Conquering Cat-a-Phobia: Purrfect Friends (Martha Speaks) adapted bty KIaren Barss

Martha and Skits were napping when they heard voices in the backyard.

"Adorable!" Helen said.

"Isn't he? We just got him from the shelter." Alice said.

Martha perked up. "Shelter! Come on, Skits! Let's go meet the new puppy!"

But Helen calls a halt to the introduction to the newcomer.

Helen warns Martha that she shouldn't prejudge the new pet because he's different. Martha is incensed at the insinuation that she, definitely a different dog, would be guilty of such a social faux pas. But then...

"CAT!" GROWLED Martha.

"GRRRRRRRoss!"

"There's different..." Martha said to Skits, and then there's... CAT!"

But Martha reckons without knowing how cute a kitty can be. It isn't long before the kitty has Martha wrapped around his little paddy paw and Martha has found an unlikely friend. But she feels like she's letting down all of dogdom in adopting a kitty-cat pal, so she sheepishly tells the kitty the way things are in the real world.

"Look, you're a nice kid," she said. "In a different world, maybe we could be buddies. But you're a cat and I'm a dog, and in this neighborhood I just can't socialize with you."

But kitty love conquers all, and soon Martha's mind is changed. Why can't she be friends with the kitty if she wants to?

"You're prejudiced!" she scolds poor Skits when he objects.

Kitties work a magic of their own, and in the forthcoming Martha Speaks: Purrfect Friends (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) Martha learns her lesson and is not shy about passing it along to Skits cat-egorically, so to speak.

And, as always, the verbally gifted Martha also shares her new vocabulary with young readers in an appended word search activity in the latest featuring the world's most loquacious canine.