

"There's no possible way to describe what you feel, when you're talking to your meal." - Into the Woods I've been waiting far far too long to do today's book. It was introduced to Betsy in graduate school, back in 2003, as an ideal storytime title. Today we consider Keiko Kasza's best known book and discuss what the Kool-Aid Man says, whether or not the pig is a classic trickster character, and if...

Happy Halloween! It's a day of celebration in more than one way. After all, starting today we FINALLY are able to start doing some Yuyi Morales books on our podcast! It's been 20 years since this little number came out and we figured what could be a better title to cap off our 2023 Halloween season than with Ms. Morales's first title? It's still in print but how does it stand up after all these ye...

Let the record show that Betsy read through a slew of different Halloween-centric picture book titles before she alighted upon one that was appropriate for the season. Who knew that Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola would be the answer to her prayers? Today we consider a book about, at its core, the difficulty of growing more than a single pumpkin in your pumpkin patch. Kate and Betsy, failed pumpki...

Remember when Betsy said to Kate that she wanted to do a certain book for Mother's Day but would settle on doing it for the Halloween season instead? What book could possibly encompass those two holidays? Behold! The rare Mother's Day/Halloween crossover hit! Brought to you by the illustrator best known for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (though he'll always be the winner of the Longest Caldeco...

In spite of the fact that Ed Young recently passed away and, traditionally, when a master of the picture book form passes away, we do one of their books on the show, we decided to keep him on the backburner while we do our first Halloween picture book of the season. And we are VERY excited about this because today's book came out in 2003, which means we can finally do it on this podcast (we have a...

Having recently read the new book Ready, Set, Run! The Amazing New York City Marathon by Leslie Kimmelman, illustrated by Jessie Hartland, Betsy was reminded of the old chestnut The Philharmonic Gets Dressed. Then, suddenly, it occurred to her that she and Kate had never ever done this particular book on our podcast. It also appears to be this podcast's first Karla Kuskin and first Marc Simont on...

It seemed only fitting that since last week's podcast episode dealt so directly with the beginnings of life, why not focus on the end this time around? I'll tell you this much, though. If you'd informed Betsy, prior to this recording, that a 1971 picture book would be one of the best books she ever encountered on death, she would not have believed you. But she probably should have realized somethi...

"Three dudes telling you how babies are made in 1968." The Fuse 8 n' Kate podcast focuses primarily on picture books of the past, but that focus means that we are subject to the past's limitations. Consequently, most of the books we've considered until now have been works of fiction. Well no more! Today we tackle one of our first nonfiction titles, this one dating back to 1968 and, we have no doub...

Featured today was DRUMMER HOFF. An odd mix of 1960s psychedelia meets Colonial woodcuts, in 1968 it was the ultimate Vietnam War bit of picture book commentary. NOT that the Emberley ever embraced that interpretation, but I am DANG sure the librarians had that in their minds when they selected it for a Caldecott Award. In today's talk we discuss our various interpretations of this book as well as...

Betsy's a child of the Generation X movement and, as such, at some point in her early education, the song "Gonna Die With a Hammer in My Hand", adapted by the folksingers of the 60s, was something she was well and truly familiar with. That said, at no point in her childhood did she ever encounter a single picture book retelling of the legend of John Henry. And though he's one of the great American...

Considering the fact that the movie of Lyle the Crocodile came out practically a year ago in October of 2022, it may seem a little late to be returning to this particular member of the family Crocodylidae, but what care we? This Lyle title was originally released in 1969. Remember that date. It puts the contents inside in a little bit of context. Today, Kate and Betsy discuss whether or not this l...

Today's discussion centers around whether our featured book bears more of a resemblance to Eloise or Last Stop on Market Street (and not in a good way). By the end of the talk you will come to the conclusion that this may, in fact, be both the most capitalistic and least capitalistic book of all time. Special Bonus: The cruelest Kirkus review we've read aloud on any of our podcast episodes. For th...

When we're not talking about the unrealistic L.A. highway driving times in the Barbie Movie, we're discussing our favorite picture books and whether or not they're classics. I admit that we have done Helen Oxenbury on the podcast relatively recently, but due to its stature in the children's literature world, I felt that his was an egregious gap in our knowledge until now. Think of Farmer Duck as a...

Believe it or not, Syd Hoff's been in the news quite a lot lately. Not bad for a pronounced children's literature 1930s Communist, eh? You could be forgiven for not knowing a lot about Syd Hoff. Honestly, we'd managed to skate through a significant portion of my life remaining unaware of him apart from the fact that there was some racist stuff at the beginning of the original editions of Danny and...

Recently Betsy created a post of picture books that belie the idea that all picture book "classics" are by white people. Amongst these were books with Jewish content. But when you sit down and look at those titles you notice that most of these are Hanukkah-related titles. So at the suggestion of Lisa Brown we're doing the very last William Steig picture book that was ever published. This book was...