These Books Made Me
Episodes
Tuck Everlasting
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode, we take a sip from the spring of eternal life—or at least from Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting—and things get ...
Twilight Part 2
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're back with a continuation of our discussion around Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. In this episode, we explore the toxicity of Be...
Twilight Part 1
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis episode feels like what we've worked toward for the past few seasons. How can we have a library podcast and not do the pop cul...
The Poet X
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe Poet X was Elizabeth Acevedo's breakout novel, winning the Printz and Pura Belpre awards and becoming the target of many challe...
Speak
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textSpeak by Laurie Halse Anderson follows Melinda Sordino as she navigates the aftermath of her sexual assault at a high school party. Unab...
Baby-sitters Club: Mary Anne Part 2
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are back with special-expert-guest-on-all-things-BSC Kelsey for Part 2. We're still talking about how arson isn't the answe...
Baby-Sitters Club: Mary Anne Part 1
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are back with more Baby-Sitters Club books, y'all and one of these is all about banned books (and arson) so you know we couldn&a...
The Summer I Turned Pretty
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a text2 brothers, 1 girl, 0 chance we're onboard with this love triangle. In The Summer I Turned Pretty, we follow Isabel "Belly&quo...
Sweet Valley High: Double Love and Teacher Crush
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWow. Truly, we are so glad we took a detour to the affluent and completely bananas town of Sweet Valley, California to meet Jessica and ...
The Birchbark House
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn a TBMM first, we read a book with substantially different editions! That's right, we all came to the podcasting table calling th...
Little House on the Prairie Series
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhile Canada has Anne of Green Gables about a girl growing up in the late 19th century, America has the Little House on the Prairie seri...
The Hate U Give
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe love a little 90s nostalgia and The Hate U Give delivers on that front. It also delivers on the well drawn characters and hard hittin...
Survivor: These Books Made Me Part 2
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're back post-merge and our Mattel and Pleasant tribes are now the Pattel tribe. Will there be friction in the now combined tribe...
Survivor: These Books Made Me Part 1
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHave you ever wished your favorite characters from different books could meet each other? Have you ever wished they could fight each oth...
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces Part 2
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're back with part 2 of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces because we needed more than one episode to sing its praises. What can we say, Gabi...
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces Part 1
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe've reached the final book of the season and boy was it a good one! So good in fact, we're splitting it up into two parts. I...
Akata Witch
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWho doesn't love a book steeped in myth, legend, and local culture? Well, we certainly love them and are leaning into our fangirlin...
Anastasia Krupnik
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textOh, for Pete’s sake, we can’t fathom why this book was ever banned! While it didn’t live up to Hawa’s spicy expectations, we tho...
The Baby-sitters Club: Claudia, Part 2
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIt's a special 4th of July episode! What's more American than relying on child labor to fix a failing healthcare system? That ...
The Baby-Sitters Club: Claudia Part 1
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are diving back into The Baby-Sitters Club and we've brought a special friend along for the ride. Kelsey proves to be the non-di...
Front Desk
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIs it a memoir? Is it fiction? Who can say when your author and main character are both wunderkind business people. This episode takes u...
Jacob Have I Loved
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textEver felt overshadowed by a sibling or struggled to find your own identity? Katherine Paterson's "Jacob Have I Loved" bri...
Bonus Episode: a Peer Health Educator discusses Forever
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textForever was a real headscratcher for us. We *think* Judy Blume was trying to disseminate information about teen sexual health in an easi...
Forever
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textOh Judy Blume, you are officially our most frequently covered author on TBMM and oh my, have you ever given us some wild rides. We weren...
The Bluest Eye
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHow many times have you read The Bluest Eye by the legendary Toni Morrison, and why is it never enough times? In this episode, we all re...
Bonus Episode: Interview with an archer
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWith a May 8th birthday, Katniss Everdeen is a Taurus not a Sagittarius (Latin for 'archer') but we challenge you to name a mo...
The Hunger Games
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMuch like Katniss Everdeen, in this episode we are faced with some very tough choices. Four librarians enter the podcasting studio, only...
Hispanic Heritage Month: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Rerelease
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes! To close out HHM, here's How the Garcia G...
Hispanic Heritage Month: The House on Mango Street Rerelease
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes! First up is The House on Mango Street by Sandr...
Blubber
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe had such a good experience with Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. that we decided to go back to the Judy Blume well as a pa...
Bonus Episode: Dr. Mike Duncan discusses the science in A Wrinkle in Time
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe couldn't decide what genre A Wrinkle in Time was but we definitely considered science fiction. To further explore our genre-conf...
A Wrinkle in Time
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're no strangers to books with religious overtones or stories meant to impart a moral lesson, but this episode's journey to ...
The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis is now officially an Ann M. Martin stan podcast. Ok, maybe not since our loyalties are divided between the many great authors we&ap...
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThese Books Made Me... kind of upset to be honest. This week we're tackling local-at-one-point author Ann Brashares and her homage ...
Anne of Green Gables Part 2
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're back with part 2 of Anne of Green Gables, because we, like Anne, can talk the hind leg off a mule. Anne's a capital R Ro...
Anne of Green Gables Pt. 1
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis podcast crew has so much in common with the heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic, Anne of Green Gables. We too prattle on...
Bonus Episode: Professor Ingrid Satelmajer, University of Maryland
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe discussed at length about Jane Austen's most famous novel, "Pride & Prejudice" (in 2 parts!). But in case you stil...
Pride & Prejudice: Part 2
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're back with part the second of our journey to Netherfield and Pemberley with the Bennet family. We delve into Lizzie as a chara...
Pride & Prejudice: Part 1
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis episode we are taking a leisurely stroll through the gentle hills of Hertfordshire and the genteel romances of Jane Austen's P...
Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis episode finds us in the ambiguously located town of River Heights with teen sleuth, Nancy Drew. The Nancy series has mega intergene...
Heaven
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIf the foundation is a lie, is anything real? This episode we look at identity, trust, and family as we dive into Angela Johnson's ...
Ella Enchanted
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are traipsing through the land of Kyria this week on our unnecessarily teeny tiny feet as we revisit Gail Carson Levine's Newber...
Coraline
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNeil Gaiman gave us a children's fantasy horror book for the ages with Coraline, which follows its titular character through a da...
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are back for season 3 with a coming of age story told in reverse. This episode we dive into Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls...
The Westing Game
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe Westing Game gave young readers a layered and complex mystery to solve and gave Ellen Raskin a Newbery medal. In this episode we dis...
Persepolis
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMarjane Satrapi's groundbreaking graphic memoir Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood chronicles the life of a young girl growing up...
The Skin I'm In
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis episode finds us in the brutal halls of middle school with Maleeka Madison, a 12 year old girl struggling with self-esteem, peer pr...
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textE.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has endured on library shelves as many older Newbery books o...
Alice in April
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode we are diving into one of the books in the comprehensive Alice series (25 books!) by children's literature paragon ...
Ramona
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textBeverly Cleary's many books for young readers have endured the decades with her boisterous heroine Ramona Quimby remaining a perenn...
Bonus Episode: Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy talk Rabies
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMany of us vividly remembered Their Eyes Were Watching God as the book where a person gets rabies and is shot. Tea Cake's demise le...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textZora Neale Hurston may have been unappreciated as an author during her lifetime, but Their Eyes Were Watching God was eventually redisco...
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textJudy Blume didn't intend to write one of the most frequently challenged and banned books of all time when she penned Are You There ...
The House on Mango Street
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe're spending time with Esperanza Cordero, her family, friends, and neighbors from 1984's groundbreaking novel, The House on ...
Alanna: The First Adventure
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNoted Sagittarius and author Tamora Pierce brought us the groundbreaking, gender norm defying Alanna: The First Adventure in 1983. The b...
Manga Edition: Sailor Moon, Part 2
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are back with part 2 of our foray into the world of Sailor Moon. In this episode we will discuss romanticism, Usagi's leadership...
Manga Edition: Sailor Moon, Part 1
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMoon prism power, make up! This week we have both new and familiar voices transporting us to the world of Usagi Tsukino as we dive into ...
Bonus Episode: American Girl Cafe Field Trip
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIt's a store! It's a bistro for dolls! It's a rose-colored fever dream! It's our field trip to the American Girl Caf...
Bonus Episode: Professor Margaret Polizos Peterson, University of Maryland
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textEarlier this season we discussed the Roald Dahl classic “Matilda.” The episode’s expert interview, Maggie Peterson from the Colleg...
These Books Scar(r)ed Me: Spooky Special
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThese Books Made Me... scared? This week's bonus episode explores the scary side of literature. From Goosebumps to fairy tales to s...
American Girl - Josefina
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis episode marks our final foray into the American Girliverse and our season 1 finale. We delve into the world of Josefina Montoya, ...
American Girl - Addy
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textOn we trek through the American Girls canon as we journey through Addy Walker's world. We explore the formation of the Addy advisor...
American Girl - Felicity
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe are diving back into the American Girl canon with Felicity Merriman. Felicity was a second wave American Girl and infamous horse thie...
Matilda
08 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe take a break from the American Girls (in more ways than one!) this week to discuss a British childhood classic of both page and scree...
American Girl - Molly
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe delve ever deeper into the OG American Girl canon as we explore the pranktastic world of Molly McIntire. We try to decipher the stran...
American Girl - Samantha
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe continue our journey through the American Girl book series with Samantha Parkington. Samantha was one of the AG OGs and was released ...
American Girl - Kirsten
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe begin our first foray into the world of juvenile chapter series and the American Girls specifically with the young Swedish immigrant ...
Bonus Episode: Sandra Johnson, St. Mark's Church Historian
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe had such a good conversation with this second community expert for our last episode, we had to release it as a separate episode. Ella...
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMildred Taylor originally did not set out to write a children's book when she wrote "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry," yet it...
Bonus Episode: Councilwoman Deni Taveras
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFor our A Tree Grows in Brooklyn expert segment, we reached out to Prince George's County Councilwoman Deni Taveras to reflect on w...
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textBetty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" was an instant classic with American audiences when it was released in 1943. Dra...
Harriet the Spy
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textLouise Fitzhugh's beloved 1960s title "Harriet the Spy" captivated young readers for generations as they followed the con...