Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Tuesday Tales - A Beautiful Feast

I am guest posting again at AVT Coach with a Tuesday Tale.
The holiday season is upon us and with many feasts planned I was reminded of this book.




A Beautiful Feast for a Big King Cat is written by John Archambault and Bill Martin JR. The beautiful illustrations are by Bruce Degen.

I love children's literature, and I have many favorites about cats. This is certainly due to the influence of my Bookworm who is a cat lover. She loved cats at a very young age and now her love of cats has grown to include leopards, tigers and lions. She and the Artist are both animal planet junkies.

I found this book many years ago in a scholastic book form and ordered it for my then three year old cat lover. She loved the rhythm of the language and as time went by we could explore the more complex lessons and the moral found in this book.

For the full review hop on over to AVT Coach.


The story involves a litte mouse who teases a cat and learns it is a dangerous game. In the end the mouse gets himself out of trouble by using his imagination.You will miss the magic of this book if you only read it a few times! As the child anticipates the story and memorizes the text they will join in with the rhythmic rhyming verse. We read this story at least 100 times before my daughter could read and then again we enjoyed it as she was learning to read. A true gem.

I will finish this post with a quote from one of the author's Bill Martin Jr. who incidentally didn't read until he was in college and became an expert at hiding his own illiteracy.


"A blessed thing happened to me. I had a teacher who read to me." Bill Martin Jr.

4 comments:

Storytellin' Mama said...

Love the art work and illustrations... as we get ready to feast this month this looks like a great reader's feast!!

Looking forward to checking it out!

Wendelyn DeMoss said...

Thank you Elle, this was a wonderful review. I will be getting this one for my library!

Momisodes said...

Sounds like a lovely story. I love the illustrations in the book. I also love his quote.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that you and Mrs TWC share a love of children's literature.

We waited to have kids for ten years and during that time I got her dozens and dozens of hardback children's books (birthdays and Christmas).

Stuff like Polar Express, Good Night Moon, and King Bidgood. Newbury Award Winners and first editions.

By the time the kids came around they had an extensive library of wonderful books. Some them, unfortunately, got to be pretty worn from heavy use, but we still have many of them.

Where did all that time go?