About This Book
Reach for this book when your child is transitioning from listening to stories to decoding words on their own. It is an ideal bridge for the moment a toddler or preschooler shows a 'point and say' interest in the world around them. Using high-interest photography of cats and kittens, the book focuses on the present participle (-ing) to describe actions, helping children understand that words represent movement and life. Beyond simple vocabulary, the book provides a sense of mastery and joy. The emotional core is one of gentle curiosity, perfect for a quiet afternoon or as a confidence booster before bedtime. Parents will appreciate the predictable sentence structure which allows emerging readers to feel successful from the very first page while indulging their natural love for animals.
What Parents Should Know
Sensitive Topics
None. The book is entirely secular, safe, and focuses on positive animal behaviors.
Ideal Reader
A 3 to 5-year-old who is obsessed with pets and is just beginning to realize that the black marks on a page (letters) correspond to the actions in the pictures. It is perfect for a child who needs a high-success, low-frustration reading experience.
Parent Prep
This book can be read cold. It is designed for repetitive reading to build fluency. A parent might choose this after seeing their child struggle with more complex storybooks, or after the child asks for the hundredth time, "What is that cat doing?"
Age Experience
A 3-year-old will treat this as a high-end picture book, focusing on naming the cats and the colors. A 5 or 6-year-old will use it as a tool for phonetic decoding and recognizing the "-ing" suffix pattern.
What Makes It Special
Unlike many early readers that use illustrations, this book uses crisp photography. For many children, real-world images are more engaging and help ground the linguistic concepts in reality.
Read plot summary
This is a foundational non-fiction concept book that pairs vibrant, high-quality photographs of cats and kittens with simple sentences. Each page focuses on a specific action using -ing verbs (playing, sleeping, jumping) to illustrate what the animals are doing.
This overview was generated by AI based on the book's content and reviews, and may not capture every nuance.
Discussion Prompts
1
Look at the kitten on this page. What do you think he is going to do next after he finishes jumping?
2
Can you find the word that ends in 'ing' on this page? How does the kitten look while he is doing that?
3
Which of these cats looks most like a pet you would want to have? What would you name it?
4
We saw the cats sleeping and playing. What is something you do that also ends in 'ing'?
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