Welcome to Books that Raised Us, a podcast about books thats actually about runts.

We don’t think this book is absolutely perfect… we know it is!

This episode follows 5th grader Nick Allen’s quest to rename the humble pen.

Some people say dogs are man's best friend, but Emily Elizabeth was definitely Elana's!

This episode celebrates an exceptional young girl, the iconic Ms. Honey, and begins to reckon with what to do with the work of bigoted authors.

show notes:

here is the article about Roald Dahl’s family apologizing for his anti-semitism

and here is the twitter thread Esti references from Mara Wilson.

Sometimes we also talk about books we didn’t love as kids…

Surprise: Esti picked another kids book about art museums. (This time its set at the Art Institute of Chicago where she’s currently in grad school.)

We might have been afraid of this scary substitute teacher as kids, but this week we find out that Viola Swamp is much more relatable to us as adults than we remembered!

This week we get silly with some Shel Silverstein poems. (and songs!) Did you know that he was also a Grammy Award-winning songwriter?

Robert McCloskey’s classic picture book elicits lots of nostalgia this week, because we love Boston!

show notes:

this is the exhibit Esti mentions

In this episode, we revisit childhood daydreams of running away from home and museum fantasies. (and remember that there was actually a mystery plot to this story, too.)

show notes:

this is the Mark Bradford piece we both love

While living through simultaneous political, economic, and public health crises, we’ve been having more “Alexander Days” lately. We hope this episode is equal parts humorous and cathartic.