Decoder Ring | If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…Will He Want a Welfare Check?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While the What Next team is having a holiday, take this journey with our colleagues over at Decoder Ring. What Next will be back in your feed on Monday.
Adults have a long history of trying to find morals and lessons in children’s literature. But what happens when a seemingly innocent book about a boy and a hungry mouse becomes fodder for the culture wars? Over the last decade, Laura Joffe Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie has been adopted by some on the right as a cautionary tale about government welfare. In this episode, we explore the origins of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the history of adults extracting unintended meaning from children’s books, and try to figure out how this particular kid’s book became a Republican battle cry.
This episode was written by Cheyna Roth. It was edited by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung. It was produced by Sofie Kodner. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
In this episode, you’ll hear from author Laura Numeroff, book critic Bruce Handy, economist Rebecca Christie and former journalist Max Ehrenfreund.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. It has been a roller coaster of a November, so please forgive the team at what next for taking the day off. |
| 0:07.3 | But I wanted to bring you one of my favorite recent episodes of another Slate podcast, Dakota Ring. |
| 0:12.8 | This one starts off with an innocuous seeming Thanksgiving, but an innocent conversation over corn casserole spins into an interrogation of what happens when children's literature and the culture wars sit at the same table. |
| 0:27.8 | So kick up your feet, dig into your turkey, and let host Willa Paskin tell you what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. |
| 0:48.7 | Last Thanksgiving, Slate Senior producer Shana Roth and her family headed to Eastern Michigan to spend the holiday with her in-laws. |
| 0:53.7 | My sister-in-law, Jean, is maybe the best cook I've ever met in real life. She makes this corn casserole thing that I was originally skeptical of, but it is incredible. |
| 1:01.1 | Jean also has three kids, so she and Shana inevitably end up talking parenting. |
| 1:06.1 | After this particularly delicious dinner, we found ourselves joking about my current driving playlist. |
| 1:12.8 | I think, you know, we were talking about what your husband played in the car in the morning for your daughter. |
| 1:19.5 | That's Jean. And for the record, it's Stacey's mom, by Fountains of Wayne. |
| 1:29.8 | That's what my four-year-old loves. |
| 1:32.7 | But the conversation expanded from there. |
| 1:35.2 | We started talking about messages in different medias and books. |
| 1:38.8 | The classics were always my favorite. |
| 1:40.8 | Jean's a great book recommender. |
| 1:43.3 | She has thoughts on the hundreds of books she's read to her |
| 1:46.1 | children over the years. Since my daughter was born, Jean has sent us some real winners. But our |
| 1:51.8 | conversation took a surprising turn when Jean brought up this classic. If you give a mouse a cookie by Laura Joffy Numeroth. |
| 2:04.7 | If You Give a Mouse a Cookie came out in 1985 and has sold more than 15 million copies since then. |
| 2:11.6 | You probably know it. |
| 2:13.0 | A little boy meets a cute mouse who asks him for a cookie, sparking a chain reaction. |
| 2:18.3 | If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. |
... |
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