Tabby is a wordless book written by Aliki. The pictures tell a story of a little girl who adopts a kitten and the reader observes the kittens first year with her new owner. The reader has to really analyze the picture due to the lack of words. When I "read" it the first time I didn't notice that the kitten was adopted. On the first page, the little girl and her father are arriving at an animal shelter, not a pet store. I also didn't notice until the third reading that she adopted the kitten in late spring, early fall. The first pages shows flowers with a few leaves falling. A few pages later the children are playing in the snow. Then the snow is gone, but if you look at the trees in the garden they're still bare. Towards the end of the story, all the flowers have bloomed and there are leaves on the trees. The lack of words requires the reader to work harder to interpret or infer information from the pictures.

I enjoyed the pictures. The illustrations seemed to have been done using pen and colored pencils. The illustrations are also very colorfully and use very vibrant colors. ( )

This wordless picture book follows a young girl and her cat. Through images we see the young girl care for her cat as it grows by feeding her, giving her a bed, playing with her, and loving her.

Teaching Ideas: get students to illustrate their own wordless picture book

Average story about a girl and her cat. For a wordless story, the pictures should've been more expressive. ( )

FROM LIBRARY CATALOG:

Pictures tell the story of a kitten's first year in her new home, with a warm bed, good food, and a little girl to play with and love.