PEPPER'S JOURNAL

PLB 0-06-027619-3 paper 0-06-446723-6 This entry in the MathStart series investigates the concepts of calendar time through the events of a kitten’s first year. Lisa’s agreeable, first-person journal keeps track of important dates—the birth of the litter at Grandma’s, Lisa and younger brother Joey’s first visit to the week-old kittens, permission to keep a newborn kitten when it is ready to leave its mother, selecting and naming a kitten at when it is one-month-old, taking Pepper home at two months, and so on to Pepper’s first birthday. These milestones appear in attractively busy spreads that show the progression of Lisa’s family life on the left and Lisa’s journal of Pepper’s progress on the right. Many scenes will provoke smiles: Thanksgiving in November finds Pepper under the family’s table, tugging at an eight-month-old cousin’s blanket, while Lisa’s journal drawings show her reading Pepper his favorite book, Puss in Boots, as he rests on her quilt. The recurring monthly calendar highlights important dates; in this well-done book, readers also learn harder facts about what a growing cat needs and does—integral, everyday, and useful information presented in a way that reinforces notions about the passing of time as well as the functions of a calendar. (Picture book. 6-9)