A colleague gave me a copy of this book, so I used it in my classroom during story time.
The title of the book is of course reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, and the short words "fat", "cat", "sat", "mat" (plus "rat", "bat", "vat", "hat" once you get into the book) are exactly the same type of words that Dr. Seuss liked to play with.
The comparison is inevitable, but also a bit unfortunate. If you're expecting Dr Seuss, you're going to be disappointed. This book isn't quite in the same league. But then, what is?
If you can resist the urge to compare, however, this book is perfectly charming if viewed on its own merits.
It's got a great absurdist humor where inanimate objects come to life and start talking.
The hat of the bat is all of a sudden introduced as a character halfway through.
What makes it so absurd is that there's no preamble. The narrator doesn't say "Oh, by the way, I should explain that this is a special type of hat that can talk". Rather, the hat just appears and starts talking.
I used this book in a couple different classrooms, and that part always got a big reaction from the kids. "What? Teacher! The hat can talk?"
Unfortunately, however, the introduction of the talking hat is really the last good joke the book has. From there the rest of the book is kind of anti-climatic, and none of the rest of the book got much of a reaction from my students.
But it's such a short book that it didn't matter. It was over quickly before my students got bored.
The short words in this book make it ideal for beginning students, but the absurdist humor in it makes it appeal to even older children. (I successfully used it with a class of 10 year olds).
You can buy the book on amazon.com HERE.
Here are some supplementary teaching materials I made when teaching this book in my classes. These materials don't really work too well independently of the actual book, so you'll need to get a copy of the book to use these.
Link of the Day
Revealing What Our Leaders Are Not Telling Us: Noam Chomsky (2008)
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