CATTY CORNER LANDS ON HER FEET

Catty Corner, who’s half cat, half girl, struggles when she attends school for the first time.

Until recently, Catty’s been homeschooled by her half-cat mom (her father is fully human), who teaches her subjects such as reading and string chasing, as well as the importance of following rules like “no midnight zoomies” and “no knocking over shiny things.” But when her mom gets an amazing job at the fish cannery, Catty contends with a whole new challenge: third grade at a real school. On her first day, Catty manages to break every single one of her parents’ big rules for outside the house: no hissing, scratching, or biting. She goes home crestfallen: “Today will go down in hissssstory as the worst first day of school ever.” But when her mom gives her a diary in which both Granny Tabby and Mom detailed their own difficult days as the only half cats, half girls at school, Catty slowly changes her attitude. Careful readers may wonder why Catty’s parents never socialized her with other children and why Granny Tabby’s diary wasn’t shared with her in advance of her first day of school. That said, with its pawsitively adorable puns and sweetly spunky protagonist, this quickly paced tale will please cat lovers; young readers looking for relatably awkward school stories will find it charming, too. The text is broken up by occasional watercolorlike illustrations depicting Catty as light-skinned with ginger hair and tail; her schoolmates are diverse.

Feline fanciers will snap this up like catnip.