Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of SPACE

 By Dominic Newman
Illustrated by Ben Newman

Look at this book!  It's so 1950's!  But modern, too!  The cover has a lovely fabric texture with silver bits.  Some of the printed colours look like they dyed the fabric whereas others look like they're decals.  It's delightfully tactile and visually pleasing.

The facts inside are wonderfully up-to-date and thorough!  It's a real textbook laid out so that a kid could read and understand it.  It's so accessible that I read it to my 3 year old (but skip as many details as possible)

 This is one of our favourite graphics.  There's a full solar system on this page, plus a representation of the planets using round food items.  Every page relays the information in such a clear and accessible way.  My daughter often stands up on the couch and excitedly yells the facts back at us as we read it with her.  She really has a limited understanding of the information, but it'll come.  In the meantime, she still love, love, loves this book.

The pictures I've supplied do not do the book justice.  The graphic design throughout the book is astounding.  It's so well organized, especially considering the amount of information they cram in here.

The only problematic thing is that they really do include all facts, like animals sacrificed for science and the fact that the sun will explode one day and how if you get sucked into a black hole you'll turn into spaghetti.

I'm glad that they didn't skirt around these subjects, but it means that this might not be a good book for a very young, very anxious child.  Or you can just skip pages; that's what we do.

Scat Cat

 By Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Illustrated by Paul Meisel

This is a great early reader.  It's full of tons of easy words.  I read it with my daughter and point to the words that she should be able to read on her own.

In particular, she can read "Cat", so she can figure out "Scat".

Basically every animal and person tells the cat to scat except for the cat's owner because he loves the cat so much.


 It has lots of repetition.  The problem I usually find with repetition, though, is that my daughter is smart enough that she doesn't need to look at the words once she's heard the pattern.  She also has excellent memory and it is rare that we can read a book a second time without her already knowing how it goes.

This book had enough material that I can randomly ask her different words every time we read it. 

Do Not Open

 By Brinton Turkle

This book was so fantastic.  And we utterly destroyed it with a cup of tea.  Tragedy.

It's about a woman who lives alone by the beach with a cat and collects odds and ends

 The pictures are fantastic.  I yearn for a house decorated like hers.  Half of the book is just describing their lazy lifestyle, retired in a one bedroom cabin by the ocean listening to storms together.

The last few pages has them discovering a bottle with a monster inside.  The woman is not in the least bit afraid and defeats it easily.  She's granted a wish as a reward.

The pictures here are a little over the top and probably not appropriate for an anxious younger child, but the whole book is about conquering your fears, so it's a good book for anxious kids, too.

My severely anxious child loved this book.  But she's starting to develop an interest in scary things.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea

 By Judith Kerr

It finally came in the mail!  We love this book.

It's about a girl and her mum who let a tiger in to tea and he eats them out of house and home.

 But he's so polite, and of course they let him.  When their father comes home he decides that they had better have dinner at a cafe instead.

The girl cuddles with the tiger throughout the entire visit, and it's pretty adorable.  We've had this one for a day and I've read it five times already.

Too Many Cats

 By Sindy McKay
Illustrated by Meredith Johnson

This was a fantastic book that I randomly requested from the library because my daughter demanded more cat books.

It's a "We Both Read" book, meaning that the pages on the left have story, and the pages on the right have one or two words with a picture.

 The story is a pretty hokey one about a girl who wants a cat and dreams that she gets ten instead, each a different colour.  It means that it's teaching kids to sight-read colours and numbers instead of learn phonetically, which is okay.  You kind of have to learn both ways, because some of those numbers are impossible to sound out phonetically.

This book was a real hit.  Before I give it back, I think I'm going to photocopy some pages and cut them up for a mix-and-match activity with my daughter. 

Cats are Cats

 By Valeri Gorbachev

This book was fantastic. I wasn't expecting much, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It's about a woman who buys a cat that turns into a tiger, but no matter how big it gets, she loves it anyway.  Very simple writing.  Cute drawings.  Comical scenes.

 Her surprised face makes no sense in half of these pictures.  She's been living with the tiger for how long and suddenly she's surprised that he's huge?  I don't get it.

They decide to get a pet fish in the end that turns out to not be a fish.  And of course, they keep it and love it anyway.

This is a great basic message for children told in a simple but comical way.  It's especially great because it isn't condescending in the least.

Hairy Maclary Scattercat

 By Lynley Dodd

We've been going on a Slinky Malinki binge lately.  We had this in the house for twelve hours and it was read at least twelve times.

 Each page has a different cat that Hairy Maclary chases.  Each cat has a goofy double barrel name. A naming practice I had previously assumed was limited to Australians.

I found my daughter curled up on the couch reading the book aloud to herself, having memorized most of it.  She couldn't remember the names, though, so she made them up.  "Mamsy Pamsy" and "Anto Panto" etc.  SO ADORABLE.

Slinky Malinki, Open the Door

 By Lynley Dodd

YES!  Another Slinky Malinki book!  We were so happy to find this at the library.

Slinky and his pal Sticky Beak Sid open doors and make a mess!

 Every page that shows Slinky opening a door has the same text.  Once your audience learns it, they can chant along with you.  If you peek into the next room, you can guess where they're headed next.

Flip the page, and there's more lovely rhyming verse about the incredible mess that they make in the house.  They destroy everything!  There's a great punchline at the end of the book!

Tons of fun.

Mog and Me

 By Judith Kerr

This is definitely one of our favourites.  It's a book about a cat.  It has basic everyday activities.  There's one simple sentence per page.  The art is adorable.

 My daughter has always been crazy about this book.  It is one of the best baby books I've seen with drawings rather than pictures.

Hi, Cat!

 By Ezra Jack Keats

There are a few great things about this book.  First off, the pictures are great, even by Keats' standards.  They're more detailed than in "Snowy Day", not that I mind the simplicity of the latter.

 Secondly, the story is just an outing with cookie events, like this one.  Most of them involve a cat.  What makes it especially great is that all of Keats' books are about the same characters, and they're different ages in each book.

Lastly, there is very little description of the events.  The pictures tell most of the story.  So, it's a little difficult for a younger audience to get exactly what's going on, but for older kids it means that the story is communicated quickly and that they're engaging with it.  The pictures are actually important to 'read'.

Mostly, though, my kids are just crazy about cats.

Friday post - Halloween -Kwik sew 1141

This year's request: an orange cat with black stripes, but NOT a tiger.

It's basically impossible to get an orange tracksuit, so I made one.  I sewed stripes on rather than paint them, because I wanted it to look decent if I was going to go all out.

I made the stripes out of black ribbing.  I added cuffs to the pants, even though they weren't in the pattern.
The tail is temporary.  I may make a better one another time.  The ears are full of buckram and sewn in a curve so that they pop up.

Because I was so unsure of the ears, I didn't line the hood.  I wish I'd been able to, but it just wouldn't have worked out.

The whole thing cost me about $50 in the end, which isn't cheap, but isn't bad.

I've come across 3 different polyester tiger suits in the $10 range in the past month, but I'm glad I stuck it out and made this thing anyway.  I'm super happy with it.

Slinky Malinki

 By Lynley Dodd

This book is very, very good.  Our copy is a board book, but it's also available in paperback.

When we first read this to our Daughter at a year old, we changed the text so that she could understand it.  The written text is in metered, rhyming verse.  The meter is flawless, and the rhymes all work.  It is so not annoying to read.  It's actually fun to read.

Slinky Malinki is basically the best name for a sneaky cat.  The vocabulary is varied and a little advanced.  The illustrations are fantastic; Slinky has incredible body language on every page.

The story is hilarious and simple enough for a toddler to follow.  There are more in this series, and I really want to check them all out.

Friday Post - Bonjour les Amis

We found this show on Netflix.  It's fairly ancient; it spends the first ten minutes teaching kids how to use the VHS machine to pause and rewind.  Even without that segment, it's a pretty terrible show for kids.  All the character names are way too long for young beginners to pronounce, let alone remember.  They should have been named "Fille" or "Garcon".  It also is basically a course for adults with fun animals in it.  It doesn't go at a good pace for young kids, and the material is completely uninteresting.  My daughter tried really hard to like it, because it had a cat, but neither of us was really engaged.

It doesn't seem to be available on Netflix anymore, anyway.  But it got me started searching for French shows at the local library.

The Cat in the Hat

 By Dr. Seuss

We don't actually like this book that much.  As a kid I used to get fairly anxious about how he came in unannounced and messed up their house (in particular, their mum's dress).

Our daughter loves this book.  Which is probably good.  Hopefully it means that she's less neurotic than us.

Mog the Forgetful Cat

 By Judith Kerr

I found this book a little disappointing, but it's one of my husband's favourites.  It's a little dated, is meandering and has odd stuff in it that I skipped over when I first read it to my daughter.

 The writing in it is pretty advanced, especially considering this is a board book.  It's probably appropriate for ages three and up.

The art is pretty cute.  And it's a story about a cat.  My daughter will basically listen to any story about a cat with rapture.  Other books in this series are geared towards babies and are absolutely perfect for kids under two.  I think this was the first one in the series, and that's why it's so weak.


Explaining burglars to a toddler is difficult.

The Cat at Night

 By Dahlov Ipcar

This book gets requested often.  Partly because books about cats are particularly popular.

  Ipcar paints colourful folk-like paintings that are wonderful to look at.  Each painting is painted once as a night time silhouette, and then in full colours, to represent what the cat sees.  The reader is asked to guess what they will see on the next page.  It's engaging and exciting for kids.

The concept is really creative, the pictures are wonderful, and the text is really well written, too.  No annoying rhyming or awkward meter.  The words are simple enough for young children to understand.  I will gladly read this book as many times as it is requested.

I'm looking forward to adding more Ipcar books to my library.

http://www.exitfive.com/dahlov/