Cat Tale

Cat Tale by Michael Hall is about three cats who go on an adventure, have a run in with homophones and find themselves scrambled and confused. Lillian, Tilly and William J begin their day with a picnic but along the way:

They use a box.
They box some fleas.
And flee a steer.

You can see where this is going. The further they go, the more and whackier the homophones they encounter become. Hall's brightly colored pictures illustrate the homophones, helping early readers master some of the oddities of the English language.

Cat Tale has a good balance of easy to read and challenging words for children who are making the transition from learning to read to more difficult books. My daughter, struggled with understanding the plot the first time, show more being caught off guard by the homophones. The second time she read the book aloud and that helped to her to hear what Hall was doing.

For the younger set, I think the homophones combined with the silly illustrations will make for a fun storytime or bedtime story. show less

This is a very, very, very clever book, quite on par with [b:I Scream! Ice Cream!: A Book of Wordles|17641500|I Scream! Ice Cream! A Book of Wordles|Amy Krouse Rosenthal|/assets/nocover/60x80.png|24617025], at least! So inspiring! A wonderful play on homonyms and homophones which probably won't be appreciated by a child much younger than five, but we thought it was a blast. My son read it to me, and he may have been a little too focused on the reading to realize at first what the author was doing with the words, so he was almost halfway into the book once a wide grin spread over his face, priceless! The cut-out (computer generated?) illustrations are esthetically pleasing, if not quite as beautiful as the ones in [b:Perfect show more Square|8471013|Perfect Square|Michael Hall|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327974028s/8471013.jpg|13335680]. show less

In a twisty tale, the three cats endure an adventure with all sorts of (homophone) situations!

This tale is quite confusing because it barely has a plot. But it's a wonderful use of homophones to teach my third graders! Using same sounding words to mean totally different things makes the simple, extremely large text a welcome help to grasp the meaning of what's happening with the three cats. I'm definitely reading it to my students to see if they can follow along.

Amazingly cute story about 3 cats, playing with words. The simple, but wonderful illustrations help to explain the difference between the homophones and word play. I love this book!
Ages 4-8 (B&N)

Fabulous illustrations and delightful wordplay. Great read aloud for preschoolers and older kids, too.

This very simple story would be great for younger children with nice brightly colored illustrations.

We have enjoyed many Michael Hall books but this one wasn't as much of a hit. In fact I couldn't keep H's attention through the entire book. :/