The Children's Literature Podcast

My friend Miguel Lopez returns to the show, taking a break from his Ph.D studies of World War II to help me understand how Animal Farm by George Orwell creates a fictional portrayal of Stalin and Stalinism. We also answer a listener’s question about whether the memes referring to British Prime Minister (for now) Keir Starmer as “Keir Stalin” are making fair criticisms of his policies, or if this is just social media ragebait.

Miguel is from the Los Angeles area and now lives in Oklahoma after retiring from active duty in the US Air Force. He is currently pursuing a PhD in History, focused on WWII in Europe, the Holocaust, and German Military History. Tiffney and Miguel have been friends since college.

This episode was recorded just a few days before the consequential local elections held in Britain on the 7th of May, 2026, which provided an interesting opportunity to see what ideas from Orwell’s book can be applied to present-day politics.

Animal Farm directed by Andy Serkis and written by Nicholas Stoller is an utter abomination.

Here’s my thoughts on three upcoming adaptations of children’s stories. First, the preview trailer for the new Little House on the Prairie adaptation by Netflix looks like it might actually be . . . Good??? Also, it sounds like those rumors about HBO considering turning Lord Voldemort into Lady Voldemort might have some truth to it (ugh). And to wrap up, I react to a new featurette that’s been released about the upcoming Masters of the Universe adaptation and I’m feeling reassured, because they put to rest any idea that He-Man’s healthy brand of masculinity will be smeared as “toxic” in this adaptation.

Human beings are going back to the moon! As I recorded this episode, Artemis II was on its journey to the moon and back again, with four crew members on board the Orion spacecraft. But what do Artemis and Orion have to do with each other? Quite a lot, actually! These two were hunting buddies who loved to explore the wilderness together. There are many twists on the myth, but all of them ended badly for poor Orion. NASA is rewriting the tale so that Artemis and Orion are once more exploring the last true wilderness — space — but with a happy partnership for them this time.

It’s been a long time since I took any time for myself to play video games, and I randomly had the idea that if I can drag myself out of bed early enough, I could revisit Skyrim and chat about the myths and legends that went into its worldbuilding. In this foray into a damp, spooky tunnel, I talk about Grettir’s Saga, one of the sagas of the Icelanders in which the antihero Grettir has two battles with undead creatures that directly inspired the draugr in Skyrim.

There have recently been a bunch of ultraviolent makeovers of classic children’s stories. Some are schlocky horror fun. And some are just dreadful. Pinocchio Unstrung looks like promisingly gory twist on Carlo Collodi’s already scary tale, while THE BRIDE! was a painfully bad attempt to update Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Star Trek VI is *so* loaded with literary references that I had to divide my thoughts into two parts. I previously talked about the Shakespeare references in the play, but this time I’ll do a speedrun through ALL of the literary references in this film — and there are a lot! See if you can guess the one I missed, though.

 

When researching the first published books of nursery rhymes, I found some hilariously inappropriate entries. Well, by modern standards, anyway. Please enjoy these silly, violent, and scatalogical poems. If you share them with your kids, don’t say I didn’t warn you if you find yourself in the principal’s office getting told off.

If you’d like to watch the full livestream including listener comments, you can find that here:

This episode comes from my recent livestream about Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and its Shakespearean influences.

The plot is a real-time metaphor for the end of the Cold War, highlighting larger-than-life personalities and critical historical moments in a way that Shakespeare did when writing his history plays. Klingon costumes are based on Elizabethan fashions, telling viewers exactly who each character is using only clothing. And the famous dinner scene both honors the original meaning of Hamlet and recontextualizes it in fascinating ways.

Join me by the fireside to hear the story known as the “Russian Cinderella,” which is funny and strange . . . and has the most unusual fairy godmother I’ve ever heard of.

This translation of the Russian fairy tale “Vaselesa the Beautiful” was done by Edith M. S. Hodgetts. Mrs. Hodgetts was born in Russia, though I could not discover the year. As a teen or young adult she moved to England, where she died in 1902. Her most famous book was Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar (1890), and the first story in it is “Vaselesa the Beautiful,” in which the Russian Cinderella meets Baba Yaga in the woods, is given the world’s most unusual flashlight, and manages to beat the odds with her especially helpful doll.

Other translations will spell the main character’s name as “Vasilisa” or render the title as “Vaselesa the Fair.” These are translator’s choices. I have preserved the original spelling and punctuation from Mrs. Hodgetts’ book so you can see how she wrote her version.