Kidlit Love: Conversations with Picture Book and Middle Grade Authors
Oct 15, 2026 · 24 min · 10 segments
Happy Thursday! I’m back in your Inbox for the third time this week and I hope you’ve loved the additional kidlit love that been filling your feed! As promised, here’s the podcast episode with Amy…
Stephanie AffinitoHostThat is the reminder I love, right? Because it literally are gonna be kids that save the world.
And so the, the bravery and the courage of, of these two kids, even in the face of some things that feel really scary-
They rally the, the people around them that they need to, to make a difference.
Now without, you know, spoilers of exactly what, what happens in the book-
... um, you mentioned, and I mentioned earlier, you've got that outer environmental discre- destruction, and then you do have the, the, the bullying that is going on-
As you were figuring out where the story was going, now that I know more of your writing process, w- was that always the plan? Did that just come, come to be as the characters just came to you?
I had this name in my head, which was Dill Sauerkraut, and it was Dill Sauerkraut, but they called him Dill Sauerkraut.
And I thought, "Well, that sounds like a bully." And I thought of these two bullies in my life who are adults, like, you know, now, and they were bullies to me I guess when they were adults too.
But they were these two guys, and they just sort of, one of them seemed more menacing than the other one, who was smaller, but the smaller one was definitely more menacing in his mind, you know? Um, but yeah, bullying, you know, I didn't really...
Until I finished the book, I didn't realize that there was a sort of connection between an adult bully and the, and the kid bullies.
That is the reminder I love, right? Because it literally are gonna be kids that save the world.
And so the, the bravery and the courage of, of these two kids, even in the face of some things that feel really scary-
They rally the, the people around them that they need to, to make a difference.
Now without, you know, spoilers of exactly what, what happens in the book-
... um, you mentioned, and I mentioned earlier, you've got that outer environmental discre- destruction, and then you do have the, the, the bullying that is going on-
As you were figuring out where the story was going, now that I know more of your writing process, w- was that always the plan? Did that just come, come to be as the characters just came to you?
I had this name in my head, which was Dill Sauerkraut, and it was Dill Sauerkraut, but they called him Dill Sauerkraut.
And I thought, "Well, that sounds like a bully." And I thought of these two bullies in my life who are adults, like, you know, now, and they were bullies to me I guess when they were adults too.
But they were these two guys, and they just sort of, one of them seemed more menacing than the other one, who was smaller, but the smaller one was definitely more menacing in his mind, you know? Um, but yeah, bullying, you know, I didn't really...
Until I finished the book, I didn't realize that there was a sort of connection between an adult bully and the, and the kid bullies.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.