This week’s bedtime story with Iggy was Eva and the New Owl by Rebecca Elliott, part of the Owl Diaries series.

These books are just plain fun to read. They’re colorful, goofy, full of little owl puns, and written in a way that keeps things moving along nicely for a bedtime story.

There’s something different about reading a book after you’ve learned a little about the person behind it. Instead of just being an old book sitting on a shelf, it suddenly has a little more context and personality. You start thinking about the person who wrote it, where they were in their life, and what inspired them to put the story together in the first place.

There’s something both sweet and a little sad about it. The tree is always happy to give the boy whatever she can, even when it costs her more and more. You can read it as a story about love, generosity, parenthood, growing older, or even about how easy it is to take something for granted when you assume it will always be there.

The copy we have is from 1991, which means the scratch-and-sniff scents are long gone by now. That didn’t stop us from having fun with it, though. We still scratched the pages with our fingers, leaned in close, and tried to smell whatever might still be there. Mostly, all we got was the smell of old paper.

And somehow, that made it even better.

Living in New England, it is easy to think you know the area pretty well, and then a book like this comes along and reminds you just how many strange, funny, and fascinating stories are hiding in small towns and along back roads.

There are entries about things like a covered bridge museum in Vermont, unusual cemeteries, bizarre landmarks, and people who have turned very specific interests into local institutions. Some of the stories are historical, some are just plain odd, and others make you want to get in the car and go see the place for yourself.

Iggy got a big kick out of the sillier moments, especially when Gerald and Piggie realize they can influence the reader. That kind of interactive humor is perfect for bedtime because it turns reading into something you are doing together rather than just something I am reading to him.

What I also liked is that underneath all the jokes, there is a surprisingly sweet little moment near the end when Gerald realizes the book is almost over. His concern about the story ending adds a nice bit of heart and makes the final pages feel a little more meaningful than you might expect from such a goofy book.

The story follows El Toro and La Oink Oink as they deal with a huge mess after a wrestling match. At first, the cleanup looks pretty overwhelming, but once they start working together, the whole thing becomes much more manageable.

That simple idea is really the heart of the book: big jobs feel a lot easier when you have someone helping you.

The basic setup is already pretty great: Taro Sakamoto used to be one of the most feared assassins around, but then he fell in love, got married, had a daughter, gained some weight, and retired to run a small convenience store.

Of course, retirement does not exactly go according to plan.

Whenever Amy returned, there was usually a new book or project to discuss, but our conversations inevitably became something bigger. We talked about writing. We talked about publishing. We talked about the strange realities of trying to make a creative career work. We talked about technology, including artificial intelligence and its potential impact on authors. During one 2023 conversation, Amy also spoke about her experience with ADHD and what she had learned about adjusting her creative process to the way her own brain worked.

Of course, “just one more” has a way of becoming two.

The stories themselves are a delightful mix of adventure, humor, magic, and lessons about kindness, cleverness, greed, gratitude, and sometimes simply what happens when somebody makes a very bad decision.

What I found was a wonderfully entertaining collection of memories covering a remarkable range of experiences. Bruce takes the reader from the Jersey shore to Hawaii and eventually to the green hills of Vermont, building a portrait of a life that feels both personal and distinctly tied to different eras and places in America.

And some of these memories are anything but ordinary.

That idea gives the story much of its emotional power. Bunns may be small and treated as an outsider, but her courage grows from compassion rather than a desire to prove everyone wrong. Her quest is not simply about finding acceptance; it is about learning to trust herself and recognizing that being different does not make her dangerous or less worthy.

The book has a wonderfully Vermont quality to it. The humor is dry, observant, and rooted in the personalities and small details of rural life. These are the kinds of stories that find comedy in ordinary conversations, stubborn characters, local habits, and the quiet absurdities that people living in small communities understand especially well.

What I enjoyed most about this book was how accessible it is. Rather than one long narrative, it's made up of dozens of short entries featuring haunted locations, ghost stories, and local legends from across Vermont. That made it a perfect distraction after a busy day. I could pick it up, read a few stories, put it down, and come back later without ever feeling like I had lost my place.

This time, our assignment was Spider-Man: The Other – Evolve or Die. With the upcoming Spider-Man movie reportedly drawing inspiration from this storyline, Jordan and I both sat down to read it before we see what makes it onto the big screen.

Barillaro’s warm illustrations and graphic-novel-style passages make the world feel expansive and alive. Some pages invite you to pause and absorb the artwork, while the more dramatic sequences give the adventure a cinematic quality.

I first became interested in this book after having Nancy as a guest on my podcast. She was kind enough to send me a copy, and I'm grateful she did. As someone who spends a lot of time reading children's books, interviewing authors, and sharing stories with my own kids, I found it to be a fascinating look behind the scenes of children's publishing.

The artwork is breathtaking. Every page feels like it could be framed, with sweeping landscapes and expressive characters that pull you into the story. It's one of those graphic novels where you occasionally stop reading just to admire the illustrations.

I've had the creators on my show several times over the years, so when they sent me a copy of the newly remastered Volume One, I was excited to finally sit down and experience the story in its collected form.

Unlike many picture books, Be You doesn't tell a traditional story. Instead, it's a collection of gentle encouragements for children as they grow and discover who they are. The message is simple: be curious, be brave, be kind, be creative, and most importantly, be yourself.