Weather Report

Rain, rain 

And more again.

Let's build a boat

Then sail away.

Returning on a sunny day.

What do you say?

CC

My art from QUESTIONS, by Lee Bennett Hopkins /HarperCollins

CATalog Samples, part I

(you can click on images to enlarge)

Hardly any of my books are cat-less. It all started

when Jane Flory asked me to illustrate her rollicking 

cat tale, We'll Have A Friend For Lunch.

My first picture book. Not too sure what I was doing, 

made a full color dummy and sent it to Jane's publisher, 

Houghton Mifflin Co. in Boston. A very patient and 

humorous Walter Lorraine taught me color separation 

over the telephone and that my 38 page dummy needed 

to become 32 pages.

As author as well as illustrator, in Too Many Babas,
my first I Can Read book for Harper, I gave Baba 
Edis a cat. While the Babas are making soup, the 
cat is otherwise occupied in the pictures only.

Lee Bennett Hopkins supplied the how, what, where, 
when and who poems in QUESTIONS, another Harper 
I Can Read book. Lots of places for cats. This one 
accompanying the poem What Do I Make? by Ilo Orleans.

My, oh, my, watching Grandma make SWEET POTATO 
PIE, from Anne Rockwell's delectable singsong early Step 
Into Reading book for Random House.

Caterina and Pavel wishing for a child of their own, 

see that even the Cat has kittens from THE LITTLE 

SNOWGIRL, my retelling of an old Russian tale for 

Tomie De Paola's Whitebird imprint at Putnam.

The Farmer and his cat hear something spooky. 

From Tony Johnston's very clever/funny/not so 

scary Halloween ghost story for early readers, 

BOO, A Story That Could Be True at Scholastic.

Sometimes a little cat just wants to be there.

From FINGERPLAYS AND SONGS FOR 

THE VERY YOUNG, (which my brother Ted 

calls, "The Patty Cake Book") illustrating

Ride A Horse To Boston, another for Random

House.

Bob Barton's retelling of Paul Gallico's sweet 

story about a boy and his Donkey, THE SMALL 

MIRACLE, Henry Holt. No cats in the story. 

But that never stopped me. That's why there's 

a cat, who looks a lot like Tizzy, watching 

from the window.

 

There are lots of farm animals in THE THREE 

BROTHERS, my retelling of a German folk tale,

Whitebird/Putnam again. Here is the cat witnessing 

the magic of the ending along with the Father 

and his sons.

Lastly (for part 1) is this cat looking out the window to

see WHAT WILL THE WEATHER BE, by Linda DeWitt, 

a Let's Read & Find Out book from HarperCollins.

Don't know about you, but after all this,

I need a CAT nap.  =^..^=

Winter Cold

A sneeze, a cough 

That starts it off.

Hot soup, some rest

That cures it best. 

ACHOO!!

(feeling a little better today) ;-)

My illustration from QUESTIONS, 

by Lee Bennet Hopkins, HarperCollins

With Apologies to Carl Sandburg

Once in a while Tizzy and Fred come on little cat feet

Sit together overlooking city and sky

And then move on...........

Without hissing and hitting

WELCOME

I think I'd better begin with an explanation of my blog title.

Shortly after kitten Tizzy came to live with me,

I found him licking a banana slice on my morning

bowl of cut up fruit. So I chopped up his banana slice

into kitten size bits along with his kibble and he scarfed the lot.

So we began to share our morning banana.

As Tizzy grew older he demanded new fruit

samples, globe grapes (peeled and seeded).

a bit of peach, a pinch of pear and most recently

a taste of bing cherry (again with pit and skin removed).

Neither he nor Freddie will eat real chicken,

fish (including tuna or salmon) or

any normal cat food just their prescription

kibble and a few Whisker Lickins crunchy treats

before bed.

Well actually there IS one other treat they both

enjoy. Housefly! And I mean Housefly on the wing!

We don't get many flies way up here. We hardly see

birds, we are up so high, but every once in a long

while there's a sudden bzzzzzzzzzzzz followed at once

by the tinkling of cat collar tags and a flash of fur blur.

As the fly hits the window (thinking it a way out)

he is thumped and swallowed. There's nothing like

live prey!

Here's a poem I wrote on the subject:

My cat eats bananas and flies.

Though you might think I'm telling you lies.

It is true and I swear

That he also likes pear

And most other fruit that he tries.

Banana, he likes just a slice.

Which I cut up and carefully dice.

With a grin on his face

He leaves not a trace.

You might think he was dining on mice.

As odd as bananas may seem

For a cat's gastronomical dream.

His other delight

Is a fly caught in flight.

Which he relishes better than cream.

My cat will lie patient for hours.

Asleep on the sill with the flowers.

He hears the first buzz

I watch what he does.

Swatting that fly he devours.

2008 Copyright Carolyn Croll. All rights reserved.