Just Dads Reading Books

We're catching up on a couple of recent Caldecott stragglers. Doug Salati is an illustrator who has worked with a number of different writers and the picture book he wrote himself, Hot Dog, won the 2023 Caldecott and boy do we agree with the committee on this one. Doug's work transports you to such specific, kind, casual worlds and we'd rather not leave. If you want to chat with us and...

We're back in Carlos Hernandez's wonderful Sal and Gabi universe which is actually infinite number of universes with infinite Sals and infinite Gabis and we must assume infinite EJs and Matts as well. The first book was a surprise hit for us and we want to see if the series can keep up the pace! If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've cove...

New Year and that means it's time to make a change! And we've got a great idea for everyone: read When the World Runs Dry by Nancy Castaldo and then go get your representatives to take the water crisis more seriously! Thank goodness young adult books like this exist so that hopefully future generations can do a little bit better than the ones before them... If you want to chat with us and...

Today, Matt and EJ are the odd couple. Matt loves holidays, and EJ apparently holds no love in his heart for them. Can Matt convince EJ that this is a fun time of year through the power of picture books? If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered on the show, please email us at justdadsreadingbooks@gmail.com Music by Russian Baths:  https://o...

This guy has a lot of books! We recently discussed his series Elephant and Piggie, and we want to eventually cover the Pigeon books in depth, but today we're going to cover the grab bag of his other works! If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered on the show, please email us at justdadsreadingbooks@gmail.com Music by Russian Baths:  htt...

We're celebrating 50 episodes and taking it as an opportunity to just smile for over 40 minutes. We get to talk about Bill Watterson's legendary run of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. One of the most influential comic strips ever made, Calvin and Hobbes has an evergreen appeal that we just hope new generations aren't going to miss it. Please give your kids Calvin and Hobbes books. Y...

We're a bit late to be doing something spooky, but Coraline by Neil Gaiman is an all-timer so it seemed fine to talk about in December! And we didn't just read this book. This time we have fully consumed Coraline in nearly every medium it has ever appeared. Come listen to a discussion about the differences between the book, audiobook, graphic novel, and movie! If you want to chat with us a...

It's our first foray into Mo Willems! He's won more awards than almost any illustrator and he has multiple best selling series. We'll get to more of them eventually, but we wanted to start with the Elephant and Piggie series because both of our kids immediately gravitated towards these books and we couldn't stop reading them! If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell...

We've caught up to the last of F.C. Yee's books set in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe and guess what? We still love it and him. Honestly at this point this books can't really fail either of us, so prepare your ears to listen to two joyful dads. If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered on the show, please email us at jus...

It's picture book time! We've dabbled a bit in award winning picture books and along that journey something we've started to wonder is what do these awards really mean? We're learning a lot about this industry and so we wanted to take some time to take a closer look at the Caldecott award for picture book illustrations. We've been able to get a decent look at the last decade of...

F.C. Yee recently released his final book set in the Avatar universe. This is a crime he has committed. His Avatar books are sublime and today we wanted to continue that series by reading it's third iteration, Dawn of Yangchen. We're introduced to a new Avatar in a different time period and surprise! It's a spy novel! If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reac...

We're winding down from our Lemony Snicket adventure and EJ spent some time recently in a friendly local book shop where he was captivated by the cover of today's book, Mulysses. It's a graphic novel from Norwegian artist Øyvind Torseter and it straddles the line of even qualifying as young adult fiction, but it was in a kid's store so it counts! To learn more about Dad Suggests an...

We finished a major arc of the show by reading all of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. It's been a long journey and we felt like taking time to think on the series as a whole. And you bet your bottom dollar we decided to arbitrarily rank all of the books... If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered on the show, please em...

We've come a long way and yet it feels like we're just lost at sea... If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered on the show, please email us at justdadsreadingbooks@gmail.com Music by Russian Baths:  https://open.spotify.com/artist/07N9Lr8AIzUbDzjPXUXTLr?si=vegRwDLXSF-IpupxjuEPJQ

We're almost done! Or are we done? So much happens in this book it's honestly hard to talk about. So here, at the 11th hour we're actually going to offer up a bit of a spoiler-free conversation about the Penultimate Peril. That's how bad we want you to just go out and read it for yourself. If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've co...

Here's an odd little episode for you: EJ and Matt took a long road trip in August of 2023 and decided to record their road chat. This isn't a 30 minute episode about a book, it's an hour long conversation with a handful of tangents. Consider it a celebration of 40 JDRB episodes. We talk about growing up, our reading history, disc golf, poker, and being dads. We hope you enjoy it and so...

We've been referencing this book for week's now as a supposed low point in the series, but it's been years since either of us have read it. Is it a boring, bottle episode of a book, or is there more deep its murky depths? Either way, it's uncharted territory for Matt from here on out! If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered...

Jon Klassen has a new book out and we're newly inducted Klassenites so we had to check it out. AND BOY WE WEREN'T PREPARED. It is stylistically beautiful, conceptually brilliant, and absolutely hilarious. And critically, we'll be revisiting this book in one year's time...so see you then! If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've cove...

The adventure continues with Baudelaires all doing a bit of growing up! We get some big, heavy new themes in the 10th entry of the Series of Unfortunate Events and we couldn't be more excited to see how the story changes as our three protagonists mature and get a bit wiser. If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered on the show, please em...

This week we unexpectedly returned to our "Road to Pratchett" mini-arc by reading the legendary fantasy novel from Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea. The best part is we each had wildly different reactions to the book. One of us listened to it and bounced off it and the other read it with our eyeballs and fell desperately in love... If you want to chat with us and recommend books or t...

We continue our journey through Lemony Snicket's escapades with a sleeper hit! Perhaps the silliest of all of the books is also the one that finally makes the world feel whole and unique and some important ground work is laid for the thickening mystery behind VFD and all it's past and present members. If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we'v...

We've been having a categorically dark and/or bad time on the show recently. Not with bad books but with SAD books, so we asked everyone to tell us about a happy, good time book. Well we were recommended Flora & Ulysses and I hate to report we did not have a good time... Let's talk about why this beloved book didn't quite work for us. If you want to chat with us and recommend books...

Our Series on a Series of Unfortunate Events continues in one of the perhaps most patently absurd stories in the set. Why are we at a hospital? How does no one know that's just a baby in a doctor's coat? We're really just going to get someone's head open in front of a crowd of people? If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your reaction to book we've covered...

**THIS EPISODE CONTAINS DISCUSSION ABOUT SUICIDE. PLEASE TAKE CARE WHEN LISTENING, ESPECIALLY AROUND CHILDREN** Matt found a book at the library with a fascinating structure and then it ruined his whole day. Thornhill is a horror in the truest sense of the word and analyzing what that means for children might take a bit of work... If you want to chat with us and recommend books or tell us your rea...

It's an exciting week because we start to really slow down with Lemony Snicket's sad adventure. We've been burning through the early books in the series mostly out of sheer excitement to get to this arc of it. Vile Village kicks off much bigger mysteries being established and the questions surrounding the VFD become the forefront of each book. So join us as we explore the rest of one o...