Favourite books: A Cat and a Dog
18 Feb 2008
At first glance, this book is a simple story about two animals fighting. But take a look beneath the surface…
A Cat and a Dog by Claire Masurel, illustrated by Bob Kolar (North-South Books, ISBN 155858949X) is one of those picture books that tells a story about something very serious, but does it in a light and amusing way. Because it doesn’t hector or preach, it leaves plenty of room for talk and thought. My own son (nearly three), likes me to read it to him again and again. I have a feeling that this is because it appears to be about the two animals in the book, but he knows that there is something else going on in the story.
Synopsis
A cat and a dog live together but spend all their time fighting, usually over their toys. One day, the cat loses its toy mouse in a pond and the dog loses its ball up a tree – but the cat can’t swim and the dog can’t climb. The solution is of course that Dog fetches the mouse and Cat fetches the ball. At the end of the book, the two animals appear to live together harmoniously.
Any questions?
One way to work with this book is to first read it all together. Then the children, in groups, could decide if they’ve got any questions they’d like to ask the cat or the dog or the people who made the book. Bring everyone back together and ask the class what questions they came up with. You write these questions up on big A2 sheets so that everyone can see them. Then you say, Who would like to be the cat? Who would like to be the dog? Who would like to be the people who made the book? Then the children ask these volunteers the questions and see if they can come up with answers. Try to make the children ask and answer the questions in role. So, the child acting as the cat must answer as the cat, and so on.
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The book’s issues
I am willing to bet that most of the issues raised in the book will arise in this question and answer session. In the back of your mind, it might be a good idea to have some of the book’s issues ready at hand – for example: Just because two people argue a lot, does it mean that they have to always argue? How do we learn how not to fight over silly things? How do we learn how to benefit from each other’s abilities? How do we learn how to help each other? I know it’s tempting to want to say this kind of thing, but it’s much, much better if the children get there themselves using this question and answer technique.
Give the children time to develop questions in their groups before bringing them back as a whole class. As you start to write up the questions, the children will start to think of some more. Don’t stop until they stop. It might be a good idea to let several children be the cat or the dog. If you really think that some of the key questions haven’t cropped up, then you can chip in with a question to the cat or the dog or the author or illustrator. Alternatively, you can offer to be the cat, dog, author or illustrator. Try not to appear too clever or too knowing, though, or it will inhibit the children’s flow of ideas.
How we live
One talking point in the book is about how we live together. It would be good for the children to draw pictures of the space they live in and who lives in it, who comes over, who comes to stay, and so on. This could be supplemented by the many great non-fiction books on the way people live all over the world. Perhaps there are children who’ve lived in different kinds of places at different times in their lives, on holidays, or when they’ve been to stay with other people. At the end of all the drawing and talking, bring these together and do a class inventory of all the kinds of different places people live in.
Favourite toys
Another talking point is favourite toys. One way to come at this would be through drama. The children can go off into groups of three and one child is the favourite toy of the moment, another is the toy that the child doesn’t play with anymore, and a third is the brand new toy that has just arrived. (You’ll see that I’m stealing this idea from Toy Story!). The owner of these three toys has just gone out the room. The three toys are arguing over why the owner should really be playing with them. Get the children to think very carefully about what toy they are, and what their special abilities or characteristics are. What makes them so appealing? Why are they so much better than the others? What will the toy do to get liked more by the owner? Following the improvisations, the children could do cartoons of the three toys with speech bubbles in which the three toys say their thing.
This article is part of our ‘Favourite books’ series. To access February’s article click here
Acting out an argument
Do the children argue with their brothers and sisters? With their cousins? With their friends? What do they argue about? The children could talk about these in groups and bring their findings back to the class as a whole. You could set up a ‘freeze frame’ situation with one of these. So, the child in question tells the class about an argument they had with someone. You get the children to split up into twos to make a freeze frame tableau of that moment. Then you, the teacher, can ‘hot seat’ it. You place your hand on one of the children in role in the tableau and ask them what they are thinking. How do they feel? What are they saying? What can they see at that moment? As you go round the class you can collect these up – the saying, seeing, thinking and feeling things, until you’ve got a load of them written up on A2 sheets round the room.
Free verse
Then you can ask the children which of these lines they like. Write these up in front of them as a separate piece. You’ll find that this comes out as a free verse poem; a set of phrases, words and statements right from the heart of a child’s argument. You can then encourage the children to write their own versions of this.
Puppet show
This book is ideal for turning into a puppet show. The best puppets for this would, I think, be glove puppets. The simplest way of doing this would be with old socks and sticking on teeth, eyes, ears and whiskers. The children could make a ‘house’, so that they act out their fights in the house. We see them fight over the mouse and then the ball. Then the mouse ends up in a pond – which could be a bucket full of torn-up blue paper… and so on. Perhaps the children could work in pairs on this, making their puppets and sets and working out the play.
Maybe some children could make up more cat and dog stories to tell with their puppets…
