No Tiptoe Through the Catnip! Bad Kitty Goes on Vacation by Nick Bruel

"I WON! I WON! I WON!

I WON!

A FREE TRIP TO SOME PLACE CALLED LOVE LOVE ANGEL KITTY WORLD!"

Uncle Murray is on a roll! A free vacation! What a deal!

But Uncle Murray is not the only one. Bad Kitty springs wide awake from her catnap.

BOI-OI-OING!

Bad Kitty has got to go! She's read all the Love Love Angel Kittyy books.

She's got all the merch... including the Love Love Angel Kitty World toilet seat and matching underpants!

But when he agrees to take Bad Kitty along on his all-expense-paid vacation, it's no walk in the catnip park. When Uncle Murray shows up at the airport, he learns that cats are not allowed unless they are in a cat carrier. When he reappears with bleeding wounds and Bad Kitty finally inside a carrier, he's informed that the carrier must fit under the passenger's seat. There's quite a disagreement at that point, and Uncle Murray decides to take the gate agent's suggestion and drive to Love Love Angle Kitty World, where they arrive three days later, only to learn that Kitty World doesn't allow... cats.

It's no more Mr. Nice Guy for Uncle Murray as he disguises Bad Kitty as his son Murray, Jr., who unfortunately is only tall enough for one ride--The Tunnel of Love Love Angel Kitty Love!

After fourteen rides through the tunnel featuring every terrible Kitty Love tunnel tune, Uncle Murray needs some sustenance--a foot-long salami sandwich, only to discover that the only food on the menu is Love Love Angel Kitty pizza....!, and Wait! His money is gone and his credit card is maxed out

and... it's off to the Love Love Angel Kitty World Hoosgow for the two of them. . ., where he realizes that he has run a-fowl of the gangsta cabal of evil roosters who control not only the entire Love Love Angel Kitty World franchise but the entire legal system of the states in which they operate, and . . .

Well, you get the idea! This is another of Nick Bruel's hilarious graphic novels starring Bad Kitty and Co., in Bad Kitty Goes On Vacation (Graphic Novel) (Roaring Brook Press, 2020). All's well that ends well with Bad Kitty and his weird feline friends delivering to Uncle Murray a foot-long salami sandwich and a tape of his favorite TV series, Bowling for Salami. The comic author-illustrator Nick Bruel provides his famous feline character and human associates in a funny series of take-off tropes on mass transportation and crooked theme park operators which are as sharp as a cat's claw, complete with words and music to the "Love Love Angel Kitty Theme Song."

Easy and silly enough for most primary-grade readers, Bruel's latest in this New York Times best-selling series is perhaps even more chuckle-inducing for the adults who read it aloud to them.

Roots: Gus & Me by Keith Richards

Who knew?

Before there was "Satisfaction" and "Brown Sugar," there was "Malaguena" and Grandpa Gus.

Keith Richards, rhythm guitarist and co-writer with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, first heard a guitar played by his grandfather, Theodore Augustus Dupree, "Grandpa Gus" to Keith. An only child. little Keith loved to spend the day with his grandfather "who lived in a house full of instruments and cake." Gus, who had led a dance band called Gus Dupree' and his Boys, played piano, violin, and saxophone, but it was his guitar that sounded best to his admiring grandson. Gus like to take Keith for long walks with his dog, Mr. Thomas Wolff, sometimes talking, and sometimes just singing or humming, symphonies or jazz ballads or hot dance tunes. Once they walked all the way to London, to a shop that made and repaired musical instruments, and Keith was never the same.

MY EYES FOLLOWED A LINE OF GUITARS THAT SNAKED AROUND THE ROOM ON A CONVEYOR BELT. IT WAS MAGIC. AND RIGHT THEN, RIGHT THERE, I FELL IN LOVE WITH INSTRUMENTS.

WHEN GUS AND I GOT BACK TO HIS HOUSE, I TOOK A LONG LOOK AT THAT GUITAR THAT ALWAYS SAT ON TOP OF THE PIANO. IT SEEMED MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN EVER. ALL I WANTED WAS TO MAKE THE STRINGS GO. BUT I COULDN'T REACH IT.

"WHEN YOU'RE TALL ENOUGH, YOU CAN HAVE A GO," GUS SAID.

ONE DAY I FELT LIKE I WAS TALL ENOUGH TO GRAB IT.

"ALL YOURS," GUS SAID.

HE SAT BESIDE ME. "WHEN YOU CAN PLAY "MALAGUENA," HE SAID, "YOU CAN PLAY ANYTHING."

With Gus's lessons, Keith worked day after day at the difficult Spanish song, until at last Gus nodded.

"I THINK YOU'VE GOT THE HANG OF IT," GUS SAID.

And indeed he had. Keith Richards' lovingly crafted memoir of his Grandpa Gus, Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar (Little, Brown, and Company, 2014), portrays the story of how a grandfather passed along his love and his love of music to his talented grandson, and the rest is, as we say, rock and roll history. Richards' writing has its own quiet rhythm and harmony as he reveals through the eye and voice of a child how a grandparent gave him the best of himself, his time and his talent and his love for music. Paired with the evocative illustrations of Richards' daughter, Gus's namesake Theodora Dupree Richards, and with family photos and a CD which features Keith's performance of "Malaguena," just as Gus taught it to him, this is a memorable book for youngsters who perhaps don't know they are music lovers yet.  "Told so naturally and with such sweet verve, readers may not notice that this is the legendary guitarist of the Rolling Stones." says Kirkus in their starred review. "A beautiful example of artistic bookmaking, a story of family love and lore, and the magic of music personified in a way that's utterly accessible to children."

Picture That! The First Drawing by Mordicai Gerson

Some of the oldest drawings ever found were made more than 30,000 years ago in a cave in southern France.

In that same cave there was a footprint of an eight-year-old child.

The juxtaposition of that child's footprint and that paleolithic drawing is the jumping-off point for Mordicai Gerstein's elegant picture book which imagines that first human artist picking up a burnt stick from the edge of the fire and creating the first human art.

But before there is art, there must be an artist, someone who could see what is real in his mind and imagine reproducing it as a painting, and  in Gerstein's telling of it, he is a young boy who loves to watch animals, with his wolf dog at his heels,  looking at a distant woolly mammoth and seeing the shape of that beast in the changing clouds above him.

No one else "sees" what he sees in the clouds and in the shapes of the rocks around him.

"Papa! That cloud looks like a woolly mammoth!"

"It looks like a cloud to me," says his father. "Like a cloud."

"Why can't they see what I see?" the boy wonders.

At night the shadows of the dancing flames from the fire circle looks like running horses to the boy, but although no one else sees  the galloping herd, the boy picks up a charcoal stick and following the curves of the rocky wall, begins to sketch out the shape of one, and then many running horses. The family look at each other and chuckle at the play of this curious child, but then, as he fills in his drawing with a husky, tusky mammoth, someone sees something familiar there.  It is a mammoth.

"This.... is magic!"

"No, Papa. I'm just showing you...."

Caldecott Medalist Mordecai Gerstein (for The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) captures that moment in time which someone, perhaps a child, made the enormous intellectual leap from something visualized in the mind to a concrete, created thing that others can see  and someone can use.  All human creation comes from a personal mental image that is reproduced in the material world, from a carefully shaped spear point to the internet, and Gerstein uses his immense artistic talent as a visual storyteller to take the young reader along to witness such an event.  Using parallel characters, a modern boy with his dog trailing behind and his drawing pencils in his back pocket and the cave boy with his shaggy wolf-pup and his burnt stick, Gerstein takes the modern reader back into a distant historic time, but the same place in the modern mind from which a child artist takes up a crayon to draw a car or an airplane.

"And it's still MAGIC!" says the author.

Gerstein's  latest, The First Drawing (Little, Brown, 2013), displays the artist's skill with word and art, his fine draftsmanship and his skillful use of media, blackline and acrylics, to give a feeling of movement, light and shadows, to the dusky depths of the cave and its walls which provide a canvass for the beginnings of art itself. "Artists see the world differently, but Gerstein suggests their true gift lies in allowing others to share in their visions," says Publishers Weekly. "Solid storytelling, satisfying narrative circularity, and masterful, creative illustrations make this an inspiring story for young artists," adds Kirkus Reviews, and Children's Literature calls it , "another must buy for real library and pre-school and lower grades use."

Gerstein's illustrated author's note provides more of the story of the discovery of  stone age cave art  in those caves of France, making this book a good one to pair with another Caldecott winner's, Emily Arnold McCully's The Secret Cave: Discovering Lascaux.

Tales from the Campaign Trail: Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel

NEXT WEEK, OLD KITTY WILL LEAVE OFFICE* AND GIVE UP HIS ROLE AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD CAT CLUB.

WHY? IT'S NOT JUST BECAUSE HE'S OLD AND TIRED. IT'S ALSO BECAUSE HE WILL HAVE SERVED TWO FULL TERMS IN OFFICE WHICH IS THE LONGEST ANY KITTY IS ALLOWED TO BE PRESIDENT.

And that means... Bad Kitty's moment has come. She had wisdom. She has a persuasive personality. (Mwroour! Hiss! FFFTTT!) And she has an issue--the invasion of her neighborhood by stray cats who seem to be occupying the trash cans along the street. And it seems she has a wily and wise campaign manager, her ever-patient owner who is more than willing to instruct her in the ways of politics.

First, he explains, there is that little matter of an ELECTION!

WHY, EVEN BEFORE YOU GET ELECTED TO BE PRESIDENT, YOU HAVE TO WIN ANOTHER ELECTION JUST SO YOU CAN HAVE THE HONOR OF RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The ever-willing Uncle Murray steps in to offer technical advice on little items like running for the nomination of your party. Party affiliations are easy to establish--right and left, right? Right and left sides of the street in this case. Bad Kitty soon has a rival for the nomination from the other side--BIG Kitty, who is the winner, paws down in the contest for BABY kissing (just as soon as Baby is done with her her French fries). Now it's on to the general election.

Just when Bad Kitty is getting down and dirty at the grassroots (NO! KITTY, NO! That's NOT what I meant!) another political consultant is called in to draw the veil over that scene, Edna Prunelove, who comes forth to offer campaign advice, and Bad Kitty, done with her digging, is off to try to garner an endorsement from Old Kitty and do some door-to-door campaigning. Chatty Kitty is all too eager to talk, but when opponent Big Kitty opens his door, Bad Kitty is so enraged by his imperturbability (whatcha bet his fur never moves in a hurricane?) and annoying Stepford cat smile, that she goes into one of her famous cat fits.

"MEOWR FFT FFT HISS SPIT REOWR!"

The next thing she knows the photo of her little off-message gaff is on the front page with the headline...

HISSY-FIT! CAT CANDIDATE FREAKS OUT!

...and the video is on the nightly news and going viral on VueTube. Bad Kitty fires her campaign manager.

But Uncle Murry steps into the breach with a little consulting on raising funds for the media campaign--complete with the skinny on PACs and 527 Groups, and soon Bad Kitty has the funds to come up with her own image-morphing video suggesting that Big Kitty is a not just a dog of a candidate but is perhaps an dog in kitty clothing! This campaign is proving full of dirty tricks...and then comes the big DEBATE, moderated by Strange Kitty, who suddenly seems more normal than the two candidates.

At long last comes the actual election day. But, whoa! There are challenges to a voter's registration, and some strange ballot irregularities, and the outcome is clouded, and then... the missing absentee vote turns up just as the polls are about to close!

If all of this sounds more than vaguely familiar to those of us who are worn out with robo-calls, it all points to the comic skills of Bad Kitty's quirky creator, Nick Bruel, whose newest, Bad Kitty for President (Roaring Brook, 2012), somehow manages to make the electoral process pointedly hilarious.

With this chapter book format that takes his cranky Kitty into new territory, populated by both beginning chapter primary readers just venturing out of the picture book phase and older middle readers who may have thought they were too mature for Bad Kitty books. Bruel continues to create comic publications that engage readers, from preschoolers to adults, in laugh-out loud stories. His forte lies equally in his comic art skills and in his keen comic sense that poignantly pokes gentle fun at both kitty and human foibles. "With their trademark wit, Bruel and his bad Kitty are back," says Booklist's reviewer of Bruel's latest.

Two Voices Are Better Than One: You Read to Me and I'll Read to You: Very Short Fables to Read Together by Mary Ann Hoberman

HERE'S A BOOK
...AESOP'S FABLES.
TALES WHERE TURTLES
TURN THE TABLES.

IN THIS BOOK WE HAVE TWO CHOICES.
IN THIS BOOK WE HAVE TWO VOICES.

YOU TAKE ONE VOICE;
I'LL TAKE THE OTHER.
THEN WE READ TO ONE ANOTHER.

TILL WE REACH THE FABLE'S MORAL,
THEN WE MAKE THE VOICES CHORAL.

Mary Ann Hoberman's latest in her notable You Read to Me and I'll Read to You series, titled You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Fables to Read Together (Little, Brown, 2010) follows the familiar format in presenting some of the better known fables--"The Hare and the Tortoise," "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,"--and some less well-known tales--"The Ant and the Dove," "The North Wind and the Sun," and "The Dog in the Manger"--with the dual voiced parts separated by a vertical line and printed in a different-colored font until the statement of the moral, which is done up in a third color for joint voices.

Hoberman's rhymes are simple and easily understood as they re-tell most of Aesop's famous fables in a way accessible to any age, and Michael Emberley's gentle and humorous watercolored illustrations help to bring home the ancient wisdom of these oldest tales in human literature with morals as applicable today as they were three millennia ago.

This book belongs in elementary library and classroom collections, of course, and is also of special worth to teachers of those upcoming summer activities for children--sleepaway- and day-camps, vacation church schools, and summer school programs. Good for oral reading practice, good for literary awareness, good material for group theatrical performances, and plain good advice for living, this latest in this popular series joins You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together, You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Mother Goose Tales to Read Together, and You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Scary Tales to Read Together as fun and educational read-aloud activities for children.

Songs of the Book: I Am the Book, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Who's rich?
The boy who has a book he hasn't read yet.
The girl with a tower by her bed....
Her life starts everywhere.

April is Poetry Month, and notable editor Lee Bennett Hopkins, the dean of children's poetry publishing, has selected thirteen modern poems which celebrate the adventure and fun of reading. Artist Diego Herrera gets in on the fun with bright acrylic illustratons which personify the familar form of book as a pirate ship, a whale's tail, a treasure chest of riches, as poets explore the reading experience from a child's point of view.

This book is the best! I woke up this morning to read it before I got dressed. This book is so cool! It's the first thing I grabbed after school.

The just-published I Am the Book (Holiday House, 2011) features familiar authors such as Jane Yolen, who's imagination vivifies the reading experience as "Words/Nudge each other/like bumper cars/at the fair"....while Kristine O'Donnell celebrates the quiet side when she says "If you have a book...this great new book to read/Who needs a window seat?" Bennett's appendix offers thumbnail biographies of each of his poets and his selections offer plenty of instructive examples of poetic language--alliteration, onomatopoeia, simile and metaphor--and all of them offer vivid word pictures to delight the mind in the way that only a book can.

This book is just right. I'm reading it by flashlight deep into the night.