January 15, 2025
Fun-loving, hard-hatted felines romp through difficulties to collaborative triumph. Starting with the blueprint endpapers, this book offers readers plenty to pore over as a kitty crew builds a perfect cat condo. Though the workers wear Day-Glo construction vests, sharp eyes will spot the color of their fur underneath. The cats are organized both by fur and hat color. "Yellow cat. Green hat." "Green cat. Orange hat." The laboring felines add brief commands in speech balloons presented in a sans serif font ("Dig this." "Clear that"), making every four lines a rhythmic, rhyming quatrain. Readers who prefer vehicles to animals will delight in seeing the bulldozers, dump truck, forklift, and hydraulic crane in action. Some workers are more interested in having fun than in getting the job done, like the green cat happily wading in a pool of concrete and the orange cat blithely juggling bricks. This OSHA-ignoring carelessness results in a spectacular accident ("BOOM! CRASH! SPLAT!") and an exclamation ("RATS!")--a reference to the rodents who can be found in every scene. But now cats and rats all "work together," clean up, get dressed up, and celebrate their success with a ribbon cutting. Bright illustrations reminiscent of Richard Scarry's work will stand up to the rereads sure to be requested. A message of determination and cooperation, conveyed with a kid-friendly combo of colors, trucks, and cute kittens.(Picture book. 3-6)
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March 28, 2025
K-Gr 1-Despite a cat-astrophic collapse partway through, the construction of a stylish bungalow complete with scratching posts is the centerpiece for this frisky feline construction crew. In this first "Cats in Hats" romp, written entirely (except for sound effects) in two-word sentences, there is a lot going on in Bardhan-Quallen's text. While the dialogue is constructed to clarify the difference between a nearby "this" and a more distant "that" ("Load this." "Move that"), the parallel captions set up a predictable color sequence, so that, for example, "Yellow cat./ Green hat./ Green cat./ Orange hat."/ Orange cat. / Blue hat" and so on. Along with views of heavy machinery on the job, not to mention glimpses of brick-juggling and other tomfoolery, sharp-eyed young viewers will notice in Hernandez's bright illustrations that the mischievous rats who cause the climactic, page-filling BOOM! CRASH! and SPLAT! give the kitty construction workers an active assist in making repairs and finishing the job in a display of cooperation. And, when the house is done off come the safety vests, on go the party clothes, and all join together at the end to roll out the "Welcome mat." Imagine that. VERDICT A breezy assemblage of wordplay fun and purposeful, house-building, and cute, fuzzy workers in hard hats, this is just the ticket for younger audiences.-John Peters
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