Booktalk

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

Created and illustrated by James Dean

Story by Eric Litwin

Published by Harper Collins on May 1, 2012

40 pages

Fictional picture book

·       This story is about a cat named Pete. Pete is wearing his favorite shirt and throughout the day, buttons start popping off his shirt. Despite his favorite shirt messing up, he continues to go about his day happy. Pete encourages everyone to keep on singing, instead of crying about things you can’t control.

·       The illustrations are very bright and colorful; they depict watercolor paintings that my kids personally love. They include counting numbers and large onomatopoeias throughout which grab attention.

·       This book could be used for kindergarten math; it has basic subtraction from 4 to 1. A teacher could easily buy a yellow button up shirt similar and Velcro four large, laminated buttons onto the shirt which you could “pop” off as the story goes.

·       This lesson can be adapted for English language learners in multiple ways:

o   Have the book in the other language but read it aloud in English, this way, they are hearing it but correlating what’s being said with what they are reading. Or have the book in English to read aloud but give that student the book in their primary language to follow along.

o   Learn some of the basic words in the student’s language. Example, when Pete counts in the book, use uno instead of one and so on.