Cat Talk

Cat Talk

Authors Patricia MacLachlan and Emilu MacLachlan Charest

Illustrator Barry Moser

Katheren Tegan Books 2013

32 pages

Children’s Poetry book

This book is about different cats and the lives that they lead when no one is watching them. Some cat sneak in windows, others creep through the night, and some even lay on wedding dresses! However some cats are quiet and some are timid, some are the boss, and some even like mice. There at cats that like to romp and play, and cats that were born in the hay. There are Grey cats, black cats, even multi colored cats. Cats love people, and people love cats, however to find the most interesting cat of all you’ll have to read Cat Talk.

                The illustrations in this book are nice, there very simple, and are colored. The medium used in this book was transparent watercolor on hand made paper from England. Actually it was interesting because it gave in great detail in the back of the book how the illustrations were made, and on what type of paper. As well as the type of font used and who made it. I liked that it was so detailed for the reader. The text in this book is easy to read. It is mostly text that flows down the page like a typical poem. However there are some poems that lead over onto another page. The illustrations are mostly on two pages, the picture just rolls right onto the other page. The pictures are big and bold and easy for the reader to understand.

                Classroom connections for this story can be fun for your students. One could be for the poem Tough Tom it’s about a cat that snuck into a house because the window was left open. The students could group together and write about different things they might find in the house if they were Tom going into a strange new house. Another connection is with the poem Alice. Alice is a cat that loves bath time and likes eating the soap bubbles! The students could draw a picture of their favorite part of bath time and then write a sentence describing what they drew. Lastly the students could do a compare and contrast of two of their favorite poems in the story and tell how those two cats and the places they lived were alike and different.