Episode 23: The Wyvern, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland with Laila Vafaeezadeh

March 20, 2018 by Marie Macula in Episodes

It was so cold that Frienduary lasted into Smarch! This week, Laila Vafaeezadeh of Bigfoot and Bob joins us while we talk the Oz-infused, magic-stuffed, girl-empowered fantasy of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente. What makes a uniquely American fantasy? How do alternative publishing schemes aid and abet children's lit? And who else wants a wyverary as a best friend?

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making: Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Indiebound, Better World Books

Catherynne M. Valente: Website, Twitter, Patreon

Bigfoot and Bob is a monstrous comedy podcast out of Seattle, hosted by Ryan Brown (@RAlisterBrown) and Laila Vafaeezadeh (@LailaMaryV). Listen in all your podcast-y places, such as iTunes and PlayerFM. Find them on Twitter and Facebook, too!

Laila's Tumblr

Laila's Wattpad project, Danny and I Survived

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.  (CC Marie Macula, Carey Farrell 2018)

Episode 21: An Abundance of Green Slime: Howl's Moving Castle with Lisa Jenn Bigelow

February 21, 2018 by Marie Macula in Episodes

What happens when you're the oldest daughter of a hat-making family, destined for no fairytale adventures and cursed by a glamorous witch? Strike out your own fortune! Lisa Jenn Bigelow, author of Starting from Here and the upcoming Drum Roll, Please, joins us this Frienduary to talk terrible boys with magic powers, the undeniable gift of aging gracefully, and shouting as witchcraft. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones had us laugh, cry, and thank Calcifer we never had J.R.R. Tolkein as a professor.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.  (CC Marie Macula, Carey Farrell 2018)

Episode 7: Happy Halloween! A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

October 31, 2017 by Marie Macula in Episodes

Happy Halloween! Spooky Month concludes with a classic involving strange powers, mysterious girls, Victorian social mores and ancient goddess cults. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray gives readers a chilly horror fantasy set in a boarding school, answering the question, what if you gave teenage girls phenomenal cosmic power?

A Great and Terrible Beauty: Goodreads, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound

Libba Bray: Website

Content Note:

This book is written from the point of view of a white English girl from 1895, and subsequently she is a pretty terrible person when it comes to India, the lower class, and especially Romani/Traveller folks. The story also touches on emotional and physical abuse, bullying, self-injury, drug use, alcohol use, ableism and suicide.