Title: See the Cat: Three Stories About a Dog
Author: David LaRochelle
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Copyright & Publishing Date: 2020
Audience: ages 4 - 8
Lexile: AD260L
Awards: ALA Notable Children's Books (2021), Theodor Seuss Geisel Award (2021)
Starred Reviews: Booklist (09/01/20), Kirkus Reviews (08/01/20), Publishers Weekly Annex (10/19/20), School Library Journal (01/01/21)
Summary: In this humorous fantasy book that adult readers will enjoy for the satire on early easy reader books, a dog named Max interacts with the book. Told in three stories, the first story, "See the Cat" has Max the dog insisting to the book that it is telling the wrong story since Max the dog can only be seen. In the second story, "See the Snake", the book has Max being confronted by an angry snake and Max needs to figure out how to solve his problem quickly. Max is finally happen with the third story, "See the Dog". But once again, the book tries to tell the story in a way that Max does not want the story to be told. Kids will enjoy the humor in the book and the outside the box thinking Max does to outsmart the book.
Categories/Genre: This book is an easy reader book because it uses its illustrations to support the text in the book. It also won the Geisel Award which is an award given to Beginning Readers (Easy Readers). I included this book because of the humor. It is funny how the dog and the book interact with each other and they each try to best the other.
Title: Fox the Tiger
Author: Corey R. Tabor
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Copyright & Publishing Date: 2018
Audience: ages 4 - 8
Lexile: 240L
Awards: ALA Notable Children's Books (2019), Theodor Seuss Geisel Award (2019)
Reviews: Kirkus Reviews (06/15/18), School Library Journal (08/01/18), Horn Book Guide (Spring 2019)
Summary: After Fox reads a book about tigers, fox decides he wants to become a tiger. So he paints stripes on himself. When he meets his friend Turtle, Turtle decides he wants to be a race car. When Rabbit joins them, he wants to be a robot. Then rain spoils their fun and play. Fox becomes happy when Squirrel wants to be a fox.
Categories/Genre: This book is an easy reader because of the use of pictures to help with the understanding of the text. It also won a Geisel Award which is for beginning readers and it is part of the "I Can Read!"series. It can also be an animal story/fiction since the animals talk and act like humans. This book I included because to the message of being who you are. But it also has a positive take on accepting others when they tell you they are different than what you perceive them to be.
