Today, I want to share with you my absolute FAVOURITE story to read to students. I love it, and my students always love it too.
Meet Mr Pusskins. He is owned by Emily, and she ADORES him! She brushes his fur, reads him stories and plays nicely with him. He does not like any of it, to say the very least.
He runs away and joins the 'pesky cat gang' and had 'such naughty fun'.
Mr Pusskins is written by Sam Lloyd.
I adore reading this book, because it flows beautifully. I don't know about you, but some books I read to my students just feel 'off'. The pace, vocabulary, story structure or something else, is just not quite right.
Well, let me tell you, this one is the exact opposite. It all just clicks together.
It is not too complicated, yet has enough detail to add a good amount of drama to your story telling. I LOVE the cat sounds - especially the drawn out scratchy wail Mr Pusskins does when he realises he may have lost Emily for good.
The story finishes with Mr Pusskins having a major change of heart. He realises how wonderful it was to live with someone who looks after you and is a genuine friend. Emily has put 'lost' posters up all over town and they track one another down.
And in the end Mr Pusskins admits that he ADORES Emily.
There is so much room to work with this book in the classroom. For such a seemingly simple story, there is a rich offering of discussion platforms. Talk about the structure, how the beginning almost mirrors the end, with the main character doing a backflip. The obvious 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end'.
When first introducing the narrative structure to little ones, I like using this book as an example, as it has a very clear 'complication' that needs to be resolved.
Discuss how the images have been drawn and how they represent the feelings and ideas discussed in the story - the sharp hard lines of Mr Pusskins and his bad attitude, and then in the end, his happy demeanour and the softened lines that illustrate him.
Talk to your students about the lesson in the story, that sometimes what we find most annoying about a person or situation, may not be that bad after all. We may just have to look at them in a different light. What we desire, may not be all that we think it is!
That sometimes, it is very nice to be looked after, loved and adored.
The story also provides an opportunity for you to teach a 'description' text type to your students. Ask your students to describe Mr Pusskins. They can draw a picture of him and create a 'Lost Poster' just like Emily, but adding a few sentences to describe what he looks like. You can download a writing prompt from Google Drive by clicking on the image below.
Mr Pusskins also makes for an adorable directed drawing for an art lesson!
Thanks so much for stopping by!