Cozy home : three-and-a-half stories (Bat, Cat, & Rat) Author: Dyckman, Ame | ||
Price: $23.08 |
Summary:
In three-and-a-half stories, friends and roommates Bat, Cat and Rat share, joke, and read together.
Illustrator: | Teague, Mark |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (01/15/24)
School Library Journal (+) (07/26/24)
Booklist (01/01/24)
The Hornbook (00/03/24)
Full Text Reviews:
School Library Journal - 07/26/2024 PreS-Gr 2—In three-and-a-half chapters, Dyckman and Teague use sentences and images that could be right out of a McGuffey Reader: "Bat, Cat, and Rat found a cozy home to share. 'Sharing is nice!' said Bat. 'It is,' said Cat. 'It is,' said Rat." For emerging readers, this is a fantastic start with lots of great reinforcement, and it just gets better. With similar sentence structures, the stories include one about their move into a house and picking rooms, another about practical jokes, and a third that takes on reading. Across the board, the book delivers on the "cozy" of the title. Cat and Rat are silly but Bat is the outlier, happy about everything, making the most of opportunities, and falling asleep under the stairs in the last "half" chapter. Teague scales back his style to simple shapes on clean white backgrounds, illustrating the occasional interior for snugness, and then offers wildly expressive facial reactions to help nudge context across. This is a charming early reader, a reminder of how mastery of the format invites children in not with vocabulary, but with story and meaning. VERDICT What a gift to reading, with one particular refrain acting as the recommendation: "Sharing is nice."—Ginnie Abbott - Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.