Eleanor & Alasdair Read That

Just like women be shopping, E. B. White. And White's 1952 novel Charlotte's Web is a blackly comical tear-jerker about a spider coming to the aid of a pig who doesn't want to be eaten. Are Eleanor and Alasdair fans of spiders? Or are we absolutely terrified of them?

Well, what do you think? Based on everything you know about us, do you think we like spiders?

Eleanor and Alasdair step into the trousers of time, with Terry Pratchett's 1996 novel Johnny and the Bomb. Five inept British teens find themselves in World War Two with bags of time on their hands.

Was Johnny and the Bomb "The Bomb"? Or will it bomb in our estimation? And who were the real baddies in WW2?

(It was the Nazis.)

1957–1968 was a golden age of big cats breaking into kids' houses and smashing up the joint. For this episode, Eleanor & Alasdair read Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat and Judith Kerr's The Tiger Who Came to Tea. We aim to decide, scientifically, which of the two books is best (with absolutely no favouritism shown towards the one we obviously like more).

Will we like the American one?

Perhaps we'll find it much more fun?

Of course, there's not much chance of that.

'Cos Eleanor hates that creepy cat.

Eleanor and Alasdair are fighting! Eleanor is in love with Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, but for Alasdair... it's complicated. The 1908 classic is a tale of motorcars, misadventure and yearning glances on the riverbank. But is it really a kid's book? Or is it a boring work of art?

Poop! Poop!

Buy us a coffee: ko-fi.com/readthat_podcast

She's small. She's ginger. She's very hard to get out of your house. No, not Eleanor Morton. We're talking about Arietty Clock, the tiny teenage protagonist of Mary Norton's 1952 novel The Borrowers. The Borrowers are a diminutive people who love stealing almost as much as they love the British class system.

But has this tale of curtain-climbing social climbers aged well? Find out in Series 2 of Eleanor & Alasdair Read That.

Buy us a coffee: ko-fi.com/readthat_podcast