Picture Book # 1 -- Mrs. Katz and Tush

1.    TITLE: Mrs. Katz and Tush

2.     AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR: Patricia Polacco is the author, as well as the illustrator.

3.     GENRE:Animal Stories, General Fiction are two of the genres that the book Mrs. Katz and Tush falls into.

4.    THEME: One of the themes for the book Mrs. Katz and Tush is diversity, another is friendship.

5.    AWARDS:Mrs. Katz and Tush has not won any awards, but it has been on the Reading Rainbow.

6.   CHARACTERS: Mrs. Katz, Larnel, and Tush are all main characters in the book, and Larnel’s parents are secondary characters.

7.    PUBLISHING DATE AND COMPANY:The Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group published the book in 1992.

8.     SUMMARY:The book Mrs. Katz and Tush is one about diversity, acceptance, and friendship. The book starts out with Larnel and his mother visiting Mrs. Katz, as they do every other day. Mrs. Katz husband had died some time before the book, and she was lonely. It is noted on the very first page that Mrs. Katz is Jewish, when she references Hanukah. When Larnel first goes to visit Mrs. Katz by himself he brings a kitten that no one else seems to want, and asks Mrs. Katz if she wants the baby kitten. Mrs. Katz compares the kitten to her husband, and says that she will need help with the kitten, which Larnel agrees too. This is when we first learn the kitten’s name is Tush. Tush is a very playful kitten, she is also very spoiled by Mrs. Katz. Mrs. Katz talks to Larnel about how back in the older days her people (The Jewish) weren’t able to go certain places, and she had to vacation in certain spots as to not be discriminated against. Larnel realizes that his family also has had to go through discrimination in the past. Throughout the book Larnel and Mrs. Katz form a close bond, and at one point Tush gets out into the cold and they search for her. When they find her and some time passes they find out something special happened to Tush. In the end of the book we find out that Larnel and Mrs. Katz stay close all the way through Larnel’s adult hood.

If I were going to use this book in a classroom I would use it in an upper elementary grade level, like fourth or fifth grade, maybe in a gifted third grade classroom. While this book is a picture book, it has a lot of words to accompany the pictures. It also has a deeper thought process involved, and a deep back story. Talking with the students would include topics such as widowing, the discrimination between two different groups of people, and lastly death.