The Children's Book Podcast · Matthew C. Winner

Expanding the Heart's Capacity with Matthew Burgess and Cátia Chien

·37 min·3 clips

Matthew Burgess describes meeting Chloe Zhao and how serendipity gives him hope in dark times.

Fireworks starts on a rooftop. Katya Chen remembers Lunar New Year firecrackers, older siblings, her grandfather's building, and the bright, slightly forbidden thrill of sparks opening the night. That memory sits at the center of the book. Matthew Burgess describes Fireworks as a picture book built from small adventures: waking up, school, play, bedtime, and then the rooftop. In his telling, the fireworks are not just spectacle. They are a shared childhood feeling, full of kabooms, river reflections, and a city gathered on the page. The host listens for how the book was made. A warm book talk turns into a craft question about how an illustrator meets a manuscript and senses life inside it. Chen answers through her sister. The manuscript sends her back to Brazil, to long summer days when two children wandering the neighborhood could slowly become a whole group. That memory lands fast. The episode keeps circling childhood time, when one adventure spills into the next before anyone checks the clock. Burgess names that freedom directly. He imagines the book giving readers a summer they can borrow, even in winter, with words and pictures pulling the season off the page. The conversation stays tender and unhurried. Under the craft talk is a bigger feeling: memory, art, and family can make a child's inner world roomier. The close turns outward with a line about cracks and light, then leaves young readers, artists, and adults with a simple nudge: make your mark before you feel perfect.

As heard by us

A tender picture-book conversation that keeps wonder at the center.

This episode treats Fireworks as more than a picture book chat. It moves from rooftop fireworks and summer wandering to the way words and illustrations can pull a reader back into wonder, and Matthew Winner gives Matthew Burgess and Catia Chien enough space to think aloud…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a picture-book conversation that remembers how wonder feels.

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