Each week, freelance writer and lifelong bookworm Alli Hoff Kosik will challenge a guest to reread a literary throwback or to experience for the first time ever a book they may have missed as a kid. After that, they’ll be asked to spill all the feels and all the opinions about that book on the air for your podcast-listening pleasure. Every Tuesday, you can find us breaking down an old school read from our tween and teen days on a new episode of the show. We’ll cover everything from The Baby-Sitters Club to Holes, Nancy Drew to Harry Potter. This time around, we’re a little wiser (yay!), a lot older (ugh.), and of legal age to drink wine… so we’ll have a lot to say. Happy Reading!
For the first time EVER, lifelong BFFs Tibby, Carmen, Bridget, and Lena are about to be separated for the summer. Luckily for them, they find a pair of seemingly magic pants to hold them together as they scatter around the world… and luckily for us, Ann Brashares shared their story in her 2001 YA novel…
Read MoreFor those of us raised on a steady diet of (often helpless) Disney princesses, Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted was a revelation, a girl power fairy tale retelling. Yes, Ella is passive, but it’s only because she has to be, thanks to an obedience curse placed on her when she was a baby. In Episode…
Read MoreTwenty years too late, Alli is finally joining the Cool Kids Club and reading Goosebumps for the first time! In Episode 11 of The SSR Podcast, we discuss the first book this beloved, best-selling series from R.L. Stine, Welcome to Dead House. How scary is too scary for middle grade? Are helicopter parents ruining kid…
Read MoreOn Episode 10, Good Christian Fun podcast co-host Caroline Ely joins us to discuss the third — but best known — book in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Published in 1950, it has quite the historical and religious context, and you’ll hear all about it! You’ll also…
Read MoreWith the help of elementary education pro and super-reader Drew Gannon, we’re talking all things Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls Wilder on Episode 9. We’ll dig into the historical context of the book (including the elements that have seriously not held up since it was published in 1935), Pa’s general hotness, and…
Read MoreIt’s time for a little required reading! On Episode 8 of The SSR Podcast, we talk with film and TV writer Meredith Dawson about George Orwell’s political allegory Animal Farm… and how it feels eerily similar to the climate in modern America. Follow Meredith on Instagram (@meredawson) and Twitter (@meredawson).
Read MoreSay hello to your friends! The Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin is quite possibly the most iconic book series of the 80s and 90s… and we’re breaking it down in Episode 7 of The SSR Podcast. YA superfan and Cosmopolitan Magazine senior editor Jessica Goodman joins us to chat all about the first book…
Read MoreOn this episode of The SSR Podcast, we break down Megan McCafferty’s 2001 novel Sloppy Firsts, the first book in the bestselling Jessica Darling series. We dive into every last delicious detail of high school drama and tackle some big questions, too. Can things ever stay the same with a friend after she moves away?…
Read MoreNancy Drew devotees, beware! On this episode of The SSR Podcast, Alli and her guest — Brooklyn-based writer Kase Wickman — take a deep dive into the question of whether or not OG girl detective Nancy is really a feminist icon and discuss her highly important role in the history of female protagonists in #kidlit….
Read MoreOn this episode of The SSR Podcast, Alli has — refreshingly! — almost nothing bad to say about E.L. Konigsburg’s 1967 book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. For this literary love fest, she’s joined by the brilliant author and food writer Hannah Howard. Follow Hannah on Instagram (@hannahmhoward) and Twitter (@hannahhoward).
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