Richie's Picks: CAT SECRETS by Jef Czekaj, Balzer+Bray/Harpercollins,
January 2011, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-06-192088-2
"Krazy Kat peeking through a lace bandana
Like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eye Jack"
-- Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia
"'It has come to my attention that someone other than a cat may be reading
this book.'
"'Shame on you.'"
Look at how school librarians are far too often treated. Instead of
everyone taking advantage of their wealth of knowledge and seeking to
collaborate with them, they are so often viewed merely as a warm body who can take
over supervision of classes from one teacher after another after another so
that teachers can go have a smoke or hang out in the break room and gossip
about one another.
"'Hey, you! YES, YOU! You don't look much like a cat!'"
Knowing how they are so poorly mis-used, it would not be surprising to
find many school librarians developing quite a subversive sense of humor.
And these librarians are going to totally fall in love with this one.
"'How do we know if they are cats or not?'
"'We can test them!'
"'But how?'"
CAT SECRETS by popular cartoonist and underground DJ Jef Czekaj
(pronounced check-eye) is a subversively funny picturebook through which school
librarians will soon have young students trying their hardest to prove that they
are really cats -- by their having to mimic cat behaviors -- in hopes of
finding out what secrets the cat characters in the book are so determined to
keep away from birds, dogs, snakes, fishes, bears, boys, girls...and
especially mice.
"'Look, they're stretching just like cats do.'"
Now, if I were one of those school librarians, this is what I would do:
After reading this book to every class in the school, I would plot with the
students to have them watch the clock so that in every classroom in the
school the students would all suddenly launch into the cat nap test at 10 am on
the dot on Friday morning in order to freak out the teachers.
Then, for my next trick, I would have the students all coming up with
ideas for tests they could do for other animal secrets books -- dog secrets and
pig secrets and housefly secrets, etc.
Somebody is going to have a REALLY good time with this book.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_
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FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he
will Pick their books. You can figure that any review was written after
reading and dog-earring a free copy received. Richie retains these review
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools
and libraries.
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