Where The Wild Things Are - GenX's Favorite Picture Books: SUPERSIZED EDITION

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Hi. This is Melissa Gilbert, and you are listening to the pop culture Preservation Society.

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to our last super sized summer rerun. This one is episode number 31 where the wild books are. This is one of our most popular episodes, which really makes my heart like burst with joy, because this is all about the picture books that we loved when we were children, and that, of course, is my happy place, because I am the children's librarian, right? We talked a little bit last time in our free to be supersized conversation about the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. That's where the free to be you and me exhibit is going to be but the Eric Carle Museum in general is a museum dedicated to picture book art. I know I said that last time, but I just have to emphasize what a sweet and special place this is. It will you come around every corner and there's a piece of art that's going to make you cry, because, as we talk about in this episode, the illustrations in these books that we loved as children, that's art, that is art, and it deserves to be on a wall. And I've had lots of things on my wall before that I've taken out of picture books. Well, I agree. I think it's, it's art that is way more meaningful, at least to me. And I know I'm speaking for you two as well, probably for a lot of our listeners, it's art that's so much more meaningful than if I just went out and bought, you know, a $2,000 painting or a or a print from Target, because these pictures, they live in us, right? They and it's also, I think, at least for me, that artwork that we saw in those picture books, we absorbed that. Because you think about it, for a part of that time we didn't know how to read, necessarily, when some of those books were getting read to us, and so we were staring at those pictures, oftentimes with someone we loved reading to us. So there's a moment that you feel when you see those pictures. And maybe it was this time with your with your mom curled up in your lap, or your grandmother. And I think those things come out when you see those photos. And I was also thinking about how we really intently looked at those even when we were learning to read, because remember how picture clues were so much a part of our like, learning what the word is like. Oh, what's that word? Oh, I see, you know, a steam shovel, or whatever. You know, you see something in the picture, Mulligan reference. What a mike Mulligan reference? Oh, yes, a steam shovel. But you see things in that illustration and in that picture that help you figure out what the words might be that are on that page. So, yeah, it wasn't just something that accompanied the words. We absorbed those illustrations in into our bone, like into ourselves. We've talked a lot in this podcast and other episodes about how music, how we absorbed music, and it became like it was, almost like it was in our cells, right? Yeah, if you think about picture books, we they were read to us, or once we were able to read them on our own, but it was just repetitively, right, like over and over and over again. So I feel like that's why a lot of the illustrations live in us. I recently, and I think it was when we did this episode, you guys. So episode 31 was a long time ago. We don't know how long, but let's say a couple years, probably two and a half. But that's what prompted me to go to my mom's house and find a lot of my old picture books, and they now live out on my bookshelf in my childhood Museum, which is my office. The one on bottom, you put the shelf through it, and it has a little elastic that catches it. So when you look at the wall, it literally looks, literally looks like it's just a stack of books attached to your wall. Somehow you see no shelf. And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to display them that way? So in in our guest room here, I am going to put them up, and when my girls are back here next month. I'm gonna have them look through our old tub that we have just saved pretty much all of their old picture books, so many. And I want them each to pick a stack, and I'm gonna put some of mine on them too. I just thought that's a really cute it's like wall art, but you're also they're really accessible. You can go grab one. I'm gonna put a link in this week's Weekly Reader. I got them on Amazon, and I know a lot of you listening have saved a ton of your old picture books too, if you, if there are, if you can get to them, get them out. That's just gonna make your day so happy and full of joy to see those illustrations. Yeah, you'll cry. Cover. You'll cry. And here's another idea, if there's, if there's a book that you love, buy a paperback copy and tear the pictures out and put them on the wall. And people, when I say that, people cringe. They're like, what? You're defacing a book? No, no, you're not defacing a book. You're holding pure the one that you had when you were a child. But you can do whatever you want with the new one that you buy. And guess what, that money is still going to support that author. And guess what, you can still buy another one, so you're not defacing it. It's a.

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Great way to get some beautiful art on your wall. I've got the things that I've had on my wall from picture books before, where I've done exactly this the snowy day by Ezra Jack Keats, which we will talk about in this episode. Do you remember? Did your kids like Olivia the little Pig? Yes, Olivia, your everybody listening. If your kids are the same age as our kids. Olivia was the little pig in the little red dress. And man, if you have a red and white bedroom, those look great on the wall. I had those in Liam's room for a long time, and then I had this. This is a picture. It's just a beautiful black and white line drawing. It's just an exquisite piece of art. This is from the book Ferdinand. If you remember Ferdinand, the little bull who wouldn't try shell, oh god. I love Ferdinand so much, and those beautiful drawings. But going back to what you were talking about, Carolyn, about absorbing these, these illustrations, then it getting into yourself. If you think about it, we're really in relationship with this artwork, because, like you said, Michelle, you're interacting with it so repetitively on a daily basis, and you're examining it, and you're taking away feeling from it. You're developing feelings for the characters. You're having feelings about what is happening in the pictures. You're creating a narrative arc all by examining these pictures so you really are in relationship with them. And when I was in graduate school my thesis, get ready for this. This is the title of my thesis. I gotta take in a big breath. Okay, the title of my thesis was the environmental content and the illustrations of Caldecott medal winning books for the purposes of the environmental education classroom.

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That was my thesis. Based on what you just said, How much do we absorb just by being in relationship with illustrations, right? So we're not doing a lecture about the environment, we're learning something just about being in relationship with the pictures that we see. That was my whole thesis. So obviously I feel very strongly about picture book illustration. So I am so happy to learn that other people felt strongly about this episode, that this made them feel strongly too. So everyone, like Kristen said, this is, this is a fan favorite. So we hope that you all really enjoy this rerun of episode 31 where the wild books are.

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I'm lowly worm. God, I love that little worm. I love that little worm. And why did he have a little fedora on with the little feather? Isn't that funny that he chose? He was fancy. He was fancy.

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Come singing.

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Come on, get

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happy, is what we'll be bringing

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we'll make you happy.

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Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation whose text messages were handwritten on paper torn from me spiral bound notebooks and folded into intricate triangles.

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We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition, and today we will be saving our very first books, the ones we read before we could read, with a very special book club devoted to our favorite picture books. I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristen, and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.

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Butterfly in the sky. I can go twice as high. Take a look.

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It's in a book a reading rain.

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On my 51st birthday, I posted this message on Instagram. If you have a picture book that still walks around with you in your heart, then you'll understand why I flew to Massachusetts and drove to a tiny town through harrowing Boston traffic to spend one hour in a museum that held the original drawings for one of my favorite picture books of all time. Then I included a picture of the book and the drawings and the 3d life sized replica of the book's main character, and the response surprised me. It was swift and heartfelt grown men and women, people who are not even teachers or librarians, swooning over my book, a book they hadn't read since kindergarten, and they were commenting things like I gasped when I saw this post. Oh, Be still my heart. Can you touch it? Please say yes. Ugh. You are killing me. I am in love with this book and your field trip. Very special book to me. Always loved this book and searched hard so I could find and read to my kids. And my favorite comment this book is the reason I have a degree in urban geography from the University of Minnesota. It was a testament to how these childhood experiences can affect us for the rest of our lives. And at the end of this episode, I'll tell.

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You which book that was. I'm so I could have written, I know what book it is. Spoiler. I'm not gonna say because it's one of my very favorite picture books as well. I feel like I could have written all of those comments on Instagram, and it was kind of a wild hair, like I I had done a big deal for my 50th birthday, and 51 was kind of falling flat, and I saw an advertisement for this exhibit, and I was like, Hey you guys, I'm getting on a plane. And my family just thought I was crazy. But the fact that people responded that way really told me that, wow, this is a big deal. It's not just for me, and so almost universally, the picture book is pretty much every human being's first exposure to reading, and you guys are readers like me, I know you have memories of those first books. Where did your first picture book memories come from? Was it your mom? Was it a teacher? Was it a library? How did these memories come up for you? Well, I know for me, definitely my mom is interwoven in all of them, but I distinctly remember getting my picture books in the mail. So we were members of two book clubs that occurred during the 1970s one was called Parents Magazine press, and the other was the Weekly Reader book club, and so each month, a thin cardboard box would arrive in the mail, and usually it would end up on my kitchen table. My mom would put it there. And the delight I would feel when I walked into the kitchen and saw that Telltale box on the kitchen table was It was magical. It really was magical. Did you guys? Were you guys members of any of those book clubs? Remember those? I don't know if we were. I don't. I don't have the memory now that you're saying that about the box, though, did it have a little thing you ripped off almost like perforated then we must have been members. Be the reason I'm saying that is because all of my favorite picture books from childhood, and most of the ones that I still have are the Parents Magazine press books. Never tease a weasel and Miss twiggly treehouse and Miss Susie and all of those books are those Parents Magazine press books. So it wasn't until you brought this up and were telling this to us the other day, Carolyn, that I thought, Oh me too. And a lot of our society members have also chimed in and said that they remember very specifically the Parents Magazine press books as well. Well, I want to say that upon my research, I realized the only way you could have read these books was if you were a member of the book club. Oh, really, maybe not read them, but that was the only way you could get them. They were not and are still not available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble unless you're buying something from a used bookstore. So they were only published through Parents Magazine press, and I haven't found any available in any public libraries even now. And I realized we didn't have Barnes and Noble, no, we didn't have like in the suburbs, at least corner bookstores or places to go, besides the library, to really get a lot of children's books. So this was kind of the way to get them for any families who wanted to have a regular book collection in their home. For me, my earliest memories with picture books definitely come from home. We always had tons of books in our house. My mom was a big reader and a lover of books, and so I grew up with a really good role model for reading. And I don't have vivid memories of my mom reading aloud to us, but I know for certain that she did. But between me and my older sister, we had and still have shelves full of these books, of, you know, picture books, and I was an early reader, so sitting with a stack of books, either reading or just flipping through the pages over and over again, is something I did daily. And for me, I think it's the characters. They're like old friends, like as you guys, you know, I've talked a lot about moving, and we've talked about all of us moving and how our celebrity crushes or favorite songs could move with us. And that's how my books and the character friends and my books were too. And these characters and these books were my constant like they went with me wherever I went, and their stories stayed the same when mine was changing all the time. That's really sweet. That is really sweet. And you know, they actually have evidence that people who grew up in homes that were slightly messy become better readers. And the reason that is is that a lot of the mess comes from stacks of books just laying around your house and that kind of, oh, yeah, that's true for me too. We had stacks of reading material everywhere, and that becomes a part of your daily ritual. And it makes it starts to make memories, like you said, Michelle, because you had some instability, and these books were and these characters were a constant for you. But these are even more important memories, because they come about when we.

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Cannot read, at least at the beginning, we cannot read, and the story has to be communicated through artwork. We have to be able to glean the story just by looking at the pictures, and possibly done with the aid of a loving adult, right? So these images get stored in our brains along with feelings. It's not just concrete words. It comes along with feelings, possibly feelings of love and security and comfort, because you might have been sharing that with the loving adult who's sharing the words with you. So it's often an, ideally a bonding experience with someone that you love, if you're even if your parents didn't read to you, maybe that important person wasn't was an older sibling, or maybe it was a teacher that you loved, or maybe it was your librarian at story time. And I can tell you as the story time librarian, I had a lot of two year olds falling in love with me. I had stories huh? Parents would come to story time, and they would talk about their children, saying waking up from their nap, and saying, will you take me to Kristen? Because they have love and comfort from this constant adult, right? That's right. And I want to interject that there was nothing like the way a librarian could read a picture book or a book. I mean, that is an art in and of itself that I would try and imitate. You know, I would sit on my little chair with my stuffed animals in front of me and hold it. And was I the one who would open and read to the side? You know, that was really hard. Oh yes,

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I would read like that to my stuffed animals and my dolls all the time. Can I tell you guys a little story? It's actually thanks to children's picture books, is the entire reason I became an elementary school teacher.

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Oh, my God, I wanted to be a newscaster, but I didn't want to be on the news. I wanted to be Mary Hart like I wanted to be an entertainment obviously. I wanted to be a red carpet interviewer. And so I was enrolled in the Walter Cronkite school of telecommunications at Arizona State University. And then one day, one of my sorority sisters was walking in, and she had a giant stack of children's picture books, like, almost so tall she could barely carry it. And I remember her name is Sarah, and I said, Oh my God. Like, I was just instantly, like, I just instantly fell in love with the books she was carrying. And I was like, what, what are you doing? Like, why do you have all those books? And she said, Oh, it's for my children's literature class. And I said, Tell me about this class. Like, what do you take that class for? And she said, Oh, I'm an elementary education major. And I mean, a light bulb just instantly, like went on. I think within a week, I had changed my major to elementary education. But yeah, it's all things to picture books that I became a teacher. And in the best books, especially in the mid century. I think you guys, we were living in the golden age of picture books. I really believe that we were treated to some of the most sophisticated art in picture books that has ever been produced. Of course, we didn't know this as children. We have no idea. I want to add to that. I think that those Parents Magazine press books were some of the best illustrated I have ever seen. I mean, I go back and they are works of art on every single page. Some are so intricate, and the detail is amazing. And actually, one of the books I remember, I'm going to hold it up, but it was called Mother, Mother, I feel sick, and for the doctor, quick, quick, quick. I don't know if you all remember this, but it's all in shadows, so the whole book is done kind of like that. I wonder if they're paper cutouts well, and I agree with you, though, Carolyn, because my memories of picture books, like I said earlier, are really mostly tied to those Parents Magazine press books. And they're also, really, they're such a time capsule. I still have a lot of them, and I've been going back and looking at the illustrations. And so if any of you know never tease a weasel or Alexander the horse, they're so the color palette is so indicative of the late 60s. Totally, I have a question for you. Did you have any books in your collection that featured children of color that wasn't the snowy day? I don't remember that. I don't either. I felt sure I did not that. And except for the snowy day, I did not so the snowy day broke ground in 1962 as one of the very first, one of not the first, but one of the very first picture books to portray a realistic, multicultural urban settings. So it was not the first book to feature black children as the protagonist, but it was the first to win the Caldecott Medal, which is the award for the Best Picture Book of the whole year. And even now, more than 50 years later, it is still one of just three Caldecott awards that feature contemporary African American children as protagonists. There were lots of folk tales, there are fables, there are historical things, there are celebrating important people from our history, but just that everyday child.

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Who just happens to be a child of color, who is going about their day, having a normal day that is still a rarity. Yeah, an experience we can all relate to. Yes, an experience that, you know, we've all wanted to go out and play. So at that time, when the snowy day came out, I think they said, like, 6% of picture books featured people of color in it, but I never saw them. Nobody ever shared those books with me. All we got was the snowy day.

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So something to think about, right? So let's talk about some of the series books that we loved, like Dr Seuss golden books, Richard Scarry,

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you know those types of books? I think, I think golden books have a special place in people, our ages hearts, for sure, whether it's if we can remember going to the dime store and seeing them on the little spinner at the end of the aisle, and they were really accessible to us, because they weren't that expensive. I have vivid memories of owning them, but also you always saw them. You still do in doctor's offices, right? Or if you're a little kid and you're waiting at the dentist, golden books are everywhere. And there's, there's just too many classic titles to list, really. I

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don't know about you guys, but my favorite, and most of our society's favorite, is the Monster at the End of at the monster at the end of this book, that was a golden book. It's a little golden book. Yeah, I didn't know that was a golden book. It is, yeah, and Grover was still is my favorite Sesame Street character. And that book, you guys, still makes me laugh out loud to this day. I just reread it yesterday, and I was just chuckling along, you know. And he's like, you turn the page. And I would read it aloud to my children all the time when my girls, when they were little, and try to do my best Grover voice and but there's just so many, so many classic little golden book titles. Well I liked in terms of the Golden little golden books, the Disney ones. So they would have Snow White and Cinderella and Peter Pan and Apple collection, and that those were the little golden books that I loved to read. Yeah? So what about Dr Seuss books? Did you guys get into all of the different Dr Seuss books? Yeah, the cat in the hat. I was really worried about the ring in the bathtub. I didn't know what this ring was and why they had so much anxiety. And it was a lot of anxiety, yeah, and I didn't know. Oh, I can't tell you. I didn't know what it was. I didn't and nobody, it's so funny, adults don't know that. We don't know what a ring in the bathtub is. I still don't exactly know what he was talking about, but it was this emergency that they had to get rid of the ring. Okay, so what about Richard Scarry for boys, a lot of them, this was their entree into reading books. You know, stereotypical as it may be, it seems like girls weren't more able to sit down and listen to a story or read a story. It was Huckle cat is over here and he needs to put gas in his car because he's going over here to the town where the baboon is getting into his banana mobile. You got a lot of bang for your buck. I feel with that, because I would sit down and play different games with it, like, look for the little worm on every page and try to find out, or, you know, who's how many vehicles are on this page, and try to count, like, how many things with four wheels? So I kind of played games with it. I'm lowly worm. God. I love that little worm. I love that little worm. And why did he have a little fedora on with a little feather. Isn't that funny that he chose his fancy and then his belt, and he has a belt around his little waist. So funny. I love it. We asked our followers on social media what some of their favorite picture book titles were, and you guys spoke, we received so many comments and titles of books, which is just more proof of the incredible and indelible impact these books had on all of us. So if you're listening and you contributed a title, listen fast, because I'm going to take a deep breath. You guys ready? Mr. Shaw's Ship Shape, shoe shop, tiki, tiki Tembo. We help daddy the surprise doll, Madeline. Good night. Little Bear, the Monster at the End of Spock, Where the Wild Things Are. Richard scaries, cars, trucks and things that go bedtime for Francis, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Seven Chinese brothers. Mr. Pines mixed up signs, Willie bear, donkey, donkey, pokey little puppy the tawny, scrawny lion. Blueberries for Sal drummer Hoff fired it off. Free to be you and me. Hope for the flowers we like kindergarten, the diggingest dog go. Dog go. The saggy, baggy elephant, scruffy, the tugboat, tutti, the Lion and the Mouse. What do people do all day? Where did the baby go? The Cat in the Hat, dictionary, Little Red Hen, Pierre, chicken soup with rice, the ugly duckling, The Little Engine That Could Cat in the Hat, the sheep of the LOL bog. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. Miss Nelson is missing bread and jam for Francis, the story of the 14 bears. ROBERT The Red Rose horse, if everybody did miss, Susie frog and toad, which each chapter is technically a standalone story. So we say it counts. Stuart Little Pepito the naughty donkey. Happiness is a warm puppy, which is a peanuts book, The Lonely doll. Caps for sale. Miss twiggles tree, Harry the dirty dog. Sam and the Firefly, the snowy day. Betsy and.

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Vacuum cleaner. Raggedy. Ann and Andy, are you? My mother put me in the zoo, the boy who ate flowers, Mr. Rabbit and the lovely present, Miss Nelson is missing. Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel. Barba Papa. That was slow. Ferdinand, puss, puss in Puss in Boots. Curious George, not Puss in Boots. That would be gross, Puss in Boots. Curious George, Amelia, Bedelia. Nights, nice. Jennifer's walk, saggy, baggy elephant, no fighting, no biting the big tidy up and BA bar. But thank you to everyone who sent us, who commented and participated. We love hearing what you have to say, because so much of it is stuff we remember too. Okay, blueberries for Sal is by Robert McCloskey. That's definitely one of my favorites. And there is also a companion book about the same characters that Sal and her little sister Jane, and it's called One morning in Maine. And so I love these books so much when I was a kid, then when I was on my honeymoon, we went to Maine for our honeymoon, and we found where Robert McCloskey lived. He lived a place called Blue Hill Maine. I know I did, and my husband is such a saint. We go to Blue Hill Maine, and I'm like, Look, this is where Sal and little Jane lived. And I go to the little bookstore, and of course, I rebuy books that I already have, and I bring them to the register, and the woman says, Oh, would you like Bob to sign these for me? And I, what, what? Well, like, like, do you keep him in the back or something? How does this work? And she said, she said, Yeah, I'll just bring him to his house. Just come back tomorrow. And so then we drove around the town trying to figure out which house was his. I meant this total stalker. Oh, that's another reason I love you. So we also asked some of our previous podcast guests, because they are all book lovers,

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and here are a few of their favorites. Amy Wineland, daughters, author of the incredible book you cannot mess this up, who we interviewed in an episode that aired last month and was the inspiration for our day in the life of a fifth grader episode as well. Loved the Berenstain Bears picnic book because her dad always cracked up when he read it aloud to her, and she said, that's such a great memory. And for those of you that read, you cannot mess this up. I think that you know the special relationship that she had with her dad, and so I loved that memory from her. So I talked to Martha, who was in our dynamite episode. She is our benefactor, our dynamite benefactor. And we talked to her about all the quizzes that she filled out in her dynamites in 1977

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and so I just sent her a text saying, hey, Martha, we're just asking people about their favorite picture books when they were little. I swear to God, she turned around and texted me back in a fraction of a second, and it was like all caps, George and Martha. George and Martha, it was like the most urgent information she had to share with him. And she said, So George and Martha are the hippos that are the best of friends, and it's by James Marshall. And she said James Marshall was a genius author. His stories about George and Martha's friendship and adventures were delightful and very funny. Our family still references these stories all the time, and I think that there is sort of a theme of family bonding to a lot of these things. This is something that she's still talking with her family about 50 years later. And then we heard from Colleen, who you heard from way, way back in our Judy Blume episode. And Colleen said,

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tubby and the Pooh bah by Al Perkins. My dad always read it to me and my brother, and we were all assigned characters. I was Tubby the elephant. My dad was the great Pooh bah. My brother was AMI, the young Fishman. And my mom was given two small parts, the guard at the Dark Tower jail and the foodlefish. And to this day, to this day, her dad refers to himself as the great Pooh, bah. Okay, so where the wild things are? I think we have to spend just a moment on Where the Wild Things Are, because it's often considered the greatest picture book of all time, of all the picture books ever published to this day and beyond, it is one of the best of all time. It was released in 1963 and won the Caldecott Award for the Best Picture Book of the Year. But it was not well received by adults, and it was regularly banned in schools and libraries because grownups did not Yes, yes. Grownups hated this book. Was it too scary? Because first they thought, they thought it was too scary, and because the little boy was naughty and he was disobedient and he was disrespectful to his mother, he yelled at his mom, actually, as my mom would say, he was sassy. There was Sass talk, and people thought that this would be a bad influence on children, so But what he was really doing, this is the marvel of Maurice Sendak. He was portraying, for the very first time in picture books, the real and true feelings of a child, how a child would actually react.

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In a real situation, which was revolutionary for the time.

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And in the early 60s, This began a movement called new realism, where authors and illustrators were starting to portray childhood as it actually is, as opposed to how adults want it to be. So now, wouldn't you like to hear what our favorites are? Of course, we have favorites of our own, or we wouldn't be doing this episode at all. We've each chosen three that really made a big impact on us. But of course, that list changes by the minute, so whatever you hear, right? We can't say that these are our favorites. We're just saying that these and they're in no particular order. These are just three books that were very important to us, and know that there are many more. And if you ask us tomorrow the list will be different. Carolyn, do you want to go first? Yes. So thank you, Kristen, for acknowledging that this was a very difficult task to choose three and yes, no doubt I would have a different answer tomorrow than I had yesterday. So the first one I'm going to share with you is really all about the memories associated with the experience of having the book read to me. And it was a book my mom read to me, and it was TIKI TIKI Timbo that was published in 1968 and it was written by Arlene Maisel or Mazel, I'm not sure. It centers around two brothers. One was Chang and the other was TIKI TIKI Timbo. No saw rimbo, cherry Berry, Ruchi, pitbury, pimbo. That was the other brother and all the problems that befall TIKI TIKI Timbo, because of his long name and Chang ends up being the hero of the story by saving his brother from a well that he had fallen down. And I want to before I go on, acknowledge the fact that

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while the story is fun, it's not any kind of accurate portrayal of Chinese culture. That's kind of some of the topics that have come out about it. Now, a lot of Chinese Americans have said there's really no accuracy in the story, but acknowledge that it's a great opportunity to talk about why it's not accurate, and to also recognize it's a good story, and it's a folk tale, and a lot of those are very exaggerated. So with all that in mind, it's still one of my favorites because of my mom reading it to me. And as I've shared with you all, Lillian could kind of be serious a lot of the time, but when she read tiki, tiki Timbo, she was a whole nother person. She just took on another personality.

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And I remember when she would say that really long name, and in the story, The Little Brother Chang has to run and tell people that his brother fell down the well, and he has to, like, run up a hill and he is out of breath. And my mom would just read that with such inflection and personality, but TJ demono saw Rembrandt,

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I was just mesmerized by my mother reading that to me. It would always make me laugh, and I just saw this kind of different side of her. I she was like the greatest actress. I loved it. That's so sweet. Carolyn, I love it, and I love hearing that about your mom. And there's something about that. It's almost like a like a sonic memory that you have of her saying that really long name, all out of breath. That's so funny, yeah. And it's also the the acknowledgement of the stereotypical

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Chinese people in the book. There are a couple of books that fall into that same category. One that was mentioned in our list was the seven Chinese brothers, which I loved. The seven Chinese brothers. Everybody loved how that boy like has, how his head got really big when he swallowed the whole ocean. The problem being, of course, that it was all of the portrayal of the Chinese people were based completely and utterly on stereotypes. But like you said, you can acknowledge your experience of it

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and and understand why this is not an accurate portrayal of people. Michelle, do you have a pick? I do. I do so my first pick today is Harry the dirty dog, which is a book written by Jean Zion and illustrated by Margaret boy Graham. And you know what? In 2007 they did an online poll. The National Education Association did an online poll and chose Harry the dirty dog as one of its teachers. Top 100 books for children. Margaret Bloy Graham also wrote and illustrated these Benji's doghouse books, the Benji books, which I loved. Loved the Benji books, and I think that book looks familiar to me. Yeah, these Benji books are so look at my little writing. The Benji books are amazing, and the illustrations look very similar to Harry, because it's the same illustrator, but I loved Harry the dirty dog, and I remember thinking just even as a small child, how clever that storyline was that, you know, he's a white dog with black spots, but he doesn't want to take a bath, and he buries his brush. He runs away. He has a grand time getting so dirty.

Unknown Speaker 35:00

And when he returns home as a black dog with white spots, his family doesn't recognize him, and they think he's lost. And he keeps trying to tell them that, no, it's me, it's me, but all his attempts fail. And so he finally has to dig up the brush and make them give him a bath. And then they realize, oh, it's Harry all along. And I just thought it was so clever. And I think for me, what brings me back to books over and over again, and what makes certain books, picture books, indelible in my memory, is absolutely the characters and the illustrations, like we talked about earlier. But I loved the illustrations in Harry. It was just so clever. I mean, I remember being just thrilled by this notion that he was a black dog with white spots. Now, and no, no, I'm really a white dog with black spots. I just thought that was the cleverest thing. All right, Kristen, you're up. Okay. My turn, when I was five, I got my tonsils out and I went to the hospital. And I got a lot of presents, mostly books. I got stacks and stacks of books, including Ira sleeps over about a little boy who waffles back and forth about whether or not he should take his teddy bear when he sleeps over at his friend Reggie's house. I got Curious George goes, these are not my picks, by the way. It's just like, it's just Christian's way of getting extra titles. Now,

Unknown Speaker 36:13

yep, I'm so sneaky. Curious George goes to the hospital, which is famous for one particular image where Curious George is getting a shot, and he's holding his arm out, and there's a needle coming at his arm, and his mouth is big with fear. I love that picture. I was just gonna say. I wonder how many kids got that book when they went got taught tonsillectomies in the 70s. That just seems like all of them. But yeah,

Unknown Speaker 36:38

the same way every new brother and everybody got the Berenstein Bears have a baby?

Unknown Speaker 36:44

Yep, totally, totally. So I also got a set of three books about a little badger named Francis, one of which included a seven inch, 45 rpm record that told the story. And the voice of Francis is seared in my memory from listening to this book, because I could sit in my room and I could essentially read this book to myself by listening to the record. And so I had to, I had to track this down, and I won it on eBay. It's going to be arriving today, because I needed to hear Francis's voice again. I know I'm like looking at my window, like, Are they here? Yet? You're gonna cry when you hear it. I bet you cry. I know. I know I am. I'm going to cry when I hear her little voice. Video, this is voice, put your put a video, okay, I will camera. Okay. So for these purposes, I'm going to choose bedtime for Francis, which is, which is the story of a little badger who's having a little trouble going to bed. And it was published in 1960 written by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams, who also did all the illustrations for Little House on the Prairie. Now, later on in the series, by the time you get to bread and jam for Francis, Lillian Hoban is doing the illustrations instead of Garth Williams, and the whole internet wants to know why? Oh, Carolyn, do you know why? Oh no, I'm going back just to remind everyone about Garth Williams. Remember our little fun fact, we know that he was John Sebastian's godfather. Oh, yeah, we can take that out. But didn't he do the illustrations for Charlotte Weber? Is that someone else? Yeah, Charlotte's Little House on the Prairie did, and Francis and Stuart Little Yeah, and Francis. Okay? So why? Why bedtime for Francis? Because I was Francis. I was that little badger. I did not want to go to bed, and I would scheme reasons to get out of bed every single night and bother my parents while they were watching, like Barnaby Jones or Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman, so Francis, in this book, gets up repeatedly, just like I do, and she asks to watch TV with her parents. She says she forgot to brush her teeth, she asks for some cake. She asks to get into bed with her parents. Remember when you used to ask to sleep with your parents? Can I sleep with you? Can I sleep with you? And her parents are annoyed, but they're also very calmly, resigned to the situation, just like my parents were. And when she goes to tell her parents that there's a tiger in her room, they say, Well, did he bite you? And she says, No. And they say, well, then he is a friendly Tiger. And her parents don't use adult logic. This is the brilliance of the book. Instead, they honor Francis and her fears, which were my fears. Father can even turn a conversation about the wind blowing her curtains, which she's very frightened of, into a discussion about everyone has a job. And he says, if the wind does not blow the curtains, he will be out of a job. If I don't go to the office, I will be out of a job, and if you do not go to sleep. Now, do you know what will happen to you? I will be out of a job, said Frances, no. Said Father, I will get a spanking. Yes, said Father. And I just think that is the most brilliant passage, I think, ever written in ever any book, ever so most famously, Frances is known for her little songs about life, and one of the main reasons.

Unknown Speaker 40:00

That I needed my eBay purchase this little 45 record is because on the record, they actually sing those songs, whereas when you read the book, you just have to read it like a poem, they don't give you a tune. You don't know what they sang them when I read them all to hear and did you? You just make up your own tune, right? So I needed to hear Francis sing the alphabet song from bedtime for Francis in which she says, U is for underwear down in the dryer. I just thought it was so funny that she said, underwear, underwear,

Unknown Speaker 40:31

underwear. So Kristen. It sounds like a lot of the reasons you love the Francis books are similar to why I made my next selection. So this book I chose because of the story. The book is called the grown up day. It's also from our friends at Parents Magazine press, and it's written by Jack Kent, and he also does the illustrations. The reason I find it similar to your reasoning, Kristen, is this was, I think, the first time I saw myself in a book that I could say me too. So this is a story about a brother and sister who basically played dress up for the day, and our mom and dad and, you know, their stuffed animals are their children, and they kind of go through this day and play, and then at the end, they're with their mom tucked in bed, and they'll get to grow up the next day. And I remember thinking like, I play like that too. My stuffed animals are my babies. I put them in strollers, I feed them, I talk to them. And honestly, I think it was the first time in my reading lifetime that I experienced that me too, feeling that I still love to this day in a book, when I can see myself in a character and realize, Oh, I'm not alone. There are other people out there that do the same thing, and there's something so special and cathartic about that, that that is why I chose the grown up day. And every time I see this cover and look at these pictures. I go. I get that feeling right in my soul. All right, Michelle, okay. So my number two pick for today is the giant jam sandwich by Janet burrowway and illustrated by John Vernon Lloyd. This book was published in 1972

Unknown Speaker 42:19

and for those of you that remember it. This is a super fun it's a pretty short rhyming story where itching down the town is infested with wasps, and they create a giant jam sandwich to trap them. And I will say that this was a little bit of a departure for me, illustration wise, because the illustrations were kind of scary to me. I'm showing characters in some of the illustrations and just the people, it's very distinct, but the the rhyming text was so clever, like then BAP the baker leaped to his feet and cried, what do wasps like to eat strawberry jam? Now, wait a minute, if we made a giant sandwich, we could trap them in it. You know, it's all just very clever. So they have to make like an entire, like warehouse full of dough, and they create an oven, and then they have to, they have to bring all the bread, has to come out on giant carts that's tied down with huge ropes. And I just thought it was so clever, and it was such a departure from what I usually read that it is so memorable to me. And I actually would read this one even when I was an older reader. I would pull this one out of my bookshelves a lot, just because I thought the story was so different and so unique and it was really original. I didn't have a lot of other stories that I loved that were quite like it. So this was a book that was in your home. This is my copy from when I was this is my copy right here from when I was a child. Okay? Kristen, what's your second pick? Okay, my second pick is corduroy, which was published in 1968 it's by Don Freeman, and this corduroy has provided both me and my husband with a lifetime of lines to use at the mall. For instance, when we find ourselves on an escalator, we will say, this must be a mountain. I've always wanted to climb a mountain,

Unknown Speaker 44:06

and it's so awesome that Mike knows what I'm talking about. Yeah, sometimes he'll be the one who's like, this must be a mountain. But corduroy takes place in a department store, the kind we went to as kids. You know, it was very fancy. It was an upscale experience to go to the department store downtown, and it's the story of a stuffed bear who longs for someone to buy him and take him home. And the store is always filled with shoppers, but no one ever seems to want a small bear in green overalls. But when Lisa asks her mother to buy him, her mother says, and I can hear my mother saying these words, not today, dear. I've spent too much already. Besides, he doesn't look new. He's lost the button to one of his straps. And there's nothing profound about that line whatsoever. I only read it because I can hear my mother saying it. So there's that memory part of it that's wrapped up, right? So this, of course, sends corduroy he doesn't know he's missing a button on his overalls, and this sends him on a middle of the night quest to find a.

Unknown Speaker 45:00

Button, where he climbs a mountain, aka an escalator, and he finds himself in a palace, aka the furniture department. And I know these pictures by heart. It's like every stroke of the pen is drawn onto my own brain. I know his furry ears. I know the night watchman coming down the escalator with his flashlight. Even the hair band that is in Lisa's hair, I have it all memorized. And even though the main character is an anthropomorphized bear, it's still part of the new realism movement, because it's showing a slice of childhood as it really is, because of Lisa. So Lisa is, you know, she's the supporting character. Corduroy is the star, but Lisa is the supporting character. And she's just a little girl shopping with her mom, who says, No, you can't have corduroy. And she goes home and she counts her money in her piggy bank, and she goes back to the store to get that damn bear. So Ruman Alam, who was a novelist, he just wrote a book called leaving the world behind, which will soon be coming to Netflix. There will be a Netflix series soon, and he wrote this about corduroy in Slate Magazine. Lisa, the human protagonist of Don Freeman's 1968 class at corduroy is someone I think of as akin to Peter from the snowy day. Her blackness is never in question, even as it is beside the point. She saves her money for the toy she wants and brings it home with her end of story, which made me ask the question, this is so embarrassing. Did I know she was black? I was just gonna ask that question, just thinking same thing. I wasn't gonna say that out loud. I was neither I know.

Unknown Speaker 46:43

Did I know, and so I've done a lot of ruminating about this, because, like I said, the illustrations are seared into my mind, so clearly I have a good picture of who she is, and what I have figured out. This is not, this is not about being colorblind. It's not like, well, I didn't see race when I was a child. That's not what this is. It's because at that young age, I did not know about race. Nobody had explained race to me. There were nobody talked about race ever, and I processed her the way that I saw her. She had black hair and she had brown skin, but I didn't know to categorize her, because nobody ever talked about that I didn't know. Yes. See, there she is, and he makes that into an argument for it. We're not ignoring her identity, but he said all children and the adults who are reading to them would benefit from more kids like Peter and Lisa, kids of color as the heroes of utterly quotidian stories where we're not talking about their race. Such children are a paltry fraction of the body of literature for children within the genre, the everyman, the default hero, when it's not a talking animal or a sentient toy, is almost always a white child. Again, getting back to that point we talked about before, and to see yourself as a child in these stories, how sad, for lack of a better word, it was that a lot of children could not see themselves doing these everyday things, and how important that was for me, and to think, gosh, they missed out on that moment that I just described to you that was indelible to me, when I said, Me too. That's really sad. Yeah, my last one is

Unknown Speaker 48:20

the book that I chose because of the language and the words. I honestly think if I look back now, my love of writing and the dance that words can do started with this book, and this would be Mr. Shaw's Ship Shape Shoe shop. This was again, Parents Magazine press 1970 written by Eve Titus, and the illustrations were by Larry Ross. And the illustrations are very intense, and there's so much alliteration and assonance, which, of course, at the time, I had no idea what that was, but now, looking back and listening, it was just it was lyrical. It didn't rhyme, like a lot of other ones, but yet, there was this melody to it, and I'll read you just the first two sentences. Mr. Sylvester Shaw was the best Shoemaker in town. His shop was in an old building on an old street between Mr. Brown's bakery and Mr. Green's grocery. And the whole book goes on like that. His cat is named shoe shoe. And the story is about Mr. Shaw, who is an older gentleman, has a shoe shop in the seaside town a ship port. And he his building, he finds out is going is getting condemned and it's gonna have to get knocked down. And he's very sad about the destiny of the shoe shop. You'll have to read the book to find out what happens to the shoe shop. But let's just say it involves a ship, and the ships happen. Of course it does, yes and shoe shoe, but it, honestly, I used it as a sixth grade teacher to talk about all those pieces of figured.

Unknown Speaker 50:00

Language that I just mentioned to you, I told showed the kids we read that book and just how we can use language, not only to tell the story, but to do it in such a way that it's such a pleasure to listen to. And that is why I chose Mr. Shaw's Ship Shape Shoe shop as my third favorite choice. Okay, so my last pick is Santa mouse by Michael Brown and illustrated by Alfreda DeWitt. It's published in 1966 and you guys, I don't know Christmas without Santa mouse because of this book. I neither do my own children, and I know this book was part of the Christmases of many of our society members as well, because last Christmas, I posted a picture of this book on Instagram, and a lot of people went crazy sharing their own memories of this book by Michael Brown.

Unknown Speaker 50:54

I I've, I don't think there's a Christmas in my life up until 52 that I haven't read this book at Christmas time.

Unknown Speaker 51:03

The past few years, I've just read it by myself because either my kids aren't home or they're not interested. I'm like, Who wants to hear Santa mouse, and everybody's like me.

Unknown Speaker 51:12

I can recite most of this book, pretty much the once I get, once I you know, the first the first sentence, I can just recite the whole book without even looking at the words, the sweet illustrations absolutely are tattooed on my brain and embedded in my soul. I feel like, like it's something that's so much a part of my childhood and just my whole life and in our family, we took this book very literally and believed Santa mouse was actually Santa's Little Helper. So just like the book tells you to do we left out cheese every year for Santa mouse, and in return, Santa mouse left us. And then as and then, when I had children, left my girls a little, tiny gift. Okay, Kristen, what's your final pick? Okay, so the final pick, lastly is the book that I traveled across the country to experience in person

Unknown Speaker 52:01

at the museum in Massachusetts. That book is the little house by Virginia Lee Burton, published in 1942 it's the story of a little house in the country on a hill full of daisies who over time, and because of encroaching modernity, she eventually finds herself surrounded by big, tall skyscrapers and streets full of honking horns and pollution, if you remember, like the pages get all gray, the air gets all black, until someone buys the little house and puts her on a flatbed truck and moves her out into the country and onto a brand new Hill full of daisies. And so the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts was the was the museum that was holding this exhibit. The reason being that is where Virginia Lee Burton, the author and the illustrator, was from. So I come to the I come to the exhibit, and I turn the corner into the exhibit, and I see the original drawings. I get my first glimpse of the original drawings, and I see the replica of the little house standing in the middle of the room, and I had to bite my cheek so I wouldn't cry. It was a very immediate and emotional response, and I really surprised myself. I was like, Why am I crying? I'm crying. It was because that images, that images is just like I said about Santa mouse, those images it's in, it's embedded in your soul. I mean, it's not just an illustration. It represents so much more, yes, right? It's, it really speaks to the importance of the visual image in those book that artwork. You don't waste your time on shitty artwork, because these images are going to live in our hearts forever, right? So there were also in this exhibit. They also had original drawings from her other books, including Mike Mulligan and Katie in the big snow. And when you see what is essentially a napkin doodle of a steam shovel that would become Mary Ann from Mike Mulligan, because Marianne is the name of the name of the steam shovel. We always think Mike Mulligan is the steam shovel, but no Mulligan is the boy who runs Marianne steam shovel. When you see this little napkin doodle,

Unknown Speaker 54:10

it makes you cry. It literally makes you cry. And so I'm snapping pictures of Mary Ann for Liam, and I'm snapping, I'm snapping pictures of Katie in the big snow for Mike, because he loved Katie in the big snow. These pictures are like, or these characters, the pictures of these characters, they're like long lost relatives. You're like reuniting with people. That's what it felt like. It felt like reuniting with people.

Unknown Speaker 54:33

So Virginia, Lee Burton was from this area of Gloucester called folly Cove, which is just as beautiful as it sounds. It's very idyllic, it's kind it's very murder. She wrote, and she formed a collective of women in this area, and she taught these women printmaking. That's how she made her illustrations. She was a printmaker, and they had a big workshop in someone's barn with printmaking machines, and she taught them artistic techniques.

Unknown Speaker 55:00

And eventually these women became so good that they created a line of textiles, like home textiles, cloth napkins, tablecloths, dish towels and things like that. And you could find them in big department stores. And when you look at these textiles, you can see that they had been honing a style that looks just like the illustrations from the little house. And so, of course, these things are collector's items now, and there are people who just rabidly try and track them down, but they're not very available. They didn't mass produce at all. Most of them are in the archives of this museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Well, I'm so grateful that we still have access to these books, many of which are still available in bookstores, which is incredible considering how fleeting and disposable a lot of our fads are today, right? A lot of the media that we consume is gone so fast, and if they're not available, well, thank God we have eBay, right? I'm looking out my window waiting for my eBay purchase to arrive.

Unknown Speaker 55:57

Thank you all for listening today, and thanks also to our mothers and our teachers and our librarians and our grandmas and colleen's Dad, the great Pooh bah for sharing these books with us and giving us what are apparently some real lifelong memories and unknowingly giving us our earliest exposure to fine art.

Unknown Speaker 56:13

And join us next time when you'll be the host of the show we asked you what you wanted to know about us in our Gen X lives, and we'll be answering your questions in the PCPs First Gen X themed Town Hall forum. We hope you feel inspired to post about your own favorite picture book from your childhood. And if you do, make sure to tag us so we can be part of the fun. And please make sure you are following our podcast where you listen, it makes a huge difference, and if we get heard and like, review, rate and share with your friends, we appreciate all your support. So so much we really do. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast courtesy of our Santa, Monica buddies, Jack tripper, Janet wood and Chrissy snow, two good times, two Happy Days, Two Little House on the Prairie. Cheers, cheers, cheers, information, opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to me, the crushologist and Carolyn and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right. I guess there's always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded at modern Well, a woman centered co working space in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nana nanow, keep on truckin, and may the Force be with you.

Unknown Speaker 57:35

We get a happy feeling when we're singing a song you.