Big Cat, Little Cat by Elisha Cooper

 

Picture Book

Big Cat, Little Cat by Elisha Cooper published by Roaring Brook Press (2017)

Cooper tells a simple story of change, and the inevitable passing of a loved pet. Big cat enjoys their days, and then a new companion is added to the mix, little cat. They enjoy their days together, getting up to the usual cat activities (cleaning themselves, staring at birds, and occasionally acting wild). One day the older cat goes away and doesn't come back. The cat's passing is hard on the other cat, and the human family who hadn't been seen until now, but they continue with their lives, a new cat comes along, and the cycle begins again.

Cooper keeps both the text and the illustrations simple, mostly just using black and white colors except on full page spreads and after the older cat's passing. It's a tough topic to broach, but Cooper does an excellent job in conveying the joy in life up until the older cat's passing and, despite how hard it is after a loved one passes, life will go on and it will get better.

I've used this in my library when parents have asked for books to help deal with the passing of a pet. In the United States, there is a good chance the average family owns a pet of some sort, and eventually for one reason or another they will leave and not return. This book is great beyond the usefulness of teaching kids about life and death, and I think that's what makes it exceptionally good to tactfully help kids cope with that kind of loss. It's really a charming book, and while it invites meaningful conversations with the kids, I'd really recommend anyone read this book.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science Verse by Jon Scieszka

Image
  Poetry Book Science Verse  written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. Published by Viking (2004) When the science teacher says "they can hear the poetry of science in everything" one student is cursed/gifted to hear poetry in a variety of scientific topics. Scieszka adapts many different classic children's songs (It's Raining, It's Pouring, I've Been Working on The Railroad) and nursery rhymes (Mary Had a Little Lamb, Hey Diddle Diddle) into silly science verses in this collection of science poems. Scieszka uses many classic tunes that kids would be familiar with, and the adaptations don't lose too much of the cadence of their original works. This is a follow-up work to Scieszka and Lane's 1995 book, Math Curse , and the duo have only improved here. Scieszka and Lane have collaborated on over a dozen projects, and both can provide bizarre and hilarious moments in this book and others. Smith uses mixed media here, as he did in one of their
Read more

Poetry Collection Evaluation and Findings

Image
I looked at every 6 books in the 811 section of our non-fiction (North American poetry). I first found that we have a lot of books with incorrect Dewey numbers...almost all the books I looked at were in 811.54 (North American poetry of the latter half of the twentieth century), but some were written in different centuries, and some not reviewed here but observed were from authors outside of North America. One might be inclined to simplify the children's poetry section to just 811, but then that leaves out the English (not North America) poets in 821. We also have one Spanish poetry book in 861. I don't have a great solution for this problem at the moment. I do see another problem in our collection: our collection has a lot of older titles, but not so many titles from the last ten years. I don't think we've done a great job of keeping up with new titles in the poetry section, and we often only get the breakthrough books (award winners like The Undefeated, or books that r
Read more

Guts Book Discussion

Image
  Book Discussion In my group, we talked about Raina Telgemeier's most recent graphic memoir, Guts . I prepared by reading the book, refreshing myself on some of Raina's biographical information from her website, and seeing what she is up to right now. At the moment, her art is on exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The exhibit, "Facing Feelings," is all about the emotions Raina is able to convey in her art. Raina's use of emanata came up in discussion, a term made up by cartoonist Mort Walker in his Lexicon of Comicana  originally to describe the squiggly lines above a character's head, but now more generically applies to all sorts of squiggles, marks and symbols in comics. We all agreed that Raina was able to convey a lot of emotion, and did focus on the facial expressions used, some like subtle shifts of the eyes, and others an aura of dread with eyes changing color and teeth clenched (big emotions here). My only expectations going i
Read more