I first came across How to Draw a Happy Cat when our local children’s librarian suggested it for my own writing research. (Side note: Librarians are awesome. Ideas to support your local library here.)
As a more advanced picture book (SLJ suggests it for grades K-2), I did not expect it to immediately enter S’s favorite book rotation. I should have. Here’s why:
- It combines multiple kid-favorite topics.
- The language is declarative and snappy.
- The book invites the reader to participate in the action.
- The illustrations are active and colorful.
As pretty much all my previous posts have established, S’s current favorite book subjects are animals and transportation. If your book has animals and/or transportation vehicles, S will probably at least give it a spin. If your book combines animals and transportation vehicles, you have dramatically upped your odds that S will want to read your book, and likely more than once. (Exhibit A: Animals Go Vroom!, an all-time S favorite.)
How to Draw a Happy Cat does one better, and introduces not only animals and airplanes, but also one of S’s favorite foods: pizza.
It’s like Ethan Berlin was handed a list of S’s interests and told to craft a story around them. Even without a great story, S would be predisposed to flip through the story over and over again, just to look at pictures of cats, airplanes, pizza, and cats eating pizza on airplanes.
But the story works. It’s a hysterical, modern, interactive version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. And while the story is complex, the way it’s written and illustrated extends the age range downward.
The story starts by inviting the reader to participate in the action — drawing our main character.
It goes on from there in the same vein – each time we think the cat is finally happy, something happens, and we have to draw/solve her next problem.
The sentences are often short and limited to one or two per page, conveying complicated problems and emotions with clean, simple language that is easy for S to understand. (How is the cat going to get the pizza? We have to turn the page to find out!)
The cadence is great for listening, and the interactive language choices also keep S engaged – S is getting all the credit for helping out our new friend Cat. (“Great! She’s so happy! Good job!”)
The sentences are also frequently accompanied by an illustration per idea. This decision is genius from a craft perspective, because it gives the reader the impression that they are impacting the story by “drawing” new things as the narrator directs them to do so.
It also has a possibly-unintended benefit from a toddler attention-span perspective. As with Itty-Bitty Kitty-Corn, the sentence-per-illustration model of picture book creation is crucial to keeping S’s attention in longer books because each sentence gives S a new thing to look at (and the new illustration reinforces S’s ability to understand what the text is saying).
So while Ethan Berlin and Jimbo Matison probably almost certainly didn’t set out to create this book for an under two year old, a few simple choices turned this book into an unexpected repeat pick.
How to Draw a Happy Cat By the Numbers:
Pages: 40
Word Count: 311
Words Per Illustration: 7.78
Words Per Sentence: 5.65
English