In July's newsletter I shared a new addition to our morning basket, and it's been such a hit with Bean, and with the children who attended my summer holiday club, that I felt it deserved a full blog post book review. The book is called Fearless Felines: 30 True Tales of Courageous Cats.
(N.B. I've since discovered that the exact same book is available in the UK under a different title, Rebel Cats: Brave Tales of Feisty Felines).
For the past month we have been dipping in and out of this book during our morning time, and it has been one of those books that the children request and then ALWAYS ask me to read more, more, more! They've been absolutely captivated by it, as have I actually.
Each double page spread features the true story of a fearless feline. We read about Faith, the cat who repeatedly took her kitten into the cellar of the church they lived in, when days later it was bombed by a German plane in the Blitz. Both cats survived.
We read about Felicette, the first cat to fly into space. Mrs Chippy, the cat who accompanied Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic. Oscar, the cat who comforted dying patients in a nursing home. Nora, the piano playing cat, and many, many more.
Interspersed between the short stories are pages of interesting cat facts, cat themed quizzes, cat superstitions, tips on how to help stray cats, famous cats, working cats, travelling cats, and so on. Basically a cat lovers' dream book.
At the front and back of the book is a timeline of the cats featured. Also included is a glossary, list of useful websites and further reading, plus a section about the author and illustrators.
My one and only (very minor) criticism is that the book doesn't include any real photographs of the cats, which seems such a shame for a book showcasing the true stories of these fearless felines. The illustrations are nice (perhaps including photographs carried copyright issues for the author?) but we longed to see what these cats really looked like. So much so, that we took to the internet to see what more we could find out about each cat featured. We found real photographs of most of them online, as well as news features, YouTube videos and even a short documentary. This book has a lot of potential for further research.
Bean was very disappointed when we got to the end of this book, but thankfully I had this book lined up for us to read next which featured a few of the cats we have already read about, but in a little more detail (and with photographs!) I have my eye on this one for later in the year too.
With love,
Rowan x
This blog post contains affiliate links. If you do click through, Bean and I will receive a small amount of commission which will contribute to new books and resources for her home education. You can, however, find all of these resources elsewhere, including other online retailers, second hand selling pages and your local library.
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