The Children's Literature Podcast

Dolly Parton was an angel on Earth, entertaining with kindness and warmth. And she spent an absolute fortune helping millions of children learn to love reading from an early age.

We didn’t deserve her. But I am so grateful we had her.

I liked Green Lantern comics as a kid. I hoped rather than believed that the new TV adaptation of this DC property would be any good.

It wasn’t any good.

I took my six year old to see the Paw Patrol Dino Movie and I was astonished to discover that writers Cal Brunker and Bob Barlen have brilliantly adapted the 1902 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which meditates on the barbarous nature of humanity and its unquenchable lust for money, goods, and power.

250 Episodes!! My goodness!! Thank you to all of you, whether you have been with the show for a long time or have just recently joined in the fun. I did a livestream to celebrate! It was so nice to chat with lots of you, and I rambled about two of my favorite subjects: Star Trek and Shakespeare.

I’ve ranked my top 10 favorite moments from Star Trek that reference the w...

I am very delighted to have Dr. Adam S. Smith and Jonathan Emmett return as guests on my show to talk about their splendid new book Great Dinosaur Mistakes, which features famous errors in the ways early paleontologists interpreted fossil finds and how the process of science improves those interpretations. The brilliant illustrations of Stieven Van Der Poorten bring this book...