SCAT, CATS!
by Joan Holub & illustrated by Rich Davis
A marauding band of neighborhood cats of every color invades the house of a red-haired little girl and her tow-headed brother in this amusing easy reader from the talented Holub (The Garden That We Grew, below, etc.). The frolicking felines wreak havoc throughout the house before the children shoo them out, but then the house is a little too quiet and lonely, so the kids invite the cats back to stay under more controlled circumstances. The satisfying conclusion shows the kitties curled up asleep all over the children’s bedroom: “Fat cats purr all day. Our cats here to stay.” Holub uses patterned sentence structures, with rollicking rhythm, rhyming couplets, and repetition of key words providing lots of help for new readers. Delightfully loose watercolors by Davis (Tiny Goes to the Library, not reviewed, etc.) add humorous details and plenty of action, while providing picture clues and exact picture-to-text match. Thoughtful art direction varies the placement of text (appropriate for a reader at the 1.9 level) and encourages left to right flow across the pages. A model for the genre: a funny, satisfying story with solid educational underpinnings. A first choice for most libraries. (Easy reader. 5-7)