Tag Archives: Podcast

Rereading Magic by the Lake by Edward Eager

(You can listen to this episode here.)

On this episode, we reread Edward Eager’s 1957 book Magic by the Lake. It’s the sequel to Half Magic, which we discussed during our first season. We talk about our love for Eager’s magical adventures and our discomfort with some scenes that wouldn’t pass muster today.

Mentioned on this episode:

The Time Garden, the fourth book in the Half Magic series, featuring Katharine and Martha’s children

Seven-Day Magic, Eager’s last book

Also mentioned:

Edward Eager’s New York Times obituary

By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic by G.A. Henty (read by Mark)

Deborah’s time travel novels, George Washington and the Magic Hat, John Adams and the Magic Bobblehead, and Thomas Jefferson and the Return of the Magic Hat

The books of E. Nesbit, Eager’s favorite children’s writer

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

The Magic Tree House books

“Goodbye, John,” Edward Eager’s biggest hit song

Songs the children hear, sing, or request: “Paddling Madeleine Home,” “Do Do Do What You Done Done Done Before,” “Yes! We Have No Bananas,”

Recommended for fans of Magic by the Lake: The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (Deborah); The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright and The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh (Mary Grace)

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes:

Rereading Half Magic by Edward Eager

Rereading Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

Rereading Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

Rereading The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah at deborahkalb.com and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

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(You can listen to this episode here.)

On this episode, we reread Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers’s beloved 1934 classic. We discuss the difference between the book and the movie version of the magical nanny, changes in the book to remove racist portrayals, and Travers’s strange and interesting life.

Mentioned on the episode:

Other books in the series:

Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935)

Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)

Mary Poppins in the Park (1952)

Also mentioned:

“A Spoonful of Bile,” Kathryn Hughes’ 2005 Guardian review of Mary Poppins She Wrote: A Biography of P.L. Travers.

A Goodreads review of Mary Poppins by Julie G that discusses racism in Mary Poppins.

A post on the website “American Indians in Children’s Literature” that discusses racist language in the book (with side-by-side examples of original and revised passages from the “Bad Tuesday” chapter) and Travers’s experiences with American Indian communities during World War II.

Travers’s 1996 New York Times obituary that repeats her untrue claim that her father was a sugar planter (gift link)

The trailer for Mary Poppins Returns, the 2018 movie sequel

Alli Hoff Kosik’s childhood rereading podcast, SSR, which recently signed off after seven years and over 300 episodes.

Recommended for fans of Mary Poppins:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Pippi Longstocking (Deborah)

The Edward Eager magic books, Ballet Shoes, and Harriet the Spy (Mary Grace)

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes mentioned:

Rereading Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Rereading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah at deborahkalb.com and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken

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(You can listen to this episode here.)

Mary Grace and Deborah commemorate the 100th anniversary of British author Joan Aiken’s birth by reading Black Hearts in Battersea, the second in her Wolves Chronicles series, featuring resourceful orphans and sinister plots in an alt-history version of nineteenth-century London.

(Note: Mary Grace thought for fifty years that Dido Twite’s first name was pronounced DEE-doh rather than DIE-doh, and she slips back to this pronunciation a few times.)

Mentioned on the episode:

Other books in the Wolves Chronicles series:

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

Nightbirds on Nantucket

Other books by Joan Aiken:

Jane Fairfax

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes:

Rereading February’s Road by John Verney

Rereading The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin

Rereading Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers

Rereading Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

Rereading The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston

Rereading The Owl Service by Alan Garner

Rereading The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Also mentioned:

The Shortest History of England by James Hawes

Post on Black Hearts in Battersea on the blog A Son of the Rock (question King James’s Scottish accent)

“What’s Your 1918 Girl Job? A Quiz,” post on Mary Grace’s blog My Life 100 Years Ago that mentions Jane Fairfax. (Jane Fairfax also comes up on another post, “Jane Austen’s Life 100 Years Ago.”)

“Writing Without Limits: Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Series,” Albion Magazine Online (discusses Aiken taking time to settle on a main character for the series)

The best and worst of April 1918: Magazines, stories, faint praise, and neologisms (Mary Grace’s blog post that mentions Conrad Aiken)

A well-known letter from T.S. Eliot to Conrad Aiken is quoted here.

The Practical Magic of Joan Aiken, the Greatest Children’s Writer You’ve Likely Never Read (The New Yorker)*

Blog on Joan Aiken by her daughter Lizza Aiken

Blog post by Lizza Aiken about Aiken’s partnership with illustrator Pat Marriot

Locus Magazine interview with Aiken in which she discusses The Chronicles of Narnia and the BBC adaptation of Black Hearts in Battersea

Suggested reading for fans of Black Hearts in Battersea: Other books in the series (Deborah), The Book of Three and its sequels (Mary Grace)

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah’s author interviews on her blog, Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

*Mary Grace took offense at this headline.

Rereading The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin

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(You can listen to this episode here.)

Mary Grace and Deborah discuss Ellen Raskin’s 1971 mystery romp, The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), about a woman’s decades-long search for her husband, whom she married as a child. (It’s a long story.) The book is full of word games, puzzles, and creative illustrations by Raskin, who was also a graphic artist.

Other books by Ellen Raskin:

Nothing Ever Happens on My Block (1967). This picture book, a childhood favorite of Mary Grace’s, was the first book Raskin wrote after illustrating many children’s books written by others.

Figgs and Phantoms (1974), a 1975 Newbery Honor Book.

The Westing Game (1978), winner of the 1979 Newbery Medal.

Also mentioned:

Raskin’s obituary in the New York Times (August 10, 1984).

A 2023 article in Allure about whether eating chocolate is bad for your skin.

The 2012 School Library Journal poll about the best children’s novels of all time, with The Westing Game at #9.

The Goodreads reviews of The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) (highlight: Jeremy’s.)

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes mentioned on this episode:

Rereading February’s Road by John Verney

Rereading Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Rereading Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers

Rereading Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

Rereading A Wrinkle in TIme by Madeleine L’Engle

Rereading Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by Donald Sobol

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah’s author interviews on her blog, Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

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You can listen to this episode here.

On this episode, Deborah and Mary Grace discuss Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild’s classic 1936 story of a trio of adopted sisters, Pauline, Petrova, and Posy, who attend a school for professional children in the performing arts in London. Ballet Shoes is the first in what became a series of “Shoes” books about children working in the theater, the circus, etc.

As Deborah and Mary Grace mention, the girls perform in these plays:

The Blue Bird, by Maurice Maeterlinck (a large chunk of which, weirdly, appears in the text of Ballet Shoes)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare

Other Noel Streatfeild books mentioned in the podcast:

Circus Shoes (1938). As Deborah mentions, several of Streatfeild’s books were retitled to capitalize on the popularity of Ballet Shoes. This book was originally titled The Circus is Coming.

Skating Shoes (1951). This is the American title; it was published in the UK as White Boots.

The Whicharts (1931). As Deborah mentions, Streatfeild’s first novel, which is for adults, also features three adopted sisters. (According to an episode on Ballet Shoes on the wonderful Backlisted podcast, the books have identical openings.)

Here’s the cover of the first edition of Ballet Shoes. This will give you an idea of the what the illustrations by Ruth Jervis, who was Streatfeild’s sister, were like. They’re not included in most current editions, although the Puffin edition that Mary Grace bought in London has them.

Recommended by Mary Grace for fans of Ballet Shoes: We Danced in Bloomsbury Square by Jean Estoril (out of print, available from used booksellers).

Recommended by Deborah for fans of Ballet Shoes: other books in the Shoes series. Shoes books available in the United States include Theater Shoes and Dancing Shoes.

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms. You can listen to it on Buzzsprout here.

You can find Debby’s author interviews on her blog, Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.