Kate, the Cat and the Moon

Title: Kate, the Cat and the Moon
Author : Almond, David
Illustrator: Lambert, Stephen
Publisher: Random House Children's Books, 2004
Genre: Picture Book
Age Range: k-2

Summary: This book is about a young girl, Kate and her dream. In the middle of the night, Kate awakes to a white cat calling "meow." She goes to meet the cat and from there, magic happens. Kate turns into a cat too! They go on a magical journey through the town, the moon even turns into a cat! A page that turns out of the book shoes the two cats flying through the air, a shoe house, and airplanes that are birds! When Kate goes back home, and stars go away she wakes up to meet her family for breakfast. As they talk about their dreams, Kate only responds with a "meow."

Response:This picture book was really enjoyable. The full page spreads really brought the action to life! The moon itself takes up one whole page! It looks as if Lambert used colored pencils for his drawings. I really enjoy this because it makes the pictures look more "dream-like." I also enjoy how on certain pages Lambert and Almond teamed up to make the pages look like comics (where Kate turns into a cat, and then into a human.) Their creativity runs wild in this book, as it should. I thought it was a great idea of them to do a few pages with just pictures. This really helps the reader understand what Kate is seeing in her dream. The reader gets engrossed in the dream! One last thing, on the page where Kate climbs back into her bed, there is a book! This is one of my favorite elements, because to me, it is saying that a book can take to places you have never dreamed of!

Teaching Ideas: I wish I could use this book in a high school classroom, but unfortunately, I think it would work best in an Elementary class. This book would be so wonderful to use to get children to play pretend! What a better way to talk about imagination than through dreams? This book could also work well with talking about dreams. Students could discuss what happens in their dreams, maybe even keep a dream log, and then write a story or draw a picture based off their notes! This was a pleasure to read! I actually was smiling ear to ear (and looking quite goofy) while reading it in the library! -jeana