Not So Bad

One of Isaac's chores is to feed the animals.  We have two outdoor cats, one indoor-outdoor cat, and a big, lazy dog.  Isaac gives them water and food each morning and is responsible for making sure they have enough water throughout the day.  This is not a job he enjoys, though I think his dissatisfaction in his work stems more from the fact that it has to be done shortly after he gets out of bed than with the actual act of doing the chore.

This afternoon Isaac told me we needed to get a stocking for the dog and that I needed to take more responsibility with the animals since he was the one doing all of the work.  We had a discussion about where the food that he gives the animals comes from (namely the paychecks his father and I bring home) and that we had the responsibility of taking care of him so that he would be able to take care of the cats and dog.  Then I nixed the  idea of getting a stocking for one of our pets.  We are just not that kind of family, and Max doesn't like the rawhide chews that were in the stockings Isaac was looking at anyway.

Since Isaac is such a grump about doing his chore for our rather low-maintenance animals, I wonder what he would be like if we owned a cat like "Bad Kitty."  Thankfully, the closest we have come is when our oldest cat urinated on our Christmas tree shortly after Isaac was born. (Hence the reason we now have outdoor cats.)  In A Bad Kitty Christmas by Nick Bruel, the aptly named cat goes much further after not getting everything he wanted for Christmas.   But, as often happens in Christmas stories, Bad Kitty is humbled by an encounter with a sympathetic character and repents of his bad behavior in time to celebrate with his family and his new friend.

Isaac laughs at Bad Kitty's antics, but would be horrified if one of our cats or dog so much as stepped on his jacket (which is usually somewhere other than the peg upon which it should be hanging).  Just another example of how fact can be much worse than fiction.

Who is Nick Bruel?

I put quite few Nick Bruel books in the bag the last time we went to the library. I heard him speak at the AASL conference a couple of years ago when he won the North Carolina Children's Book Award for Who Is Melvin Bubble? I hadn't read many of his books prior to this last library visit, though. Contrary to what many of you may think, school librarians do not read every children's book that is published. We just pretend that we do.

Now that I have read a few of his books, I kind of like them. Isaac did, too. The three we read were very different books.

Bad Kitty is a favorite with many students. Bad Kitty is just that, doing everything naughty you can think of from A to Z. There are many Bad Kitty books, including chapter books. I am sure we will be revisiting Bad Kitty soon.

Bob and Otto was probably my favorite of Nick Bruel's books that we read, but mainly because it has a sentimental history. Bruel the elder actually wrote the story and Bruel the younger illustrated and published it after his father's death. It is a story of friendship and has a nice twist at the end.

Who Is Melvin Bubble? was the one that NC school children chose as their favorite a couple of years ago. In it, various people from Melvin's life try to define him, each giving their perception of what kind of person he is, what he likes and doesn't like. In the end, Melvin tells the reader about himself. It is a good reminder for adults that we are many different things to different people. The lesson is packaged in a very appealing format for kids which obviously resonated with kids in North Carolina.

Okay. I will go back to pretending to have read everything in my library now. Happy reading.