Episode 261 - The Mitten

Since the entire premise of this podcast with Betsy and Kate is to take well-known books and determine whether or not they continue to deserve their "classic" status, it probably behooves them to do a couple books everyone has actually heard of. And since the last book they did was, at best, obscure and, at worst, completely forgotten, they figured today that they should go all in and do something out-and-out famous. To their surprise, they've never tackled a Jan Brett book before. That said, they did have to admit that it's possible that Kate and Betsy are not the world's most impartial critics. You see, their mother instilled in them an appreciation for fiber arts. and can you think of a single illustrator who has ever depicted the knitted stitch better than Ms. Brett? Today, they consider the woman's best-known book and how it has held up over all this time as well as the timeliness of doing a Ukrainian folktale in this day and age. Show Notes: In the course of Betsy's research for this podcast she read a fair number of interviews with Jan Brett about her work on The Mitten. Her favorite? This one with TeachingBooks.net. In it, Jan really leans into the research she did for the title, as well as the Ukrainian ex-patriots who suggested, "I make Nicki's clothes too big for him because his family would have made them by hand and passed them down from father or older brother. He'd wear a belt to make his jacket fit closer around his tummy. The boots, too, might be a little big. He might stuff some newspaper in them or wear an extra pair of socks to make them fit." In that light, this book actually makes so much more sense: https://www.teachingbooks.net/interview.cgi?id=88&a=1 For the full Show Notes please visit: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2023/02/20/fuse-8-n-kate-the-mitten-by-jan-brett/(opens in a new tab)