Sometimes everything comes together so beautifully. Kate had been asking for a while for Betsy to come up with a fox-related picture book title in which the fox wasn't evil. Meanwhile, Jerrold Connors has been creating a picture book biography of James Marshall called JIM! (which Betsy interviewed him about this past week) in which Jim is portrayed as his famous fox character. The time just seemed right to put these two things together. The James Marshall Fox series had multiple volumes, so which one would be the best to do with Kate? What's that you say? The one where they all smoke cigars? God. It's like you know us. For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2025/01/20/fuse-8-n-kate-fox-all-week-by-james-marshall/

Hooray! With the ALA Youth Media Awards on the near horizon (Monday, January 27th at 8 a.m. MT to be precise) it's never been a better time to debate some possible winners of the Caldecott Award. Today, I hand over to Kate an unprecedented FOUR possible contenders (rather than my usual three)! Will she opt for the vibrant father-daughter vibes of My Daddy Is a Cowboy, the rainbow wry-wit of Touch the Sky, the luminous family-centric storytelling of Joyful Song, or the heartfelt sincerity of Home in a Lunchbox? Only this podcast can say for sure. For the full Show Notes, please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2025/01/12/fuse-8-n-kate-the-caldecott-contenders-of-2025/

A Caldecott Award winner! It's been a minute, hasn't it? When Betsy thinks of today's book she thinks of something David Wiesner said about it during one of his own Caldecott acceptance speeches. "Structurally unlike any medal winner before it — or since — Black and White...redefined the way stories could be told in picture books. And, just as importantly, it did this while being very, very funny." That's our bag, baby. As such, Betsy introduce Kate to this metafictional picture book and the legacy it engendered. Today we discuss newspapers, abstract cows, how the book occasionally hurts Kate's brain, and why it reminds her of the testing she took for her own autism. For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2025/01/06/fuse-8-n-kate-black-and-white-by-david-macaulay/

Betsy has been waiting YEARS to finally get to do today's book. Literally! She read this book over and over and over and over to her small children, and she has every intention of doing the same to Kate's incipient child. Today we get to talk about sheep! Sheep of every type and stripe! We also discuss, for some reason, Australian armor-clad bushrangers, which of these sheep is the most impressive skill-wise, and whether or not this is just Hippos Go Bezerk with sheep! For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/12/30/fuse-8-n-kate-where-is-the-green-sheep-by-mem-fox-ill-judy-horacek/

Just in time for Christmas! So Betsy was on the lookout for Christmas books we hadn't done before and you know who we've never presented on this podcast? Langston Hughes! Heck, we've done James Baldwin, but we've never done Langston Hughes. Oddly, we've done shockingly few picture books over the years around Christmastime that involve baby Jesus. Today we consider an author who was blacklisted in his day and turned to writing books for children to make ends meet. This particular book was also never really intended to be a children's book. It's a series of poems that were adapted into a book format instead. How well does it hold up over time aside from the goodness of its mere existence? We intend to find out. For the full Show Notes, please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/12/23/fuse-8-n-kate-carol-of-the-brown-king-by-langston-hughes-ill-ashley-bryan/

Since Christmas and Hanukkah fall on the same day this year, Kate and Betsy had a difficult decision ahead: Do we do a Christmas first book or a Hanukkah book. And, if a Hanukkah book, which one? The answer came to us when Betsy discovered the incredible and incredibly weird Moishe's Miracle. Unfamiliar with it? Maybe it deserves classic status as an undiscovered gem. Today we discuss Gremlins, hidden gems, and so much more. For the complete Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/12/16/fuse-8-n-kate-moishes-miracle-a-hanukkah-story-by-laura-krauss-melmed-ill-david-slonim/

You may have recollections of this book so vague you almost wondered if it was a fever dream you had a child. Well, wonder no longer! Today we're taking a trip to Itching Down where four million wasps cause all kinds of trouble. Like a surreal combination of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and maybe Who Needs Donuts?, join us as we determine whether or not it truly deserves to be remembered as a classic or not. Today we discuss the long forgotten Good Witch of the North, the location of this story, and how, for my generation, this book was "a whole thing." Please see the full Show Notes here: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/12/10/fuse-8-n-kate-the-giant-jam-sandwich-by-john-vernon-lord-and-janet-burroway/

Turkey day approacheth and, let me tell you, it can be just a tiny bit difficult finding Thanksgiving Day picture books from 20+ years ago that aren't offensive in some way. Today's title came out originally in 1976, though you wouldn't know it from the lead male's shirt which is VERY 1985. We learn a bit about Dahlov Ipcar and consider a book where every single problem in this book could be solved if the farmer just installed, oh I dunno, A FENCE!! This is, to our mind, the story about a guy who went off the grid without doing any research. Enjoy it as we try to determine its place in the Gobble Day pantheon. For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/11/25/fuse-8-n-kate-hard-scrabble-harvest-by-dahlov-ipcar/

Betsy got all kinds of addicted to doing Caldecott winners after we recorded an episode on Kitten's First Full Moon. Afterwards, she looked back over our recent books, and somehow we missed doing this book when it hit the 20 year mark. Bonus, it's our first Eric Rohmann title! We don't want to spoil anything, but this is the kind of book that rewards a closer read. Today we're talking tattoos, lapine workout routines, and the likelihood that someone drugged this dang hippo. To put it simply, this is The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions... The Book! You can find the full Show Notes at https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/11/18/fuse-8-n-kate-my-friend-rabbit-by-eric-rohmann/

Fellow librarians who have been around a day or two: Can you believe that Kitten's First Full Moon came out TWENTY years ago? Kate had asked me to come up with an election picture book and I failed miserably (since we already did So You Want to Be President? and Duck for President previously). So Kevin Henkes used to be Mr. Mice. He just did all mouse picture books all the time. My theory is that the turn came around the time he created Kitten's First Full Moon. These days, Mr. Henkes is much more inclined to create emotionally resonant square-sized picture books than vertically inclined mouse-related picture books. Little wonder since Kitten won a 2005 Caldecott Award. Today we determine how well this book has aged in the last two decades. For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/11/04/fuse-8-n-kate-kittens-first-full-moon-by-kevin-henkes/

"A ludicrous concept that is funny because it is ludicrous." Just in time for Halloween we have our last Halloween-adjacent picture book title just in time for the season! Kate and I begin by having a detailed discussion of what constitutes a racist or offensive Halloween-related picture book. That won't be a problem with today's book, though. We've been asked for years to do this particular title and with its 2002 publication date, the time has definitely come (we have a 20-year rule when it comes to considering picture books for this podcast). We discuss how true hiccup picture books can only end one of two ways (based on, amongst other things, The Hiccupotamus): Either the other person gets the hiccups (which could be seen as revenge) and the other way is for the original person to then go about their life as if everything fine and then, in the last scene, they come back. What's your take? For the full show notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/10/28/fuse-8-n-kate-skeleton-hiccups-by-margery-cuyler-ill-s-d-schindler/