Roll a Seven, Regret Everything: Jumanji

Episode 15 of Throw the Book. The guys tackle Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 Caldecott winner Jumanji, a book none of them had read, even though they all knew the movie. It’s a black-and-white picture book where kids get bored, a lion shows up, and nobody ever explains why.

• Peter and Judy play with their toys for about 30 seconds before announcing they’re bored. The panel was never allowed to say that as kids.

• The kids live in a mansion with a train set, a statue, and a grandfather clock, which sends the guys off on couches, Wayfair, and the case against grandfather clocks.

• A completely made-up theory about what the horse’s legs on a statue mean, delivered with total confidence and zero evidence

• A mystery explorer wanders in, ignores everyone, sits on the dollhouse, and is never explained

• Sleeping sickness gets a full, accurate medical explanation, to the horror of everyone who just wanted to talk about a rhino

• Every square on the board is either bad or neutral, so the panel’s strategy guide is “just speed-run it”

• A clock-continuity investigation that ends with a perfect-score argument

• The ending: the kids put the cursed game back under the tree for the next family. The panel compares it to returning a haunted object to the library.

• Reviews that include a one-star that praises the book and then rates it one star, and a one-star complaint about the movie’s 4K transfer

• An AI-generated Jumanji theme song with a bagpipe solo that you can’t unhear

Scores landed between a flat six out of six and “the same thing happened three times, then the book ended.” Then we bumped the average anyway.

Next up: Room on the Broom.

#ThrowTheBookPodcast #Jumanji #ChrisVanAllsburg #CaldecottMedal #ChildrensBooksForAdults #BookPodcast #KidLitReview #BoardGameNight #PodcastRecommendations #BookBeforeTheMovie

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.

#ThrowTheBookPodcast #DollyParton #BillyTheKidDancesHisHeartOut #ChildrensBooksForAdults #BookPodcast #KidLitReview #DollyFacts #NashvilleVibes #RestInPeaceDolly #PodcastRecommendations

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."

#FrogAndToad #ThrowTheBookPodcast #ArnoldLobel #ChildrensBooksForAdults #NewberyHonor #BookPodcast #BestFriendsGoals #KidLitReview #PodcastRecommendations #ReadingRainbow

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.

Episode 11: Clifford the Big Red Dog 🐕🔴

This week Dave, Shawn & Jeremy take on the Scholastic mascot that's sold 134 million copies — and immediately fall into a K-hole. Highlights: Emily Elizabeth's dead eyes get diagnosed as a symptom of her dying in a hospital and hallucinating the entire book, a full "space mutant dog" theory for Clifford, and a breakdown of why he's basically running a protection racket on the neighborhood. There's a deep dive into the biology of a 25-foot, 87-ton bone-crushing dog with no visible wiener, a tangent about kneecaps being "on the outside," and a full derail into vintage computer RAM. Plus: the wildest one-star Amazon reviews we've ever read (shoutout to the reviewer who called Clifford a neo-Nazi dog whistle), a Louis C.K. bit about Clifford's death penalty, and someone's homemade Clifford song. Final scores are in, and nobody agrees.

🎧 New episode up now — Throw the Book Podcast

Episode 10: Where the Wild Things Are — Max Gets Away With Everything

A kid gets sent to bed without dinner, throws the tantrum of the century, and somehow ends up sailing across an ocean, conquering an island of monsters, and getting crowned king — all before coming home to a hot meal waiting on the table like nothing happened. No apology. No chores. No consequences. This is the book they gave a Caldecott Medal to.

We cracked this one open expecting a cozy bedtime classic and instead spent an entire episode arguing about whether Max is a misunderstood dreamer or the tiniest, most successful tyrant in children's literature. Dave brought in an AI chatbot to defend the book's morals and watched it lose the argument in real time.

Other things we can't let go of:

• A full nautical inspection of Max's boat, which he named after himself, because of course he did, and which is rigged in a direction that defies basic sailing physics
• A full year alone at sea with zero food, which raises questions nobody in this book seems interested in answering — is it a fever dream? A concussion? Did his mom just knock him out with a shoe?
• Maurice Sendak's origin story: sickly Brooklyn kid, lifelong Mickey Mouse obsession, allegedly could not draw a horse to save his life, drew monsters instead
• The theory that the Wild Things are just his ugly immigrant relatives with better hair and worse manners
• Why this "demonic" little book caused a full-blown moral panic decades before moral panics were cool
• A very serious, mostly unresolved debate over how a seven-year-old apparently understands maritime boat registration better than actual sailors

Plus a two-book Sendak giveaway for our biggest fans, and a first look at next week's read, Clifford the Big Red Dog, which we are already bracing to somehow connect back to the Holocaust.

Is Max a genius, a menace, or just really good at getting away with it? Tune in and pick a side.

Episode 9: The Story About Ping — Three Grown Men vs. One Duck, One Spanking, and the Worst Book They've Ever Read

A duck runs away from home to avoid a spanking. That's the plot. That's the whole plot. And somehow, The Story About Ping (1933) still manages to be the book that finally breaks Dave, Shawn, and Jeremy.

What you're in for:

• 🖍️ A "crayon book" so old the illustrator outlived the author — and the receipts on both of their wild backstories
• 🚤 Ping jumps ship, dodges a spanking, and nearly ends up as somebody's dinner (yes, really)
• 🧧 The guys actually dig into the book's very 1930s take on Chinese culture instead of just cringing and moving on
• 💀 A first-ever unanimous throw — all three hosts, all three books, on the floor
• 📖 One host threatens to graffiti "worst book ever" straight into the library's copy
• 🎙️ Verdict: less "children's classic," more "why does this duck have main character energy in the worst possible way"

If you've ever wanted to hear three adults dismantle a 90-year-old picture book with the seriousness of a courtroom drama, this is your episode. Ping never had a chance.

This week Dave, Shawn, and Jeremy crack open The Wild Robot on the Island by Peter Brown — the picture book prequel to the novel-turned-Netflix-movie everyone's already seen (which, as it turns out, is a problem). Highlights include a deep dive into Peter Brown's sunset color theory, a full-blown investigation into why the robot is apparently 45% legs, and a growing conspiracy theory that the book's opening crate scene is secretly the start of a Tom Hanks Castaway movie (or possibly just an Amazon delivery). The guys also can't stop comparing the island spread to a video game intro screen. All of this delivered under the influence of a full Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle outfit — so don't take it too seriously. It all adds up to a rating so low the guys had to talk themselves out of giving it a negative score. Spoiler: watching the movie first ruins the book. Who knew.

Monty Python Silly Walks Reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2ViNJFZC8

Magic School Bus Reference -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdNrs9RLn_Q

NOTE: This is not intended for children, parents please be responsible.