MORE 'FUSE-8-N-KATE' POSTS
On today's podcast spend an inordinate amount of time saying "Lord Cucuface", discuss "the happiness of a father of a husband", and tackle why the ending of this book bugs me in the same way that the ending of the movie of The Wizard of Oz does.
"Well, THAT didn't end how I thought it would!" I save the spookiest book for last this month, and I think I knocked it out of the park. What better than to end the month on a book that involves honest-to-goodness MURDER?
Every year I have to come up with spooky classic picture books, and today's was a recommendation from one of our fans (that would be our mom). It's less spooky than it is autumnal, but that's okay.
When I heard that Newbery Honor winner Christian McKay Heidicker considered Spooky Old Tree a seminal text, I not only knew what our next book was going to be, I knew exactly who should be our next guest!
It's October so that means spooky season has officially begun! I introduce Kate to one of my favorite eerie classics. It's pure unfiltered Steven Kellogg. Let's see what she makes of him.
"Some days you're the girl in the soup and some days you're the chicken under the chair." Special guest Erica S. Perl joins us this Yom Kippur to discuss what should be considered the official picture book of 2020.
This week, Kate delves real deep into the marital status of dear Mr. and Mrs. Bird here (including Mr. Bird's "extracurricular activities", if you get my gist). We discuss how this is like a "very small version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds" (their reign of terror is swift and tiny). We wonder about color layering, and we get to sing the "Toldja So" song.
I can say with complete confidence that this was the first picture book about a Black kid on the autism spectrum I had ever seen when the book was first published in 2010. Recently Kate saw a list from Black Education Matters listing several books that featured Black children with disabilities and she asked if any were possible for our podcast. And lo and behold, we found one,
This old lady may be devouring the local flora and fauna at a prodigious rate, but SHE HAS A PLAN! At least we think she does. We cover a book that celebrates that classic elderly ability to unhinge your jaw.
Kate hates clowns. Naturally, that meant I had to find her the sweetest wordless clown picture book ever created. The results? Let's just say she doesn't have a clown conversion in the course of this show.