Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Day the Babies Crawled Away With Special Guest Star Aaron Reynolds!!

Generally speaking Kate and I prefer dead people. Dead authors. Dead illustrators. But boy howdy do we like it when we have them come on as guests, so put a hash mark in the “Live” column. Back on October 30, 2017 I made Kate read Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds. With this episode, Aaron comes on the show, marking this as the first time a creator of a book we’ve covered has made a guest appearance. We asked him what book he’d like to do with us and he suggested this Peggy Rathmann classic. Best of all, Aaron brings up stuff that I myself had never noticed, like the fact that each animal the babies encounter travels with the babies, to a certain point. Makes me want to take a closer look at that ubiquitous butterfly as well. And as I say in the episode, a book that isn’t afraid to be a little weird is a book I can truly respect.

Kate would like me to state, for the record, that the Penguinologist was out of town, which is why the sound is a little funky. Also, because this book is done entirely in silhouettes, I discovered that my shots of the interior images have to deal with a glare problem from my overhead lights that I usually don’t have to think about. The black of the pages is just so shiny!

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, PlayerFM, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

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Show Notes:

• The cookies Kate made, just for Aaron. Carrot cookies with eyes and the occasional brows.

• Here are Aaron’s three books out in 2020.

The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter

Rescuing Mrs. Birdley

Fart Quest

[Cover Not Available]

• And here is Aaron performing Ms. Spears at TLA. Best dang thing you’ll see all day. My life goal is to compete in this competition some time in the future. I already have my moves planned.

• You can find Peggy Rathmann’s website here. Like I say, pretty bare bones. As far as I can tell it hasn’t been updated since 2004. Impressive, actually.
• “What is in the water that everybody got pregnant at the same time?” Kate makes a fair point. Dunno, but it’s clearly set in San Francisco with that hill.

• It’s so funny that Kate saw this as Gloria doing cat’s cradle. Since she didn’t know Office Buckle and Gloria (we haven’t done it yet) she didn’t know that that dog is actually signing an autograph.

• I know the babies are in peril most of the time but this isn’t Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Nor is it Ghastlycrumb Tinies.

• “If you are referencing a baby with frog legs coming out of its mouth there is only one place to go with that.” So sayeth I to Kate.

• “I now deem this Nightmare Baby. Because the eyes are glowing! What baby has glowing eyes?”

• “Let us be clear. We are WELL into the evening now. Are you telling me they haven’t done anything in their diapers until now?”

• This is such an interesting shot that I had to show it to you here. The action is going from the right page to the left, which I have heard is rare. Generally speaking publishers don’t want you to have the action go against the page turns rather than from left to right.

• I say vampires. Kate says aliens. And Aaron says that they’re clearly doing Yoga.

• Brave Potatoes by Toby Speed and Barry Root – The book of rhyme that Aaron highly recommends. Now, horribly, egregiously out-of-print.

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate