I Am A Cat

Bernstein, Galia. I Am A Cat. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2017.

I Am A Cat is a delightful book for young children. It could easily be used as a tie-in to a science unit on mammals. In I Am A Cat author Galia Bernstein discusses the characteristics of a cat. A house cat tries to convince all the big cats that he is also a cat – they all laugh at first. The text looks at lions, tigers, panthers, puma, cheetah, and a house cat – looking at their differences but also at their similarities and why they can all be considered a cat. I believe the book will have appeal to young children. According to the information in the book, Galia Bernstein created the illustrations digitally with applied hand-painted textures.  Her artwork illustrates the text well.

I will be including I Am A Cat in my annual Mock Caldecott unit later this fall. Even though the book comes with a 2017 copyright date listed on the copyright page, the publication date on the publisher web site is February 2018. The book has appeared on several Mock Caldecott lists, so I am assuming it is eligible. With the wide variety of artistic styles in this year’s picture books, it will be interesting to see which titles the fifth graders choose for their projects.

I Am a Cat is available from Amazon if you’d like to add it to your library. Thanks for using my affiliate link which helps support this children’s literature blog without costing you any more on Amazon.