These Books Made Me
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at pgcmls.medium.com.
Episodes
57 episodes
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces
We'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. In Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero, our central character, Gabi, is smart, opinionated and shockingly self-aw...
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Season 4
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Episode 9
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1:00:02
Akata Witch
Who doesn't love a book steeped in myth, legend, and local culture? Well, we certainly love them and are leaning into our fangirling over Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. Sunny is tearing up the football pitch at the Zuma games, getting in ...
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Season 4
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Episode 8
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1:18:13
Anastasia Krupnik
Oh, 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 thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the Anastasia Krupnik series by Lois Lowry. Our charming protagonist may just be t...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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1:12:40
The Baby-sitters Club: Claudia, Part 2
It's a special 4th of July episode! What's more American than relying on child labor to fix a failing healthcare system? That sounds grim, but we continue to enjoy our time with the girls of BSC. We return to our discussion of Claudia with a le...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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56:17
The Baby-Sitters Club: Claudia Part 1
We 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-diabetic Stacey of the podcast because she goes away but she always comes back. While Kelsey might be Stac...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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1:02:09
Front Desk
Is it a memoir? Is it fiction? Who can say when your author and main character are both wunderkind business people. This episode takes us to the Calivista Motel, a charming motel operating on the backs of children and horribly exploited immigra...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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1:04:48
Jacob Have I Loved
Ever felt overshadowed by a sibling or struggled to find your own identity? Katherine Paterson's "Jacob Have I Loved" brings these raw emotions to the surface, and we're peeling back the layers. Join us as we navigate Sarah Louise's turbulent j...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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1:13:34
Bonus Episode: a Peer Health Educator discusses Forever
Forever was a real headscratcher for us. We *think* Judy Blume was trying to disseminate information about teen sexual health in an easily digestible way but we wanted to check in with an expert. In this frank conversation, we untangle the comp...
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Season 4
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33:45
Forever
Oh 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't sure what to expect when we revisited Forever, one of the most frequently challenged books of al...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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1:03:11
The Bluest Eye
How 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 revisit this literary classic and realize there are several interpretations and layers we missed in previous r...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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1:06:26
Bonus Episode: Interview with an archer
With a May 8th birthday, Katniss Everdeen is a Taurus not a Sagittarius (Latin for 'archer') but we challenge you to name a more iconic wielder of bow and arrows in pop culture. It seemed therefore essential that we seek out an expert to talk t...
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Season 4
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46:37
The Hunger Games
Much like Katniss Everdeen, in this episode we are faced with some very tough choices. Four librarians enter the podcasting studio, only one will leave! Actually no librarian podcasters had to fight to the death during the making of this episod...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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1:02:16
Hispanic Heritage Month: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Rerelease
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes! To close out HHM, here's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. If you missed this episode the first time around, it's back with some bonus ...
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1:07:18
Hispanic Heritage Month: The House on Mango Street Rerelease
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes! First up is The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. If you missed this episode the first time around, it's back with some bonus recommendations for reada...
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1:09:45
Blubber
We 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 palate cleanser of sorts post-Sisterhood. Well, you know how it's really gross when you drink orange juice...
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Season 3
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Episode 13
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1:06:36
Bonus Episode: Dr. Mike Duncan discusses the science in A Wrinkle in Time
We couldn't decide what genre A Wrinkle in Time was but we definitely considered science fiction. To further explore our genre-confusion, we decided to talk to an expert about the actual math and science in A Wrinkle in Time. ...
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Season 3
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23:48
A Wrinkle in Time
We're no strangers to books with religious overtones or stories meant to impart a moral lesson, but this episode's journey to Camazotz with Madeleine L'Engle's classic work A Wrinkle in Time is definitely the most overtly religious boo...
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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1:12:50
The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy
This is now officially an Ann M. Martin stan podcast. Ok, maybe not since our loyalties are divided between the many great authors we've revisited, but we are firmly team Ann. This episode we embark on our long-awaited journey into The Baby...
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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1:10:05
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
These Books Made Me... kind of upset to be honest. This week we're tackling local-at-one-point author Ann Brashares and her homage to pretty much everything that was wrong about the late 90s, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. This...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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1:13:51
Anne of Green Gables Part 2
We'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 Romantic and obsessed with beauty. She sees it everywhere from the Lake of Shining Waters to the fashion of the day. Spe...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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43:19
Anne of Green Gables Pt. 1
This podcast crew has so much in common with the heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic, Anne of Green Gables. We too prattle on incessantly, have ill-advised adventures in hair dyeing, and we're big in Japan... one might say we're ...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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57:15
Bonus Episode: Professor Ingrid Satelmajer, University of Maryland
We discussed at length about Jane Austen's most famous novel, "Pride & Prejudice" (in 2 parts!). But in case you still had a taste for more Jane Austen content, we've included an expert interview with Ingrid Satelmajer, a professor at the U...
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23:45
Pride & Prejudice: Part 2
We're back with part the second of our journey to Netherfield and Pemberley with the Bennet family. We delve into Lizzie as a character, whether Mr. Darcy really was in want of a wife, and who really got the short end of the stick in the Lydia ...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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50:15
Pride & Prejudice: Part 1
This episode we are taking a leisurely stroll through the gentle hills of Hertfordshire and the genteel romances of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. We're talking classics, love-hate relationships, £5,000 bachelors, loveless ma...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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1:01:17
Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock
This episode finds us in the ambiguously located town of River Heights with teen sleuth, Nancy Drew. The Nancy series has mega intergenerational nostalgia vibes for a lot of us —that row of yellow spines on a shelf transports many of us straigh...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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1:03:59