The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Cartoonist Liana Finck Picks Three Favorite Children’s Books

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Liana Finck is a cartoonist and an illustrator who has contributed to The New Yorker since 2015. She is the author of several books, including the graphic memoir “Passing for Human.” Like many of her forebears at the magazine, Finck has also published works for children, and her recent book, “Mixed Feelings,” explores the ways that emotions are often confusing—a truth for readers of any age. “Kids’ books were my first experience of art. They’re really why I do what I do,” she tells David Remnick. Finck discusses her time interning for Maira Kalman, and she shares three “deep cuts” from writers associated with The New Yorker: Kalman’s own “What Pete Ate from A to Z”; William Steig’s “C D B!”; and “Tell Me a Mitzi,” by Lore Segal, with illustrations by Harriet Pincus.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Leanna Fink is a cartoonist who contributes to The New Yorker. She's also the author of the graphic memoir, Passing for Human and other books. Her work has a quality of being somehow whimsical and at the same time, kind of profound. And like many of her great forbearers at the magazine, she's also done children's books. Earlier this year, Leanna published a book called Mixed Feelings that explores, well, just that.

The ways that our emotions sometimes confuse us, and that's something that happens if you're four or you're 64. I asked Leanna Fink to join me and talk about some of the illustrators who have inspired her over time. Leanna, you've been contributing amazing work, amazing cartoons to the magazine for a decade now, which seems hard to believe,

and you've published children's books of your own. What's the overlap between cartoons for adults and children's books, if any? I think the children's book, as we know it, was kind of invented by an editor at Harper and Row named Ursula Nordstrom. She published E.B. White, these books just kind of like get to the heart of things. I would compare them to fairy tales. Right. Children's books are very often like fables. Yeah, fables. I think we could say that that's the root of children's books is Asap's fables. or things like that, they had a moral lesson.

Is that still the case in books that you're reading with your kids? More so, yeah, more, I would say more lesson, and we're a lot savier about, like, psychology now. So in some ways, the books are a lot more sophisticated and in other ways they're less weird, and that's a little bit sad. I think maybe the first Pat the Bunny and Good Night Moon is the book I think I've read most. in my life. Yeah, it's perfect. I think it's

possible that I've read that thousands of times to various kids of mine. How is becoming a mother changed your relationship to what you think makes a good kid's book? It has brought me back to the root

of why I love art. Kids books were my first experience of art. They're really why I do what I do. I loved them. I think I stopped loving them when it stopped being socially appropriate. But like, it's weird when you're a drawing person to stop looking at kids books because that's the main, like one of the real venues for people to draw stories. And that's what I do. It's really different from fine art and painting and

sculpture and stuff. So it's given me an excuse to get back to basics. And I'm also watching my kid and watching what he likes. And I'm realizing it's so much simpler than like what I try to do as an artist. I'm like always trying to go for like the real reach. Well, walk us through your selections. My understanding is that your first is by William Styg, who I even knew a little bit when I started as editor. So tell me about the William Styg book that you brought. I think it's one of the first ones he published. It's also kind of a deep cut. I was really debating bringing Sylvester and the Magic Pable, which is probably the first William Stig book I would recommend, but I'm assuming you've all read it. So,

I brought one called CDB that's kind of a little bit for kids and a little bit for grownups. And it's a book written in kind of puzzles where each word is represented by a letter. So he only says things that can be written just as letters. So the phrase C, see the B is written as the letter C, D, and B. And then he illustrates them with these kind of anarchic super emotional, super simple drawings that are not. or reach. Like, he always stayed true to, like, the most direct kind of drawing. And I think that's why he made such a good kid's book author, which is something he became, like, long after he'd been making cartoons for decades. So those came much later. Yeah. He was in his late 50s, I think,

when he started doing these storybooks. And there's another puzzle in the book. It's, I envy you, and it's spelled I, the letter N, dash the letter V, the letter U. And it's a picture of a plaintiff-looking boy talking to a much more confident, slightly older-looking boy who is eating a lollipop. And one nice thing about this book and Stieg's work in general is that he doesn't talk down to children. He uses big words. He talks about complex things. So envy probably isn't a word you would normally see in a name.

children's book. And he's boiling it down to make it so, so simple and so, like, essential. And to be something a child could absolutely relate to. Next up is another alphabet-based book. And this one is by another artist that I adore and who's published quite a lot in the New York, Mara Coleman. Tell me about this book. So this is called What Pete Ate from A to Z. And it's autobiographical. in that it's about a dog named Pete, who is Myra Kalman's dog. I brought this book because I think Myrakelman might be my favorite kid's book author and illustrator. And the first book that I read when I was for when I thought, I really, like, this is my favorite thing in the world.

And I want to do this was another book by her called Sayanara, Mrs. Cackleman. And I think it had come out that year. It was new, and it's so punk rock and it's so wild. Now, you know or knew Mara Coleman. You were an intern for her? Yeah. So I wrote both her and Roz Chast letters when I was like 16. I think I wrote to Roz first, and that began like the most meaningful correspondence in my life.

But I wrote to Myra a little bit later, and she let me come be her intern. What does an intern for an artist do? She had me organize her Moss collection and walk Pete. I'm speaking with Leanna Fink, more in a moment. Now, here's one that's been around for a while. Tell me Mitzie. What do you love about this? Tell me a Mitzie.

The motif in this book is that there's a little girl named Martha living in then modern times, and she says to her parents, tell me a Mitzie. And then they tell her a story about a little girl named Mitzie, who's growing up, I want to say, in the 40s or 50s. And this is a collaboration between... Lori. Siegel wrote it and Harriet Pinkis illustrated it.

Lori Siegel, everyone needs to know as a writer writer. She was a child of the Holocaust, born in Vienna, I think. And Lori Siegel wrote for the New Yorker pretty frequently and died within the last year or so. A year ago in October, yeah. And here's a little bit from the first story and tell me a Mitzie that I really like. The doorman helped Mitzie take the stroller down the steps. And Mitzi pushed Jacob to the corner of the street and called taxi. A taxi stopped, and the driver got out and came around to their side.

He lifted Jacob out of the stroller and put him in the back seat and lifted Mitzi in and folded up the stroller and put it in the empty front seat and walked around to his side and got in and said, where to? Grandma and grandpa's house, please, said Mitzi. Where do they live? asked the driver. I don't know, said Mitzi. So the driver got out and came around. to the other side and took the stroller from the front seat and unfolded it on the sidewalk and took Jacob out and put him in the stroller and took Mitzi out and put her on the sidewalk and

walked around to his side and got in and drove away. So on the first page, the words are next to a full page image of Mitzi walking out of her building and she's pushing this stroller and she's passing all these kids playing on the street and she's wearing the iconic snowsuit with purple with orange stars on it that I

remember so well from when I was a kid and everything's just so like a little cabbage batch doll ugly and also

just so appealing and so delicious and I think Lori Siegel is really wise she was a mother and

I think she knew that words are just like comforting to kids and she wrote I think she intentionally

made this story a little bit tedious there's a ton of tedious detail. And I think it's really soothing for kids, but I still love these pictures a lot. And as an adult, the things I love in these illustrations are the same things I loved as a kid. And that's so interesting. Like, I think when we look at pictures, it brings us back to exactly who we were when we were kids, which is magic. Do you think cartoons, which began, you know,

in satirical magazines and probably on cave walls will last forever, or is it a form that's challenged by the winnowing of magazines and the gigantic growth of the Internet? It's going to last forever, even if we're doing it secretly. I think it goes so deep. It's interesting. Like, people, like in the inspirational moment that we were in recently, maybe still are, I don't know, people would be like,

Why should everyone draw? Like, that's a question I would get asked. And I'd be like, not everyone should draw. That's ridiculous. Like, everyone's different. I should draw. But I'm kind of changing my mind. I think it's, like, so essential.

I think it's very similar to music. It's just, like, something that comes out of us. Leanna Fink, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Leanna Fink's illustrated books include mixed feelings and questions without answers. You can find some of her cartoon at New Yorker.com, and you can subscribe to the New Yorker there as well.

New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining us today. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul,

and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.