Nine to Five Paws: Dolly Parton’s Billy the Kid Dances His Heart Out

A very special episode of Throw the Book. The guys read Dolly Parton’s Billy the Kid Dances His Heart Out, a glittery pink picture book about a guitar-playing dog with two left paws, and give it the send-off it deserves. Mostly.

• Dolly facts, including the real story behind “I Will Always Love You” (it’s not a love song) and the lookalike contest she lost
• Billy plays a guitar with five strings, then six strings, because someone fixed it between rehearsal and showtime
• Bella, the dance teacher with a majestic beard that has its own fan club and its own critics
• A dance studio that teaches ballet, breakdancing, and flamenco, with no clear curriculum
• The Moon, who has a face, and the theory that every celestial body does too, just too far away to see
• Goodreads reviews, including a four-star rating whose entire comment is half a sentence
• A scoring split that goes from “three paws, I read it six times” to a bonus “seven”

Rest in peace, Dolly. Thank you for the music, the books, and the dog dance party.

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Wake Up, Cross It Off: Frog and Toad Together
Arnold Lobel's Newbery Honor classic gets the full unhinged treatment this week, dedication page and all.

• A dead-serious research detour into who "Barbara Dicks" is and why she's immortalized in the front matter forever
• Toad's list-making habit gets fully diagnosed, including his groundbreaking decision to write down "wake up" as a task to complete
• Frog watches his best friend scream, sing, and read bedtime stories to a patch of dirt rather than just saying "seeds take a few days, buddy"
• The Great Cookie Standoff, resolved via the bold strategy of eliminating all cookies from planet Earth
• A surprisingly earnest tangent on whether this book is a quiet decades-early "it gets better" message, sandwiched between frog leg confessions
  No consensus on the final score — somewhere between "one of the greatest stories ever told" and "where's the drama."

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The Trouble with Friends, and Several Other Problems
The Trouble with Friends gets picked apart page by page, and things escalate fast.

• A human plushie in one panel triggers a full "do bears keep people as pets" investigation
• The mysterious, ever-shifting geography of Bear Country (it's basically Springfield)
• Brother Bear's savage comeback game, decades ahead of its time
• The skateboard that's clearly missing a wheel, and other 1980s illustration crimes
• The group formally opens a file on Papa Bear as a suspected serial killer
  That's just book one of four on the docket this episode — stick around for the rest.