Mini- Me Reads (2)

Yay! It's time for Mini-Me Reads again here at Alluring Reads. I am having so much fun finding new books to feature in this meme and I hope you are enjoying it as well! This week it's all about Pete The Cat!

Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes

Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes

Story by Eric Litwin | Created & Illustrated by James Dean

published July 26th 2011 by HarperCollins

Pete the Cat is back--and this time he's rocking in his school shoes. Pete discovers the library, the lunchroom, the playground, and lots of other cool places at school. And no matter where he goes, Pete never stops moving and grooving and singing his song . . . because it's all good.

One thing that I absolutely love about my daughter being in Kindergarten is that she comes home from school and talks about all the books they read in class that she wants to get for home.  One of the first ones that she became enamoured with was the Pete the Cat series.  I had never heard of them before so off to Chapters we went! Upon coming home and reading them, I can see why she is a fan!  Rocking in My School Shoes is an adorable little story that is loads of fun to read.

Pete is a musical little cat and he gets through a day at school by putting whatever he is doing into his Rocking in My School Shoes song.  What I found most endearing about this book (beside the cute song the kids and I sang along to) is that every setting Pete goes to is introduced in the form of a riddle leaving time for the kids to figure out where he is and shout out the answer.  We had so much fun solving where Pete was headed next and it made for a great interactive read.  I also let the kids put the new action the cat got up to in the song by themselves before I sang the one in the book.

I'm not too sure how the rest of this series is but at this point I can say that I really enjoy how interactive and musical it is! I also like the grungey cute vibe the illustrations have.  I will say that I wish Pete had a mouth because you can never tell if he's happy or not!  We will be delving into more Pete the Cat for sure.

The Harpercollins Childrens website has a great interactive section just for Pete the Cat and it features a read-a-long song of Rocking in My School Shoes.

Check out the read-a-long here!

Pete the Cat Saves Christmas

Pete the Cat Saves Christmas

Story by Eric Litwin | Created & Illustrated by James Dean

published September 25th 2012 by HarperCollins

'Twas the day before Christmas and Santa was ill.

In the cold winter wind he had caught a bad chill.

Will Christmas be canceled? Will it come to that?

"Never!" cried Santa. "Let's call Pete the Cat!"

In this rockin' new spin on the traditional tale "The Night Before Christmas," Pete the Cat proves that giving your all in the spirit of Christmas is the totally groovy thing to do.

We had a lot of fun reading this one! After exploring the Pete the Cat section on Harper's website we decided that instead of reading this one we would listen along to the .mp3 file on there!  What a great idea, the kids (especially my 5 year old daughter, Sloane) had such a blast singing along to the song and boogying as well!  Check out how into it she got:

As for the story here, it's a cute tale of Santa getting ill and our beloved Pete stepping in to get the gifts out to the children of the world.  While I found Rocking in My School Shoes to be a fun read and loved the interactive element in it, this one didn't excite me as much. Yes, there was the song to sing along to but this one came with more of a message about giving your all and being your best.  But the addition of the little riddles in School Shoes was missing here and we had so much fun with that.

Once again, I love the lazy, grungey look of the illustrations and I'm still yearning for Pete to get a mouth! There are a few other books in this series and we will definitely be grabbing them, so be sure to come back the next time we feature Pete the Cat!

Click here to listen to the Pete the Cat Saves Christmas song!