Amazon.com
Did you know that white cats are usually deaf? Or that when a cat is frightened it sweats through its feet? Or that ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of a cat? Any self-respecting cat lover will be delighted to discover these feline facts and more in Nicola Bayley's The Necessary Cat, a lovely, old-fashioned tribute to cats and kittens of all varieties. Exquisitely detailed, whimsical illustrations in diverse styles highlight Bayley's scrapbooklike collection of old-fashioned cat toys (and new ones, too!); cat stats; cat lore; cat poems by such luminaries as William Wordsworth, W.B. Yeats, and Walterde la Mare; cat words; and famous cats and their infamous feats. Feline fanciers of all ages will enjoy pawing through this delightful album--dare we say it's the cat's meow? (All ages) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

What A Wonderful And Thoughtful Book
I recently bought this book and thoroughly enjoyed myself.I too would recommend this book for cat lovers everywhere.My favorite thing in this book is:When In Doubt-Wash It's a wonderful bit contributed by PaulGallico and speaks volumes about the attitudes of our feline friends. Thumbs up on the illistrations too.Great job!

Exquisite Cat Art.
Nicola Bayley's latest is a treat for cat lovers and anyone who enjoys brilliant illustrations.She has combined her love of cats, literature, fine art, and pure charm. If you like any or all of these, then this is foryou.

Although she is listed as an illustrator of children's books (ThePatchwork Cat is a classic) her skill should rank her along with othergreat artists.

A MUST for all CAT Lovers!
This book is a MUST if you are a cat lover.The poetry, writings, and art are great!You can read it over and over and be delighted each time. You can also just skim through the beautiful art when you need to beentertained. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Beautiful
This book is sweet and gorgeous.My daughter and I both love the art work.While the text is charming, it is rather simple and doesn't really say much about the story of Christ's birth.
However, the story of Jesus' birth intertwined with the harmony of nature is a unique and lovely supplement to other Christmas stories.

Year's best Christmas book, any-season gift for new mothers
The text of this book by Phyllis Root draws on Christmas tradions from all over the world.Animals of all sorts rejoice in the birth of the child: this idea that all nature celebrates a great event or mourns a great loss is an ancient convention in Western literature.Root's simple, beautiful language takes no back seat to anything, including the art, exquisite though the illustrations certainly are.Nicola Bayley has drawn on art in medieval manuscripts for the design of the book, using complicated borders around the pages and jewel-toned miniatures set in a filigree surround.It shouldn't be considered only a Christmas book or a religious text, for its theme of joy in beginnings and the hope inherent in the birth of a baby is universal.It would be an lovely gift for adults as well as children, particularlyfor new mothers, at any time of year.

Visual Feast
This is an absolutely stunning children's book, and I say that with an awful lot of beautiful books in our family library.The "story"/song that accompanies the illustrations takes a quick backseat to the visual feast but is fine and true to its religious origins.I haven't yet tested this out on my 6 year old (Christmas being a bit away), but my take on this book is that because of the lack of ACTION!he won't appreciate it unless we block out a lot of the bustle of the day and get into a cozy space that allows for more concentration than the usual pace of our evenings. However, I think it's good to have a book so lovely that it compels you to try to create that space with your child, at least during one season every year. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

christmas gift
gave this book to my great nephew for christmas and he was surprised and very pleased

great preschool bat book!
i agree with the fact that it is a story that reads like an encyclopedia...my boys really like it and it's not so dry that i enjoy reading it again and again to them! beautiful pictures too! just right for my 6 & 4 year olds even when they were 4 & 2!

I Love This Book
Nicola writes in such a spare and poetic style that she must capture the imagination of each child who reads it, or has it read to her. She offers facts about this bat breed as she weaves her story, and topped with delicate artwork, it's just perfect.

Wonderful Book!
The beautifully written story manages to combine a ton of information about bats with a cute little story, and the illustrations are the best!My little GIRLS love this story and make me read it over and over.It reads like a story but offers information like an encyclopedia.

Bats Galore.....
"Bat is waking, upside down as usual, hanging by her toenails.Her beady eyes open.Her pixie ears twitch.She shakes her thistledown fur..."So begins Nicola Davies marvelous picture book introduction to the world of bats.Follow mother bat as she awakens at dusk, flies out into the night hunting and searching for food, then returns home at sunrise to feed her batling, and sleep again until nightfall.Ms Davies combines a simple and evocative story line with interesting scientific information, fun facts, and trivia.Find out where bats live, how they hang upside down so effortlessly, their special body features, how they navigate at night by echolocation, what they eat, how they hunt...Sarah Fox-Davies' quiet and eloquent illustrations complement the text beautifully, and bring this mysterious little creature and its habitat to life.Perfect for emerging readers, Bat Loves The Night is non-fiction at its very best, and is a fascinating and intriguing book budding scientists will want to study, pore over, and read again and again. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Grossly Fantastic!
I read this book to my kids about a week ago and they loved it!My oldest son shocked me last night by telling our friends about the book and remembered some really difficult names...and he's 5!

This book has gross, but never crude information about parasites in it and it is a great read.The illustrations made the complex world of parasites totally understandable and fun to my 4 & 5 year-old audience.This book is pretty long for that age group but they loved every moment of it and never tired.

This covers human and animal parasites and how they get into you and the other animals, what they look like, what their purpose is, how they harm or don't harm you, how some of them are beneficial, and how some of them live amazingly crazy life-cycles.

My kids are pretty young, but I found the information fascinating as well.I would venture to say this is a book for readers of all ages, who have a little bit of curiosity and humor in them.I never ventured to think that parasites would be fun learning about, but this book does just that. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

My 2 year old loves this book...
Although it is a long book for a 2 year old, my 28 month old son will listen to the entire book and he loves the illustrations.It is a great bedtime book for him.He doesn't ask to read it like he does the other books, but he listens very intently to this one. The book is lovely - I highly recommend it.

Beautiful, stirring, my kids loved it!
When my children were young, this was one of the bedtime stories they loved best.It's particularly good for cat lovers!The illustrations are gorgeous, and the story moves through suspense to a beautiful resolution -- a feast at the end of a storm-tossed fishing trip.

Fantastic
A wonderful story with beautiful pictures.If it doesn't warm your heart, you're not human!It is so good, I've bought a stack of copies to send out as Christmas gifts.

One of the most perfect children's books I know
This is an extraordinary book.Antonia Barber has produced a superb story, based on the legend of the Cornish village of Mousehole.Tom is an old fisherman who lives with Mowzer, his cat, who is also aging gracefully. Their lives--organized around fish, firesides, milk, and scratching ofears--fill the first few pages, and then the Great Storm-Cat arrives,howling around the harbor and bottling up the fishing fleet.Food in thevillage starts to run low.Finally, the day before Christmas, Tom andMowzer go out to fish together in the teeth of the storm, so that thechildren of the village should not be hungry on Christmas Day.

The textis powerful--remarkably so for a children's book.But Nicola Bayley'spaintings are, if possible, even more astonishing.There is a gorgeouspicture of the Great Storm-Cat and Mowzer at sea; fine, characterfulpictures of Tom, Mowzer and the village of Mousehole; and among othertreasures, one picture that always moves me to tears.Another reviewersaid the book made them weep: I know the page they were talking about. It's where Tom and Mowzer sail back to the village, to discover that thevillagers have realized they are gone, and are waiting for them.

Enough. It's a beautiful picture.Buy the book, even if you don't have kids,though you'll get far more pleasure from reading this to a child.Thelanguage is a little complex for a child under five, but you can simplifyas you read.And you'll read it again and again.

A really good read
This book was really one of the best I've ever read.I suppose because I'm only eight I haven't read that many - but this is still the best so far (Harry Potter is next, so who knows?).

The illustrations were superb and I would read this book again, and again and again. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

My four year old LOVES it
Since our first reading, my four year old daughter loves this book.She giggles at the humor and Nicola Davies wonderful use of her craft. A wonderful literary non-fiction choice.

A Fun Shark Book!
This book is great for kids who love sharks.It is sassy, funny and breezy.I recommend it.

Jaws ah-plenty
Word on the street (which is to say, librarian-based listservs) has it that the book "Surprising Sharks" is incredibly popular these days.Having heard that this book was flying from shelves across the country, garnering the love and respect of thousands of children every day, I thought I'd check it out myself.It's very rare that a non-fiction book becomes overwhelmingly accepted by kids.But when it happens, watch out!It might be all you can do to keep the l'il buggers from reading it day and night and day again.

The book is a clever look at the wide variety of sharks living in ocean waters today.From the tiny sixteen inch cookie-cutter shark (which wins my love on name alone) to the vast twenty-nine foot six inch basking shark, this book has `em all.It includes a variety of amusing factoids in its text, providing copious amounts of useful information.In a well drawn graphic section, the book examines the common properties that all sharks share, both inside and outside the body.Kids reading this book learn about the different parts of the shark and why they're so awfully dangerous.Most interestingly of all, the book makes it perfectly clear that while sharks do kill an average six people a year, people kill an average 100 MILLION sharks a year. The book finishes up with an index of all the sharks in the text (for kids' easy referencing) as well as a bit of shark history to boot.

I was a little sad that author Nicola Davies didn't give any space to a bibliography of sources kids could use to find out more about sharks and their ways.Still, that's small potatoes.Davies certainly seems to have plumbed every last bit of interesting information about sharks she could find.I mean, who knew that the gel-filled pits in a sharks nose detect the electrical messages in a prey's body?Or that latern sharks have light making organs that help them blend into the silvery surface of the water around them?News to me!Illustrator James Croft gives the book an easy-going cartoonish feel that doesn't particularly add much to the book, but neither does it detract.The book's brightly colored and amusing.Just not particularly original in that respect.

If you need a good non-fiction picture book that'll give some of the more scientifically minded kiddies the thrills they seek (and frankly, what kid isn't interested in man-eating animals with big nasty teeth?) "Surprising Sharks" is your best bet.It's not gory, but it'll certain give some kids the thrill of fear they seek in their non-fic lit.An enterprising and engaging book.
... Read more

Book Description
An award-winning author and illustrator swoop into the wondrous world of the barn owl.

A young girl and her grandfather look for a barn owl night after night. Will a distinctive heart-shaped face appear at the window? Michael Foreman’s lush, intimate paintings are a perfect companion to Nicola Davies’s lyrical text featuring intriguing facts about a rare bird indeed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Definitely not just a children's book
I love this book. It is fun to browse through (cartoon-like illustrations make it fun). But it is definitely a book chock full of information. How do seals dive so deep and not get the bends? How do frogs survive winter after being frozen like popsicles? Can an organism really survive temperatures exceeding 230 degrees or as low as absolute zero, -459 F?Not only does this little book provide these answers and explanations, it will leave the reader hungry for more mind-blowing revelations about life on this planet, and perhaps on the next. Warning: It will be difficult not to read snippets to whomever is in the room with you.

A fun factual read
Lots of people have written about penguins, polar bears, and bacteria--but not this way! Nicola Davies has written stories about the roughest, toughest, baddest animals there are, so funny I was laughing out loud and so good I couldn't put it down.

She brings life to the dullest subjects. Is a sponge an interesting creature? It never was to me, but her account is. She says, "To be honest, even live sponges don't do much. They just sort of sit there and grow.But put one in a blender and you'll see that they do something no other animal can: pour your sponge smoothie back into its seawater home, and it will put itself back together..."

Explanations that are accurate but make sense to a non-scientist (animals with "antifreeze" in their bodies, for example) and deceptively simple illustrations by Neal Layton make this one of my new favorite books. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Life cycle of the loggerhead, written for children and those who don't grow up...
"Far, far out to sea, land is only a memory, and empty sky touches the water.Just beneath the surface is a tangle of weed and driftwood where tiny creatures cling.This is the nursery of a sea turtle" (p. 1-2).

Nicola Davies story of the life of the loggerhead sea turtle, combined with the outstanding illustrations of Jane Chapman, make this an entertaining book on sea turtles for children ages 3-7.The larger text focuses on the story of survival of one loggerhead, while smaller text provides more detailed information.The hardcover book is quite large, making it a great book for holding open and reading to a group of children.

This is one of the nicer books for very young people on sea turtles.

Minor issues:

"Sea turtles are great wanderers, traveling thousands of miles each year, often far from land."Many subadult and adult sea turtles go through periods where they just "hunker down" in their foraging and resting areas.The grand travels tend to be restricted to the times they visit their nesting areas (every 2-4 years) and when they are still growing in those first few "lost years" of pelagic foraging.Leatherbacks, of course, are a real exception, since they always seem to be traveling.

"Not much bigger than a bottle top..." (p. 8).Actually, a hatched loggerhead is never the size of a bottle top, and a growing loggerhead is much bigger.I think a better size reference could have been used here.

"Coming ashore is very risky for sea turtles - they can easily overheat and die.So they only nest at night or in cool weather" (p. 21).I agree coming ashore is risky.But the most important reason is probably avoidance of predation.

Hey, you can't cram everything into a book for young children!I'll use this one in the classroom.

Remarkably Beautiful Book
We received One Tiny Turtle as part of an "undersea pack" assortment of books from Scholastic, and I wasn't prepared for what an excellent book it turns out to be. Packed with information about the lifecycle of loggerhead turtles, One Tiny Turtle is also graced with lush, dreamy paintings of the loggerhead's undersea world. The text is lyrical and challenging to my young reader ("pinprick nostrils" is one phrase that stood out), but clear and easy for her to follow. It's somewhere between a standard "kids read and find out" book and the kind of thoughtful nature writing you expect from the likes of Rachel Carson -- on a level that works well for kindergarten and young-elementary students.

Highly recommended!

My students love this book
My Reading Olympics team really enjoyed this book.. The illustrations are great and it's a nice story.

A VERY WELL DONE AND INFORMATIVE BOOK - KIDS LOVE THIS ONE
There is so much information packed into this work that it is difficult to imagine how the author and illustrator pulled it off.This is the story of the life cycle of the loggerhead turtle.The illustrations are beautiful and actually quite accurate.The text is simple and very, very well done.It follows the illustrations perfectly and is just overflowing with good information. This book, while great for kids to read on their own (this is one of the more used books in our school library), it is also great to read to the class as a whole as it never fails to bring on good questions and good discussions (better know your turtles when faces with a bunch of third graders).

My Favorite Book!
I like this story because it tells me a lot about loggerhead turtles. My favorite part about the story is the interesting fact that turtles cry. I never knew that! Turtles lay one to ten eggs, but at least five live. I learned that. They lay their eggs at night. I like this book because it is a wonderful story about turtles and I think everyone should read it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Perfect science and read-aloud book.
A wonderfully succinct overview of the blue whale and it's habits.

The clear, sweet prose makes delivery of the content easy, and the very fine, soft illustrations demand repeated veiwing. My Preschool and Kindergarten ESL students found it highly engaging.

If there's a better science and read-aloud book around I'd really like to know about it. TEN stars.

Follow this book up with the superb "Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?" by Robert E. Wells. Wells' book uses the whales' size as a starting point for exploring the size of the universe and other very big things (the second step involves putting a hundred blue whales in a really big jar). Read my review of Wells' book if you like.

ONE OF THE BEST WHALE BOOKS AVAILABLE!
I'm a whale researcher who has spent much of the last 12 years studying blue whales in the North Pacific. I'm also a mom who loves children's literature. Rarely do I see a book that is so accurate factually while it is captivating and magical! The illustrations are beautiful. I highly recommend it to anyone who has children who are facinated by whales. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Delightful story about a cat and her human family
This is a delightful story based upon real events of a cat and a baby that survive a flood in the Netherlands.The cat starts out leading the carefree single life, but changes in the human family at home forces a change in lifestyle as the cat moves from sleeping in a warm bed to sleeping in the windmill.During particularly stormy weather, a dike holding back sea water breaks and the whole town is flooded.The cat saves the life of the family's new baby, and later acquires the baby's cradle for a bed after the child grows older.The story is enjoyable for even mature readers.

Katje, the Windmill Cat
This story enchanted my children several years ago when we got it from the library.The fact that it's based on a true story made it even more interesting.The pictures give you an idea of pre-industrial Holland, and of course cat lovers like the personality of the cat and her heroic deed!I have tried to order it for a couple years and it was unavailable for one reason or another, so we are very happy to finally own the book.

Beautiful illustrations, but too scary for very young kids
This is a lovely book, but the story was too frightening for my 3 1/2 yr old.The story includes a baby and cat being washed away in a flood and rescued at the last minute.Maybe better for older kids.

A story with great appeal for children and cat lovers
Gretchen Woelfle's "Katje the Windmill Cat" will have great appeal for children and cat lovers alike.The true tale of a brave cat which ended up saving a baby during a 15th-century flood in southern Holland, "Katje the Windmill Cat" begins quietly enough with Katje and her owner, Nico, enjoying the solitude of windmill life together.They play together, eat together, and even cozy up together at night.Both are content.

Then Nico brings home a bride, and soon enough, there is a baby girl named Anneke.Although Katje feels a little pushed aside, she does her best to amuse and take care of the baby.Her efforts are not always appreciated by Lena, Nico's wife, but all is forgiven when, at the end, Katje saves the day and Anneke alike.

Nicola Bayley's superb, softly colored illustrations greatly enhance the text.Pictures of the cat and her family subtly boost the story, as do the utterly charming Delft tile squares on each page--some depicting cats, some windmills, some dikes, and so on.This is a lovely story for almost any age, and the illustrations bring fresh visual rewards with each viewing (try finding the mice scattered throughout!).

Beatifully written and illustrated
Since my parents are from Holland, I was thrilled to find a book that relates to my heritage.The book is beautiful, filled with moving illustrations, adorned with little Delft blue tiles.My son (age 4) loves the story, and we always hold our breath as the little cat saves the baby's life.That it is based on a Dutch legend only adds more to the story.And there is a gentle thread of humor woven through the story, as well. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Copycats - Nicola Bayley
This is a series of five individual stories about cats who wish to be another animal.The stories are simple to read and wonderfully creative.I originally bought the set for my four children and now read them to mygrandchildren.They all love them and want them read over and over again.One four-year-old grandson has them memorized.The illustrations arebeautifully done by the author.Her talent in capturing a cat and itsantics is wonderful.I highly recommend this collection of littleeasy-reader books for all ages.They make you smile. ... Read more

Product Description
A cat imagines what it would be like to be an elephant--that is, until bathtime comes. ... Read more