These Books Made Me

Send us Fan Mail Marjane Satrapi's groundbreaking graphic memoir Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood chronicles the life of a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In this episode we discuss the experience of reading graphic novels, the impact of Satrapi's illustration style, and the importance of this work in establishing non-serialized graphics as a legitimate g...

Send us Fan Mail This episode finds us in the brutal halls of middle school with Maleeka Madison, a 12 year old girl struggling with self-esteem, peer pressure, and grief in Sharon Flake's The Skin I'm In. Flake's almost 25 year old award winning book takes a hard look at colorism, the burden of low expectations, and the importance of teachers who want to be in their classrooms and...

Send us Fan Mail E.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has endured on library shelves as many older Newbery books often do. In this episode we talk about whether the 1967 mystery cum adventure story still earns that spot on the shelf. We discuss Claudia Kincaid as a role model and possible queer feminist icon and also have a lot of feelings about the Met'...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we are diving into one of the books in the comprehensive Alice series (25 books!) by children's literature paragon Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Alice in April covers one very dramatic month in the life of Alice McKinley. Journey with us and Alice through the awkwardness of middle school, complete with inappropriate nicknaming and sick burns about genitalia. We dis...

Send us Fan Mail Beverly Cleary's many books for young readers have endured the decades with her boisterous heroine Ramona Quimby remaining a perennial favorite for both parents and children. In this episode we examine the original bookends of the Ramona books, beginning with Beezus and Ramona and ending with Ramona Forever. We discuss being the eldest child, the most beautiful doll names, th...

Send us Fan Mail Many of us vividly remembered Their Eyes Were Watching God as the book where a person gets rabies and is shot. Tea Cake's demise left us with so many questions so Hannah consulted experts Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy, the authors of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus. They gave us such a fascinating interview that we couldn't bear to cut...

Send us Fan Mail Zora Neale Hurston may have been unappreciated as an author during her lifetime, but Their Eyes Were Watching God was eventually rediscovered and has endured as a classic for the past several decades. We explore the life and loves of Janie Crawford and her impact as a heroine. Our hosts discuss gender roles, the complex nature of romantic love, and unfortunate decisions during nat...

Send us Fan Mail Judy Blume didn't intend to write one of the most frequently challenged and banned books of all time when she penned Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. She just wanted to write a book that captured the trials and tribulations of adolescence, complete with girl talk about bras, periods, and boys. We wonder why the pretty tame discussion of puberty, and a storyline abou...

Send us Fan Mail We're spending time with Esperanza Cordero, her family, friends, and neighbors from 1984's groundbreaking novel, The House on Mango Street. This paragon of the Chicano/a literary canon challenges us to define it - is it a novel, a novella, an epic poem - and has itself been the subject of frequent challenges for its unflinching look at the lives and loves of its characte...

Send us Fan Mail Noted Sagittarius and author Tamora Pierce brought us the groundbreaking, gender norm defying Alanna: The First Adventure in 1983. The book ended up being a formative text and gateway sword-and-sorcery fantasy work for many of us. Alanna was a Strong Female Protagonist for young adults before the Strong Female Protagonist conversation was a thing. Headstrong, improbably purple-eye...

Send us Fan Mail We are back with part 2 of our foray into the world of Sailor Moon. In this episode we will discuss romanticism, Usagi's leadership style, the male gaze in Sailor Moon, and how much of a downer it would be to outlive everyone you love.  These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Libra...

Send us Fan Mail Moon prism power, make up! This week we have both new and familiar voices transporting us to the world of Usagi Tsukino as we dive into manga for the first time with Sailor Moon. The iconic series by Naoko Takeuchi is perhaps the most widely beloved example of shojo manga and both the print and anime versions are standards in the 90's  Girl Power canon. In this episode we tal...

Send us Fan Mail It's a store! It's a bistro for dolls! It's a rose-colored fever dream! It's our field trip to the American Girl Cafe at Tysons Corner! Journey with us through the strange world of the American Girl Cafe. Only in the AG  Cafe can you simultaneously feel like a small child and also incredibly old. We explore a plethora of dolls and accessories, ask just what it...

Send us Fan Mail Earlier this season we discussed the Roald Dahl classic “Matilda.” The episode’s expert interview, Maggie Peterson from the College of Education at the University of Maryland, was too delightful not to be heard in full. Dr. Peterson speaks on her experience as an educator, impressions of Matilda, schoolyard tropes, and what makes great literature. Enjoy the extended cut of this in...

Send us Fan Mail These Books Made Me... scared? This week's bonus episode explores the scary side of literature. From Goosebumps to fairy tales to straight up horror, we take a look at the books that haunt us. We discuss horror as a genre and try to identify why it often appeals to women not only as readers, but also as writers. We reminisce about our own creepy encounters with books and get...

Send us Fan Mail This episode marks our final foray into the American Girliverse and our season 1 finale. We delve into the world of Josefina Montoya,  our most introverted girl to date, but possibly the most resourceful. There is a piano disaster (and subsequent miraculous piano healing), a rattlesnake attack (and subsequent semi-miraculous healing), a deceased parent, a deceased goat, and a kind...

Send us Fan Mail On we trek through the American Girls canon as we journey through Addy Walker's world. We explore the formation of the Addy advisory committee, Connie Porter's writing style, and the way the series presents slavery and the Civil War time period to children. We discuss how this Harriet also might be a sociopath and how colorism is depicted in the text and in the illustrat...

Send us Fan Mail We are diving back into the American Girl canon with Felicity Merriman. Felicity was a second wave American Girl and infamous horse thief. We learn about the author of the original six Felicity books (as well as several of our previous AG books), Valerie Tripp, and wonder whether the gender roles focus in the Felicity books is particularly successful or just kind of confusing. In...

Send us Fan Mail We take a break from the American Girls (in more ways than one!) this week to discuss a British childhood classic of both page and screen, Roald Dahl's "Matilda". Matilda is a quintessential bookworm who uses her unmatched smarts and special powers to triumph over her less than ideal surroundings dominated by neglectful and at times abusive adults. In this episode,...

Send us Fan Mail We delve ever deeper into the OG American Girl canon as we explore the pranktastic world of Molly McIntire. We try to decipher the strange recurring chronologies of American Girl books and discuss the highs and lows of the first six Molly books. In this episode we examine the books' decidedly Midwestern-nice spin on World War II complete with casseroles, Victory Gardens, turn...

Send us Fan Mail We continue our journey through the American Girl book series with Samantha Parkington. Samantha was one of the AG OGs and was released as one of the original three characters in the Pleasant Company catalog. We learn a bit about doll manufacturing and discuss Samantha's first six books and their historical and literary merits. In this episode, we will explore how American Gi...

Send us Fan Mail We begin our first foray into the world of juvenile chapter series and the American Girls specifically with the young Swedish immigrant Kirsten Larson. Kirsten was one of the original three dolls released by Pleasant Company, the company that first created American Girl, and in this episode we cover all six - yes, that's right six - books in Kirsten's original series. In...

Send us Fan Mail We had such a good conversation with this second community expert for our last episode, we had to release it as a separate episode. Ella (of Ella's Ephemera fame) chats with St. Mark's Church Historian Sandra Johnson about sharecropping and other related topics in Prince George's County African American history that are connected to the book "Roll of Thunder, H...

Send us Fan Mail Mildred Taylor originally did not set out to write a children's book when she wrote "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry," yet it quickly became a children's classic and classroom staple for young readers. We'll reexamine this iconic work that unflinchingly examines racism as the children and their parents find ways to push back against the injustices of the Jim C...

Send us Fan Mail For our A Tree Grows in Brooklyn expert segment, we reached out to Prince George's County Councilwoman Deni Taveras to reflect on whether Smith's depiction of New York reflected any of her own experiences growing up in New York. The conversation morphed into a much broader discussion about affordable housing and public education and was simply too good to reduce to one s...