Fuse 8 n’ Kate: On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman

New General Rule: When a celebrity promotes an already existing picture book, it is rarely a good thing. I am thinking, naturally, of the episode of Friends where they read Love You Forever in its entirety. But it doesn’t just happen on television shows. Recently a Kardashian recommended today’s title, and to my horror and delight it’s 20 years old (if you go by its original self-published publication date). A self-proclaimed books for parents (rather than children) we have to weigh Tillman’s talents as an illustrator against her storytelling choices. The end result is that we have two rather different final scores. Listen and see why that is!

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Show Notes:

Yep. The Goodnight Moon Suite in the Sheraton Boston does indeed exist. Bowl of mush and all.

And I found the Goodnight Moon article that I allude to in the show. From The Ugly Volvo, All of My Issues with the “Goodnight Moon” Bedroom. Written in very much the same vein as the McSweeney’s article Thirty-Nine Questions for Charlie Daniels Upon Hearing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” for the First Time in Twenty-Five Years.

This is the free floating note that this now officially Kate’s nemesis.

A Bible quote at the front tells people, “This is the club I belong to.” But, to be fair, this is probably the coolest Bible quote you could kick off with.

The choice to break up the centers of these sentences with a frog is a very odd design choice. We don’t see folks do this very often (and for good reason). By the way, this is NOT a note. That is a treble clef.

Does this baby face in the sky have any Teletubbies influence involved in its inspiration? You be the judge.

Ah. The duckface moon (which would be a GREAT name for a book or poem). Which apparently the Kardashians are into.

We can NOT figure out how this freaky deaky scarecrow got into this book. It has the creepiest smile on its face which, naturally, means that this is actually the best part of the book as far as I’m concerned.

I dunno. Something a bit unnerving about these animals and their dead-eyed staring.

Why is the Tower of London here? “Oh sure, put the Tower of London in there. Nothing bad has ever happened there.”

It’s kinda psychedelic while somehow also remaining not quite psychedelic enough.

Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic wrote us saying, “It’s called Fishwife: www.eatfishwife.com, and I feel like you might desperately need these sardine hair clips: https://eatfishwife.com/products/chunks-sardine-dream-clips“

Kate Recommends: Sweet Pickle Books in Manhattan, NYC

Betsy Recommends: Blunderbuss: The Tomi Ungerer Symposium (more info to come on how it went!).

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate