After Passover, before Tax Day, the holiday Betsy decided to discuss today is Easter! Now Kate already met Max and Ruby back in September of 2025 with Max's Dragon Shirt. Betsy thinks it's weird. Kate doesn't. But a chocolate chicken is not a thing. Betsy gets to mention how the Max & Ruby books are much like episodes of The Simpsons. Why? Because it's easy to ask, where does the cut-off between the good early work and the later lesser work lie? We may disagree a bit about this episode but one thing we can see eye-to-eye on? "Max... pull yourself together," is indisputably a great line. For the full Show Notes please go to https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/03/30/fuse-8-n-kate-maxs-chocolate-chicken-by-rosemary-wells/

We return to the wordless and spare once more. Lehman's Caldecott Honor winning title is an exercise in restraint. And since Kate is extra tired these days with her baby, I figured getting her a book with as few words possible was a smart way to go. We discuss super grippy mittens, how to "pull-a-Curious-George", and we divide on the ending. Where do you fall? You can read the full Show Notes here: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/03/23/fuse-8-n-kate-the-red-book-by-barbara-lehman/

“Hubris, Kate. He suffers from hubris!” We’re on the cusp of spring, so full credit to Eric Carpenter for pointing out to us how egregious a gap we’ve had in our roster until now. Have we really and truly never done that spring book to beat all spring books Muncha Muncha Muncha??? Such a thing seems inconceivable and yet… here we are. Today Kate and Betsy discuss bunnies, munching, and the role that illustration plays when our own personal preferences come into it all. Candace Fleming’s been having a stellar year (becoming the first person to receive the Children’s Literature Legacy Award and the Margaret A. Edwards Award in the same year, in addition to her book Death in the Jungle winning the Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults). Now she faces the ultimate challenge: Whether or not her picture book from 2002 is actually a classic.

I know you're all desperate for spring out there, but winter's not done with you yet! With that in mind, we tackle what may well be the most famous snowman-related picture book outside of the Raymond Briggs classic. Betsy introduces Kate to a title that has remained WELL in print since its publication back in 2002. For those of you peeved that we don't know how to pronounce the Buehners' last name, I would like to point out that I did go to Teachingbooks.net and they did NOT provide a pronunciation guide to that name on either one of them. On this show, Kate provides fun snowmen-related facts, we are sad not to see any curling, and we marvel at how good Buehner is at figuring out where the lights are coming from in these nighttime sequences.

For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/03/09/fuse-8-n-kate-snowmen-at-night-by-caralyn-buehner-ill-mark-buehner/

Can you believe it! Can this really be happening? It has taken years but at long last Kate and Betsy have hit their 400th episode of our podcast Fuse 8 n' Kate!!! Their Quatercentenary! Now they've had a variety of special guests in the past. Jon Scieszka. Aaron Reynolds. Lucy Knisley. But today they're bringing on their sister podcast (brother podcast?) from SLJ. That's right, the hosts of The Yarn, Travis Jonker and Colby Sharp, are joining us for the biggest recording to date. We needed to find a book worthy of such a moment. What's a groundbreaking title that challenged assumptions and made everyone say at the same time, "What really IS a picture book?" Our answer seemed obvious. At Colby and Travis's suggestion, there could be only one. You can see the full show notes here: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/02/23/its-our-400th-episode-fuse-8-n-kate-welcomes-colby-sharp-and-travis-jonker-from-the-yarn-to-discuss-the-invention-of-hugo-cabret/

In a dual celebration of Black History Month and Valentine's Day, Betsy figured the logical connection came in the form of Eloise Greenfield's Honey I Love. But which version? Turns out that there's the original book, illustrated by the Dillons (Leo and Diane, obviously) and then the titular poem from that book was republished as a book in and of itself a bit later. Now initially Betsy envisioned this episode as a dual book review via Kate. What became almost immediately clear was that the best book to consider (for our particular podcast) is the more recent 2003 version of this poem. Why did we choose it? And why do we think it's worth noting? We discuss Betsy's issues with Ash Wednesday, baby teeth, messed up babydolls, and much much more. For the full Show Notes, please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/02/16/fuse-8-n-kate-honey-i-love-by-eloise-greenfield-ill-jan-spivey-gilchrist/

Poor Betsy had a bit of a mix-up.

In her defense, she had her reasons. Anyone who is familiar with the Children's Literature Association Phoenix Awards may be aware that they reward children's books that didn't receive major awards when they first came out, but 20 years later they can now. And Not a Box by Antoinette Portis is the most recent winner of the 2026 Phoenix Picture Book Award. Pretty cool, right? So Betsy figured it would be an ideal book to do with Kate this week... without ... checking..... the pub date. Yeah. Turns out, Not a Box came out in 2007, not 2006. So, technically, we are breaking our 20 year rule. But only because Betsy trusted the Phoenix Picture Book Award committee to also do their homework. We're sure they had their reasons. We just should have done our own home work as well. Good thing it's a fascinating book. For the full Show Notes please see them here: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/02/09/fuse-8-n-kate-not-a-box-by-antoinette-portis/

At last! We finally pounce upon the third and final David Wiesner Caldecott Award winning title! Having already covered Tuesday and The Three Pigs (which we promptly forgot that we'd already discussed) it seemed only fitting that we'd move on to the third title in The Wiesner Triumvirate (and can you believe that it's 20 years old?!?). Today, it's all about the fish. Fish and photography, baby. We discuss how hot fluorescent pink is the official color of the 2026 Caldecott winners, definitions of both "flotsam" and "jetsam", how digital prints at Walgreens are immune to inflation, and the difficulty of conveying a storyline this complex solely through pictures rather than words. For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/02/02/fuse-8-n-kate-flotsam-by-david-wiesner/

Initially, this was supposed to be an entirely different episode altogether. I had somehow managed to convince myself that we hadn't done The Three Pigs by David Wiesner on this podcast before. In truth? We did that precise book on May 13, 2024 (so, yeah, not actually all that long ago). My bad, folks. My bad. In a pinch we had to find a replacement and, because Kate is now mother to a small child, we had title on hand that (A) I love and (B) we've never done before. We discuss this teeny tiny board book which, we would like to point out, ALSO has three pigs on the cover! It was fate to do this title. For the full Show Notes please go to https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/01/26/fuse-8-n-kate-moo-baa-la-la-la-by-sandra-boynton/

Every year, Kate and Betsy do one Caldecott prediction post for their podcast. Betsy hands over THREE books that she thinks are contenders. Then the two discuss and predict which ones might win the big awards. They usually manage to get at least one Honor (and last year they got two!). This year we're pretty confident that at least one of these three books will win something on Monday. Trouble is, Kate never seems to have the same reactions to these stories that Betsy does. Listen up and you'll see why. Get ready for a discussion about the significance of cardinals, font sizes, and how one of these books is clearly sponsored by Big Monday. For the full Show Notes, please read on here: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2026/01/20/fuse-8-n-kate-caldecott-contenders-2026/