Kitten’s First Full Moon

Kitten’s First Full Moon
By Kevin Henkes

This book is about a stunningly dumb kitten. She looks at the moon and thinks it’s a bowl of milk! So she sticks out her tongue to lick it and winds up with a bug instead. Then, instead of enjoying the crunchy bug and looking for more of them, she spends the rest of the evening chasing after the moon. If I were this kitten I would be really embarrassed to be exposed as so stupid. And her owners aren’t so bright, either — in the end the kitten comes home to find a bowl of milk waiting for her. Don’t they realize that most cats are lactose intolerant and that in any case, milk has no nutritional value for us? Hopefully, instead of plain old cow’s milk, they gave the kitten one of the milk products especially formulated for us cats.

Apparently this book won the Caldecott award, and humans rave about its black and white drawings. I just hope that any human who buys this for their kids explains that 1) most cats are way smarter than this one and 2) that we should never be given cow’s milk. If I sound a bit grouchy with regards to Kitten’s First Full Moon, perhaps it’s because my human wouldn’t let me chew it, since she got it out of the library.