Katie Loves the Kittens
Title: Katie Loves the Kittens
Author: John Himmelman
Illustrator: John Himmelman
Publisher: Scholastic Incorporation
Publication date: 2008
ISBN number: 978-0-545-22364-5
Audience: Ages 4 – 8
Summary of book: Sara Ann brings home three new kittens. Katie, her dog, couldn’t be happier. Unfortunately, Katie’s uncontrollable joy causes her to unintentionally scare the new kittens. Sara Ann reprimands her and Katie is very sad. After a series of good intentioned episodes where Katie continues to unintentionally be unwelcoming. Katie is very upset with herself. She spends the entire day on her doggy bed. When she wakes up the kittens have fallen asleep on top of her. She wants to run around and chase them, but instead she controls herself and happily lays with them on top of her.
Literary elements at work in the book: Through the words and the illustrations, Katie comes to life. She is an amazingly sweet and joyful character.
How the book presents gender, race, culture, economic status, abilities/disabilities, age, etc.: The only human character in the book is Sara Ann, a Caucasian girl with red hair and blue eyes.
Theological Conversation Partners: Galatians 5:22-23a
22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control.
Faith Talk Questions:
- Which fruits (of the Spirit) does Katie have abundantly? How do you know?
- Which fruits (of the Spirit) does Katie need to practice? How do you know?
- Describe a time when you were like Katie and had good intentions that didn’t work out well.
- Which fruits of the Spirit do you have abundantly?
- Which fruits do you need to practice?
This review was written by Union Presbyterian Seminary student Jessie Smith.
Katie Loves the Kittens by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
