Dads on Books

Mike Walker 0:03
okay. So intro intro intro.

David Patrick 0:07
Dads on books, we love books, our girls love books, we love our girls books."

Both
And... "Books".

David Patrick
I'm David Patrick

Mike Walker
And I'm Mike Walker.

And we are Dads on books

David Patrick
So, I'm gonna let you kind of start because um...

Mike Walker 0:22
So the book, this week, is called Mrs. McTats and Hr House Full of Cats. And it is by Alissa Satin Capucilli

David Patrick 0:32
I'm gonna go Capucilli. It's probably Italian.

Mike Walker 0:37
Possibly. And the illustrations are not Italian, they're by Joan Rankin. But the cover of the book is Mrs. McTats, who is a woman probably in her 40s, maybe. I actually play her a little bit older than that. like, "She's a grandma type."

David Patrick 0:58
I would say I would call her a cat lady."

Mike Walker 1:02
"I was going to say that."

David Patrick 1:04
"Spoiler alert."

Mike Walker 1:06
"I was trying because I have a family full cat ladies." And...

David Patrick 1:12
We don't judge

Mike Walker 1:13
If we could have 20 cats, they probably would. At least 2 of them.

David Patrick 1:18
Oh, that makes 40 cats.

Mike Walker 1:21
That'd be a lot of cats.

David Patrick 1:23
That's a lot of cats.

Mike Walker 1:24
I really didn't like that show

David Patrick 1:28
[laughs] You weren't blind when you were born?

Mike Walker 1:32
Uh... I don't know, but I'm not sure I got that

David Patrick 1:36
Ah, the very first words of the musical. Are you blind when you're born? Can you see in the dark? And it goes from there.

Mike Walker 1:49
I have cut that out of my memory as much as possibly could. Just did not enjoy it. But, we're not talking about cats. We're talking about Mrs. McTats and Her House Full of Cats, which is about Mrs. McTats, who is a cat lady. And she has a cat. and the story is about her and how, she ended up having all of these cats. And it's kind of a teaching book because each time she has a cat, they are the next letter in the alphabet, which I find very interesting

David Patrick 2:24
Let me ask you about that because you said we're going to revisit this book, and for me it's visiting this book. Okay. I'm revisiting it. I know. But the point is, when there's a book that you read to your girls and that I didn't read to mine, I have to look at it through that prison of, "Oh, cool." Depending on how young your girls were when you read this to them, or Kim did, yeah. You're teaching them the alphabet.

Mike Walker 2:31
I think we started reading this when they were around four-ish years old.

David Patrick 2:57
So that's perfect. And it didn't occur to me. You said this is a teaching book. And I'm like, "What does it teach?" "Oh yeah, of course the alphabet, something that's simple."

Mike Walker
"Oh, wait, there's more."

David Patrick 3:07
"Really."

Mike Walker
"You not only learn all of the letters of the alphabet because of all the names of the cats, but also learn how many letters in the alphabet there are." You add up the cats each time, which Elissa does." Like on...there's no page number, so I can't say it on page. She comes back from the market the first day, and she says, "Oh, come in, I'm sure I have room for two more cats. I had only one cat, but now I have three."

David Patrick 3:46
You can do math too.

Mike Walker
So I never saw that, I was like, "Oh, wait, it's not only the ABCs, but it's also a little bit math.

David Patrick
That's awesome."

Mike Walker 3:52
"That's sneaky."

David Patrick
And it's so sneaky that I discovered it right now thanks to you.

Mike Walker 3:58
"Yes." I read it and basically played Mrs. McTats, because she's the only person that talks and the narrator."
But for some reason, I felt like she had a Scottish or Irish mixture of an accent. "

David Patrick
A brogue. Hey, can you give me a sample of that right now? Can you give me your voice over for Mrs. McTat?"

Mike Walker
"Mrs. McTats." Come in my sweet dears. Said Mrs. McTats. I'm sure I have room for just 2 more cats.

David Patrick
I love it.

Mike Walker 4:34
And my girls loved when I'd do that, and we would laugh and giggle, it was a lot of fun.

David Patrick 4:38
"When I would do that, and we would all laugh," couldn't get it. "That's awesome." "Hey, for the fun of it, I might read this to my girls who are, you know, Lucy is going to be 10. My youngest will be 10 next week. I don't wonder how my 14-year-old will react to it."

Mike Walker
"I'm sure there's a big eye roll in there somewhere."

David Patrick
"Oh, maybe two. Maybe two eyes will roll. So, "I looked at the cover a little bit and thought, "I'm going to like the art." And then I opened it to the very first spread, which is, it's a panorama of her village. Her house is there with some trees and over on the left side. There's a cluster of houses with what looks like a church or something with a steeple. "This is done entirely in either pen or colored pencil and watercolor. And I love watercolor."

Mike Walker
"You know, I had not paid that close attention to the artwork because I was so enamored with Mrs. McTats and really just getting into the role. Uh, very method."

David Patrick
"Yes." "And what's funny is just now when you were saying that I thought you were going to say you were getting into the story."

Mike Walker 5:51
"Nope just the character.

David Patrick 5:52
"Because there's the character, there's the story and then there's the art, not in necessarily a particular order." One of the things I've loved doing with my girls over the years is actually doing art. And watercolor is a really cool medium because you can see where Joan Rankin, the illustrator, you can see where she, you can see the water to a degree. You can look at the details and see okay is that pen or pencil. She did this outline first and she had fun with watercolor color. But you can also take a tiny step back and just see this beautiful art that she's created and not see the actual medium or the painting or the -- I just love it you can kind of go back and forth. "I love that too.

Mike Walker 6:51
And I'm glad that you pointed it out because I mean, I know the pictures from reading this so many times, but I don't ever think that I realized that it's a lot of watercolor."

David Patrick 6:51
"It is."

Mike Walker
It's really really cool.

Mike Walker 6:53
Now that you mention it, I'm like, I totally see that. Like the smoke coming out of the chimney."

David Patrick 6:59
"Yes. I was looking at that as I was telling you. Yeah, absolutely, it's so cool."

Mike Walker 7:00
"That is super cool."

David Patrick 7:05
"Well, because that part she didn't use any pencil or outline. She let the blending of the colors in the water create the effect of the smoke. For those of you just listening and not watching, just trust us. But Mike, if you look down next to her where she's sitting with the cat and that tree, those flowers at the base of the tree, that's another place where there's no pencil or pen outline. It's just watercolor those tiny flowers and it's really, really cool."

Mike Walker 7:08
"That is really cool."

David Patrick 7:42
And just above it, those bushes, it looks like she used watercolor as the outline, but other places where it's pretty clear, she either used really thin dark watercolor or pencil or pen.

Mike Walker 7:08
"That's really cool. Like, I don't know if we've gotten-- well, we have gotten into the artwork pretty much the first episode we've really got into the artwork. I don't think that there's a lot of symbolism in this artwork as there was in the giving tree." Correct. "But really gives you the feel of small town. You can look at this for a while and find new things because I just found a chicken over the door."

David Patrick 8:08
"I just noticed that too. Sitting on the roof of her, what appears to be a thatch roof of some sort because the sides of the roof are kind of broad strokes, but the cut out of the front parts are dots, which means it's some kind of thatch that was maybe cut to fit the front of the house. I mean, just stuff like that.

David Patrick 8:29
I love it."

Mike Walker 7:08
"And I forgot to turn my phone off."

David Patrick
"That's okay. We'll fix it in post."

Mike Walker 8:33
"I don't know if you heard that."

David Patrick 8:35
"It sounds like some weird squeaking, but I chose to ignore it." So another thing I noticed about the art is just the palette, because the palette on that opening spread is earthy blues and greens. There's blue and green and brown, and it has a really cool, pastoral feel. I mean, this is definitely a rural setting, a small town. You can literally see it. "It's pretty

Mike Walker 8:39
I think that that's when I first saw it, that's where I came up the accent. I had a feeling from this picture of a small town in Ireland or Scotland or somewhere where there's a cool accent. And I just went with that because of the picture.

David Patrick
I love it."

Mike Walker 8:39
So it really does give a nice feeling.

David Patrick 9:21
It does. And as you go along in the book, you mentioned the letters, and that's definitely true, but it's also really fun to see how the different cats are drawn and painted.

Mike Walker
And none of them are similar, which is amazing. you draw, or however you made these cats

David Patrick 9:44
draw or paint those are two verbs that come to mind.

Mike Walker
"There you go." "But every cat is totally different and unique and they all look like their names."

David Patrick 9:53
Yes. As you're saying that, I'm on the page where Dolly, Ernest and Fuzzy are on the stairs.

Mike Walker 9:54
So am I?

David Patrick 10:01
Yep. And Fuzzy. I mean, this is one of the actual notes I wrote when I first read the book, Fuzzy, "Little Hair on Outline." Those little tiny, and that can't be watercolor. That's definitely pen or pencil or something. A maybe she did the watercolor and then did that so it helped bleed a little bit or whatever. But I just love it. It's just so fun to see.

Mike Walker 10:13
It really is. It's a lot of fun. We had a comment from a friend of ours. That basically he was saying that we talk about the book a lot, visually.
And I just realized that we can't not talk about the book visually. All of these books so far, half of the story is about the art, and I think that have to explain a little bit more. So that everyone understands like, "Oh, talking about the art, and we're trying explain it in a way that gives you a good visual image."

David Patrick 11:02
Yes. Two things to mention along those lines, as our listeners listen in, maybe some of them will have a copy of the book beforehand, because then that way, they can follow along with us. But another thing I was going to bring up, and I'll bring it up now, is as well as the book that we will do in our next episode, were written by someone, and illiastrated by someone else.

Mike Walker
I love that you say illiastrated.

David Patrick 11:32
Ilyastraighted. The subtext is, "I don't know how to pronounce it, so I'm going to, I don't know what I'm going to do."

Anyway, but our first two books were written and drawn by-- I just, I just Elmer Fudded, or is Porky Pig-- you have to go, "fuh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, quickly." You don't know the word, so you change it. Anyway, our first two books were written and illustrated by the same person. These two books were written and illustrated by two different people, and then I was wondering with both books, you know, the chicken and the egg thing. Did the writer completely write and conceive the story, and then find an illustrator? I'd like to think that once that happened, they collaborated, and yes, and it went back and forth, and one inspired the other, and maybe there "Hey, let's do this. Oh, that'd be great." I just-- I it might be different with every book, you know?

Mike Walker
Right. Yeah, because I-- someone could have written this whole book, and then passed it off, and never had anything to do the illustrations, but I think the art does such a great job of telling the story without reading the words. Actually, I guess it is really good because you're reading the story to a child who can't read probably yet, so they're really getting the idea of how the words are going together with the pictures.

David Patrick 12:57
Well, it's like when you're reading this to a younger child, a pre-school child, you' narrating. You're the voiceover to the pictures that your child is seeing.

Mike Walker
Absolutely. Such Discovery, how are we going to make this happen for another 2 or 300.

David Patrick 13:16
I don't know, but I asked myself that after the first one, and we're doing well so far. So I'm going to say the answer to your question is, "One episode at a time?" Yes. And it's okay if we don't necessarily love a book, especially if one of us recommends it and the other does it, a little bit more on that in our next episode.

Mike Walker
Oh, interesting.

David Patrick
But it's still moving along. first few spreads, the palette remains the earth tones, blues and greens, but then it does change at times. There's a yellow cat that comes in, and the palette changes her clothes changed. There's some reds and pinks brought in and things like that. It's just kind of fun to see how it changes.

Mike Walker
Agreed.

David Patrick
And speaking of which, there's a little device that I noticed that's really fun. And I didn't notice it at first when it started. I noticed it and I had to go back. you notice the portrait on the wall of the two people?

Mike Walker
Yes. But I don't know. I also just noticed there's a chicken on the page with "Izzy and Jezebel." There's a chicken on that.

David Patrick
Oh yeah. [INAUDIBLE] Not a secretary.

Mike Walker
A shrunk That's what we called it in Germany. When I was growing up. I don't know why, maybe that's a German word for display cabinet-y thing.

David Patrick
Yeah, with drawers and cabinets and open shelf on top. That's what that's called, exactly.

Mike Walker 14:46
Oh, so the people are actually looking at the cats.

David Patrick 14:52
-- Yep I first saw the picture, I just thought how cute that must be her mom and dad.

Mike Walker 14:56
That's what I thought.

David Patrick
But I started to notice that they are reacting.

Mike Walker
Oh my gosh, how funny.

David Patrick
- And even if you go to the Millie-Norin Oscar page, they're looking down and the man's fingers are out of the frame. They're kind of-- Oh, yeah. --he has his hand grabbing the bottom of the frame. We're having bottom of the frame. So funny. They have--

Mike Walker
Then the woman in the picture's all jazz handsy.

David Patrick 15:21
Yes, he's frowny and she's shock-ed. Now you go to the next page and look at them in this page.

Mike Walker 15:24
They're holding cats.

David Patrick 15:30
Yes. And now it makes me want to look at your-- would you call it a shunk? Your piece of a-- Now I'm wondering, do the chickens on that thing change? And yes, they do.

Mike Walker 15:31
Yes, they do.

David Patrick 15:42
Oh my goodness. Izzy and Jezebel, that porcelain chicken in the middle shelf that's just kind of hanging out? And then you get two spreads later and the chickens kind of looking at us a little bit.

Mike Walker 15:47
But wait. There's more.

David Patrick 15:53
No.

Mike Walker 15:54
Yes. And maybe it's just a-- it's not. Directly below the chicken. This is really weird that we're finding all these weird stuff out, 'cause we're weird.

David Patrick 16:00
Yes

Mike Walker 16:07
So if you Notice the cat on the shelf--

David Patrick
The bottom shelf?

Mike Walker
Yup.

David Patrick 16:13
In Izzy, it's just-- It's like a bookend.

Mike Walker 16:15
It's like a bookend.

Then when you get to-- when she's buying the tuna, the cat's starting to hide behind the books.

David Patrick 16:23
You can barely see it, and you wouldn't even notice if it's a cat in this spread. It's just a white oval sticking out.

Mike Walker 16:27
And it's not. Yeah. And it's not the perspective of Shrunk. It's just that was a choice.

David Patrick 16:37
Mm-hmm. So cool. Well, I think what I love about it so much there's so much detail.

Mike Walker 16:39
Yes.

David Patrick 16:46
Almost every page. And even if there's a page where there's only art in less than half of it, within that art, there's still so much detail.

Mike Walker 16:55
Yeah. And I love it. It really, for me, I think it's just a great book for kids.

David Patrick 17:00
Well, hey, I have already decided something. I'm definitely going to read this book to Lucy. She's my youngest. I never shy away from an opportunity to act and do funny voices.

Mike Walker 17:02
Really?

David Patrick 17:11
But Lucy loves cats. Lucy loves cats. Lucy is mildly allergic to cats. Monica is quite allergic to cats. So we will never have a cat. But she will really enjoy this book. So I will read it to her. And maybe we can add a little extra bonus thing. And maybe in the future, I will experiment and read some of these books to my girls even if they're too old before you and I talk about it and see what the reaction is.

Mike Walker 17:16
I actually

David Patrick 17:40
Good or bad?

Mike Walker 17:41
I think that that's a great idea. And my kids are in high school now, and I'm sure that they would love for me to bring this up and read.

David Patrick 17:51
Totally. But you know what? You want to share, right? I think it should be with all their friends.

Mike Walker 17:53
Oh, yes. I love it. So somebody should have a gathering at the house. And then I can just pull out the karaoke machine, but not to sing, well, maybe to sing too, but, so that I make sure everybody on the block. Here's my telling.

David Patrick 18:15
I like

Mike Walker 18:20
of Mrs McTats and her house full of cats.

David Patrick
I like the way you think that is.

Mike Walker
I like the way I think too.

David Patrick
I like the way you tink there.

Mike Walker
Daa, Yaa, Daa. Well, I think that I could say that we both enjoy this book and would recommend a good reading. Absolutely. Especially if you like to do silly, voice things.

David Patrick
Do you want to know how much I like this book?

Mike Walker
Yes, I do.

David Patrick 18:48
Two things I'm going to do. I'm going to return it to the Great Vine Library, and then I'm going to buy my own copy. That's how much I... Yeah. I'm going to invest in it. I'm going to invest in this book. It's a great book.

Mike Walker 18:54
Well, it's funny. You say that it is a great book and the number of times that I've read it, I'm just amazed at how little wear and tear there actually is. I think it's a great book, good for so many reasons.

David Patrick 19:00
Yeah.

Mike Walker
Math, Oddly, and Elfabeti stuff,

David Patrick
and art,

Mike Walker
art, meeting art with words. If you could see me, I'm putting my hand and my fingers together, so they're meshing together.

David Patrick
And if this were a movie, it would be in a world where art and words collide.

Oh, I wonder if somebody has a development deal on this one. Oh, well.

Mike Walker 19:46
Oh, well.

Awesome. So, we both like it. Yep. Those are our thoughts on the whole thing, and so...

David Patrick 19:55
Tell us yours down below in case we YouTube this eventually.

Mike Walker 19:59
Oh, there you go.

David Patrick
What are your thoughts and comments on this book?

Mike Walker
That would be great, but I'm not recording video that we're pointing. No more pointing.

David Patrick
There's no point taking baseball.

Mike Walker
I think actually there is. Tell them that you're going to hit a home run.

David Patrick 20:19
Right. Yeah, yeah. Where you're going to hit it for the kid in the hospital. Thank you.

Mike Walker
Anyway, so next time on Dad's On Books, we are going to talk about, you say the title, because I've been saying it wrong all of these years.

David Patrick
No problem. This is a book called "Big Words for Little People" by Jamie Lee Curtis with drawings, art and images by Laura Cornell.

Mike Walker 20:41
So that was actually my recommendation, and always thought it was just the book of big words. You know, I probably knew at the beginning that that's what it was called, but yeah, but I'll talk about that next time.

David Patrick 20:54
So, stay tuned. Happy reading.