Kicking off October with Edward Gorey just seems obvious at this point in time. After all, since he died 25 years ago, there are a lot of celebrations happening in his honor this season (see one of them below in the Show Notes). Naturally, since he did quite a few "picture books" (a term we use in the broadest sense) it seemed logical to tackle his best known work. Is it for children? Not intentionally, but I make the case on the show that there are picture books out there that are not intended for children but that kids find anyway and grow to love (Uncle Shelby's ABZs, anyone?). Today's book is a "cult classic picture book" in precisely that sense. This is our fourth alphabet book on our podcast (I forgot we did Eating the Alphabet when we recorded this) and our second Edward Gorey (after The Shrinking of Treehorn). We discuss how this was clearly Wednesday Addams's favorite book when she was little and how Gorey's rhyming is on point!
Please note that we do have a trigger warning at the beginning of our discussion. This book does mention children dying.
So the Society of Illustrators is currently putting on the show Something Else Entirely: The Illustration Art of Edward Gorey from October 4, 2025 - January 3, 2026. This exhibition showcases more than 80 original illustrations curated from the archive of The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, San Diego State University, and several noted private collections. This is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to Gorey's art for publications outside his own written body of work and most of these pieces have never been publicly exhibited before. Here are some of the talks:
Now I should note that Kate is reading today's book from this collection:
We do not recommend you go that route, since there appears to be a bit of a typo with Gashlycrumb Tinies. There's a gap between H and I in the book for quite some time.
Kate was so pleased that she got featured in this book.
And that's how I'd prefer to go.
Fairly certain that some of these sequences are influenced by Struwwelpeter. Rhoda reminds me of the girl who played with matches and burned herself up so that her cats would cry.
The true reason that this one is so terrifying is that there are only five mice seen here. That seems a much worse way to go.
Betsy Recommends: N.D. Stevenson and the story behind the illustrator of the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (you can hear me discuss it on our podcast).