Reading With Your Kids Podcast · Jedlie Circus Productions, Inc

From Silly to Profound: Kobe Yamada on Writing Picture Books that Start Conversations

·57 min·4 clips

“Don’t yuck other people’s yum” becomes the episode’s clearest shorthand for empathy and restraint.

1. Reading With Your Kids discusses Kobe Yamada’s picture book Others, which centers on empathy, perspective, and conversation across a hedge. 2. Kobe Yamada is the guest author, Jedley hosts the show, and Charles Santoso is the illustrator whose art shows imagined scenes beyond the barrier. 3. The episode asks what picture books can do for children and adults when a story is built to start hard conversations. 4. Yamada says he wrote the manuscript first, but he worked closely with Charles Santoso through “hours of conversations” about the book. 5. He describes the story as a conversation between two characters on the left-hand side of the page while the reader can see over the hedge. 6. The hedge represents a physical barrier and a psychological barrier at the same time. 7. Yamada says the opening is deliberately “absurd and silly” before the story becomes more sincere. 8. He says that shift lets the book move toward “more understanding, more compassion, more empathy.” 9. Jedley recalls a childhood store memory in which an adult assumed Chinese speakers were talking about her. 10. Yamada uses that example to talk about assumptions, insecurity, and the fact that people often project their own fears onto others. 11. He extends the same idea to foods like broccoli and oysters, which people reject before trying. 12. He also points to travel, different neighborhoods, and different birthdays as examples of learning from other ways of living. 13. Jedley shares the motto “don’t yuck other people’s yum,” which Yamada says contains “so much wisdom.” 14. Yamada says parents and children both benefit from the same story because picture books are written for a “dual audience.” 15. He describes reading as a safe way to start conversations when a child has had a difficult day at school or with a friendship. 16. He says his books are not a “solve for huge problems,” but they can be “a little stepping stone” in ongoing conversation. 17. The conversation is warm, reflective, and personal, with Jedley often adding memories or examples from his own family. 18. Yamada’s answers are practical and specific, especially when he talks about curiosity, food, and neighborhood-level connection. 19. Listeners who like picture books, parent-child reading, and empathy themes will likely enjoy this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a fast factual interview with no family or reading advice may skip it.

As heard by us

A warm, reflective conversation about books that invite curiosity and connection.

Kobe Yamada talks about picture books that open doors instead of closing them. The discussion of Others keeps circling back to curiosity, connection, and the need to notice difference without turning it into distance. He also returns to What Do You Do With an Idea?

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Why you'd press play

A warm picture-book conversation about curiosity, difference, and how reading together can make families stronger, closer, and kinder.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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