Fuse 8 n’ Kate: In a People House by Dr. Seuss, ill. Roy McKie

Upon hearing that Jon Klassen was hugely affected by this book as a kid (fascinating when you consider how opposite it is from his latest title The House with Nobody In It), we felt it was time to revisit this old 1972 easy book to see how it stands up. Truth be told, we’re less interested in the Seuss connection than by the outdated terminology in a supposed book for early readers (“bureau drawer”?!?). “Seuss knew what he was doing with Cat in the Hat. I guess he sort of lost it at this point.” We talk about how the book is, at times, “adorably dated,” and how this is different from The Cat in the Hat because, at least in that case, the Cat cleans up after itself!!!

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

Show Notes:

For those of you curious about all our rating thus far, Kate has consolidated them all here. Enjoy!

As I tell Kate, I’m fairly certain that for these particular roller skates, you would probably use some kind of a skate key to screw them on to your tennis shoes. So… yeah. Not exactly contemporary.

“Bird, I think, is an angry drunk.” And here he is drinking what appears to be orange wine, long before that was a thing.

You know, Seuss had a chance to include the simple spelling of this foodstuff for this book (“donuts”) but opted instead for the version with all the silent letters.

Okay. A question for you folks. Let’s crowdsource this. Are we meant to recognize what these sticks are? I consider that these might be used by teachers, but that’s just us throwing out guesses.

And boy, oh boy, the dated electronics just keep on coming!

Oh. This image is driving Kate up the wall. The hands are pointed to 12 and 4, but the hands are at 90 degree angles. Yet the hands aren’t pointing to 12 and 3?!?

And this little dolly has inspired Kate to add creepy dolls to her Halloween display this year.

Here is a roster of great Easy Books starting with last year with links to titles from the last decade or so. Just in case you need it.

Kate Recommends: The fiction tale Beach Read by Emily Henry

Betsy Recommends: The upcoming movie about Margaret Wise Brown and her re-released title, The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds

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