Join Pete the Cat for 12 groovy, cozy stories in this giftable 192-page hardcover collection.
Each of these awesome twelve tales is the perfect length to read aloud and includes full-color illustrations on every page.Readers will love snuggling up to these fun Pete the Cat stories, from Pete helping out the tooth fairy, camping in the woods, hosting a slumber party, and much more!
This collection includes lightly adapted versions of 12 favorite Pete the Cat stories from New York Timesbestselling creators Kimberly and James Dean.If you're looking for 5-minute bedtime stories, Pete the Cat is a winner.
To start, the artwork is poor. There's probably an argument to be made that drawings that look like something a small child could create is engaging for kids, but at this age they simply need to be exposed to really good art with craftsmanship and care, even if the art is simple. Jon Klassen for example has what one might call simple artwork, but it's so filled with character and whimsy and humor that it transcends its simplicity. This art is simply, poor. There's little whimsy, there's no details that encourage really looking around the page, objects appear and disappear with no real rhyme or reason or purpose. It looks slapped together in the worst way.
Then we get to the writing. Every one of these stories takes a good initial idea, and then does absolutely nothing with it. Characters simply exist in these worlds where stuff happens. Nobody grows, changes, or learns anything because of anything that happens in these stories. They simply arrive at the end and have learned because the words say they learned. Even in children's stories there has to be motivation, purpose, a reason for things to happen with consequences for actions.
In Jon Klassens' I Want My Hat back for example, the bear lost his hat, he interrogates the entire forest, gets lied to by the thief, and eventually uses context clues to find his hat and the thief suffers his fate because of it. It's dark, it's funny, and it's simple. In Oliver Jeffers' Boy series, he finds a penguin, goes through a journey to bring him home, realizes that he made a mistake in returning the penguin to the Arctic by evaluating his own emotions and recognizing what the penguin was attempting to communicate. Eventually he atones for that by sailing back and reuniting with the penguin.
In Pete the Cat's Train Trip, Pete goes on a train ride, sees the train, and gets off of the train. He never gets into any trouble on the train, he doesn't get onto the wrong train, he doesn't meet anyone of interest on the train who help him with their specialized skills. Nope, he simply has a train ride and sees some different cars.
In Pete the Cat's Bedtime Blues, Pete has his friends over for a sleepover, they all do annoying things to keep him up, so he reads them a story and they go to sleep. Somehow, the annoying things only affect Pete and they only affect him once, and his solution has nothing to do with anything that happened earlier in the story, he simply takes out a book and everyone goes to sleep.
In the Tooth Fairy story, Pete gets tasked with helping the tooth fairy collect teeth, a whole 3 people. Pete goes into their rooms, takes the teeth and leaves the money. Until he gets to the platypus room who has no teeth (yet was still on the list for some reason). Pete gives him money because why not and tells the tooth fairy everything was fine, then goes home. NOTHING HAPPENS in this story of any consequence.
Maybe in the tooth fairy story the platypus could feel left out because he doesn't have any teeth so he put something fake under his pillow to trick the tooth fairy and come out with money. Maybe he keeps doing it but Pete catches onto him and threatens to rat him out until he realizes that he was just feeling upset that everyone got to partake in this tradition but him. Pete and the platypus could learn about judging someone before they get all of the facts and build some empathy for people who experience the world differently and feel they need to be forced into a certain role. But nope, instead the platypus just is accidentally on the list and gets money because reason.
The biggest problem with these books is exactly that. There's NO growth, no change, nobody does anything of consequence in any of the stories. They don't have to be moralizing or even fables, but somebody has to have an emotion in these books besides mild annoyance or mild confusion that gets resolved patly because the book says it does.
Every single time I read these stories to my kids I end up utterly baffled by so many of the choices. Pete the cat is a deeply uninteresting character with deeply uninteresting friends, none of whom have any personality at all beyond maybe one character trait that gets exploited for a single page of a story and is then never mentioned again.
Steer clear of this and look up so many other wonderful kids books that you could be putting your time and energy into. Look at Oliver Jeffers The Boy series, absolutely anything by Jon Klassen of I Want My Hat Back fame, The Year We Learned to Fly by Jacqueline Woodson! If you want a series of stories to read that are around the same level, look up the stories by Lio Lionni which has poetry in its language and beautiful, but still childlike in wonder, drawings.
'Pete the Cat 5-Minute Bedtime Stories' by Kimberly and James Dean is an adorable storybook that any lover of children's stories will find inviting. Each one of Pete's tales is unique, in that he gets to do a lot of different activities and enjoy every moment of each one.
He gets to spend time as the Tooth Fairy, travel to outer space, go camping with his family, and pretend he's a pirate searching for treasure. He also gets to take a train trip, become a firefighter trainee, and make something to sell at his school bake sale, among many other fun adventures.
Pete is always eager to be part of everything, and he loves spending time with his friends and family. This is a great lesson for kids, as they learn that playing pretend and being together can be just as exciting as, if not more than, watching a TV show or playing video games. There is so much to do and so much to see if you learn how to observe the world around you and find what interests you most. Any kid or adult who reads this book can find something fun to dream about after reading any one of these bedtime stories.
Beth Rodgers, Author of 'Welcome to Chanu-Con!,' a Children's Picture Book, and Freshman Fourteen' and 'Sweet Fifteen,' Young Adult Novels
Pete the Cat is one of my Grandson's favorite characters. He really enjoys Pete the Cat's adventures. This bedtime story book should help him to enjoy getting to bed and hopefully giving him wonderful dreams. It is (as always) well illustrated and includes trips on trains, planes, fire trucks and many more adventures.
I loved how these stories are different - words as well as illustrations - from the individual stories. My kid noted that, and they are four-years-old. But, hard to read since they are written to be read by kids.
Kiddo loves to be read this book before nap every day! 10/10 recommend since you have 12 stories to choose from, be warned though, they really do take 5 minutes to read!
This brightly illustrated book includes 12 short entertaining bedtime stories to enjoy: Pete the Cat and the Bedtime Blues; Pete the Cat and the Lost Tooth; Pete the Cat Out of This World; Pete the Cat Goes Camping; Pete the Cat and the Treasure Map; Pete the Cat and the Tip-Top Tree House; Pete the Cat and the Cool Caterpillar; Pete the Cat Checks Out the Library; Pete the Cat and the Surprise Teacher; Pete the Cat: Firefighter Pete; Pete the Cat’s Groovy Bake Sale.