I don’t usually pay much attention to the universe outside my peculiar little brain, but once in a while I poke my head out of the metaphorical dirt and realize that there’s a great big, wonderful world out there.  A world filled with movies based on picture books. Movies like the upcoming Peter Rabbit film. So to honor (slash counteract) its debut in theaters, I decided to launch it in full at Kate. In all its teeny tiny glory. Kate in turn, manages to find things about it that I’ve never really considered, like the book’s inherent ageism and the Beatrix Potter/Harry Potter connection (warning: it’s a stretch).

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

Show Notes:

– You’ll find Beatrix’s description of Dr. Seuss’s works here.

– Here’s Old Brown the owl and Squirrel Nutkin. Fluffy tail and all.

– Here’s a picture book that was actually based on the creation of this book:

– The world’s smallest scarecrow:

– We had to look this up. A fortnight is a period of two weeks. So we were both wrong.

– Mrs. McGregor serving the pie:

– Don’t you agree with me that Mr. McGregor’s face is pretty darn vague?

As I mentioned, this book came in at #19 on the Top 100 Picture Books poll.

This is The Poky Little Puppy. I may do this with Kate someday. Maybe.

Here’s where I did my research on whether or not Beatrix Potter terrorized little Roald Dahl. Read the article “Buzz off” and other advice from one writer to another.

Curious about that Emma Thompson sequel? Beholdeth!

The illustrator was Eleanor Taylor (though you have to do a bit of digging to find that out since her name is nowhere on the front cover).

For the record, this is the trailer, featuring the song, that will need to be surgically removed from this book for a while:

Quite frankly I still think “headlights” is funny. And it’s heads and tails better than this:

Here’s the video for Kate’s I Mom So Hard women. I gotta say, they make some salient points. And are much braver than I could ever be.