Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann

“He is a grown man jealous of a D-O-G.”

While we’ve been doing some superb picture books as of late, but it’s been a while since we’ve done a particularly famous one. So for a small change of pace we’re doing a Big Name today. The kind where my library has nine copies in its main location. And, bonus, it’s not one by Seuss. Peggy Rathmann giveth again to us today with the irrepressible Officer Buckle and the adorable Gloria. I expected many things to occur during our talk but I did not expect for this podcast to devolve into huge conversations about bananas. It may amuse you to hear that Kate made me banana bread at our next Game Night after we recorded this. Sheesh.

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

Show Notes:

I would like it widely noted that I did some extraordinary research to figure out why it is that every time I hear Kate mention Hawaii I sing like I’m Minnie Mouse. I was able to track the source of this knee-jerk reaction here. Skip to the end of the short and you’ll see what watching Disney cartoons in your youth will do to your adult brain:

I wasn’t wrong. We really have done two other Peggy Rathmann books on this pocast. Recall, if you will, that we already did Goodnight, Gorilla and The Day the Babies Crawled Away. Now that we’ve done this one, which means we have only one major Rathmann left (see if you can figure out which one it is).

I call Peggy Rathmann “the Gary Larson of picture books”. She walks away from a marvelous picture book career to live with John Wick. Not even kidding about that. And as I mention on the podcast, there was a piece in On Pasture called Meet Someone Making A Difference to Agriculture and the Climate. So, basically, she’s saving the world. Pretty good excuse for not making any more picture books.

What is the percentage of residents of Naperville who mistakenly read Officer Buckle’s hometown as their own.

Behold. The only Game Boy to appear in a Caldecott Award winner.

What does this remind me of?

Oh yes!

How many friggin’ schools are even IN this town?!?

You begin, after a while, to come around to Kate’s worry about the anti-banana sentiment in this book. The patch? It’s the Buckle meme.

What’s the best Officer Buckle tongue twister you can come up with? “Bitter Buckle had a bit of better … banter?” Needs work.

This is literally my favorite picture in this whole book. Can we talk about how it hit her claw-side down?!?

Should you wonder, Officer Buckle and Gloria appeared at #59 on the Top 100 Picture Books Poll back in 2012.

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate