3 August 2010 CAT SECRETS by Jef Czekaj, Balzer+Bray/Harpercollins, January 2011, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-06-192088-2

"Krazy Kat peeking through a lace bandana

Like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eye Jack"

"'It has come to my attention that someone other than a cat may be reading this book.' 

Look at how school librarians are far too often treated.  Instead of everyone taking advantage of their wealth of knowledge and seeking to collaborate with them, they are so often viewed merely as a warm body who can take over supervision of classes from one teacher after another after another so that teachers can go have a smoke or hang out in the break room and gossip about one another.

"'Hey, you!  YES, YOU!  You don't look much like a cat!'"

Knowing how they are so poorly mis-used, it would not be surprising to find many school librarians developing quite a subversive sense of humor.  And these librarians are going to totally fall in love with this one.

"'How do we know if they are cats or not?'

"'We can test them!'

"'But how?'"

CAT SECRETS by popular cartoonist and underground DJ Jef Czekaj (pronounced check-eye) is a subversively funny picturebook through which school librarians will soon have young students trying their hardest to prove that they are really cats -- by their having to mimic cat behaviors -- in hopes of finding out what secrets the cat characters in the book are so determined to keep away from birds, dogs, snakes, fishes, bears, boys, girls...and especially mice.

"'Look, they're stretching just like cats do.'"

Now, if I were one of those school librarians, this is what I would do: After reading this book to every class in the school, I would plot with the students to have them watch the clock so that in every classroom in the school the students would all suddenly launch into the cat nap test at 10 am on the dot on Friday morning in order to freak out the teachers. 

Then, for my next trick, I would have the students all coming up with ideas for tests they could do for other animal secrets books -- dog secrets and pig secrets and housefly secrets, etc. 

Somebody is going to have a REALLY good time with this book.   

Richie Partington, MLIS
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