Ming-Shu and Her Cat and Other Stories (You Draw Book)
Lois M. J. Danes
Dorrance Pub Co
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Interesting Format ... Recommended ... 4 stars

Stories included in the collection of small tales are: ' Ming-Shu and Her Cat' , 'Time For Fishing Fun', 'Ming-Shu Visits Mr Lee's Farm', 'Nine-In-One or One-In-Nine' in addition to listing discussion questions at the end of each story.

The book was written with an eye toward teaching Taiwanese schoolchildren learning English through using tales and settings more related to the students' culture and daily lives. Beginning readers read about Ming-Shu playing with her cat, visiting the farm and zoo, going fishing with her Grandfather Yi. Readers meet Ming-Shu's little sister Mei-Mei. Children discover that Ming-Shu hurries to do her schoolwork before playing and listens with respect as Grandfather Yi tells stories such as a folktale from the Hmong people in Laos: Nine•in•One.

"Ming-Shu and Her Cat" includes a vocabulary page to accompany each story. The work is presented as a collection of short tales with each having room for children to add illustrations to accompany the text. For classroom use children can be provided paper for creating images to illustrate the narrative. I like the format.

Reading the book first to 4th grade I found the kids were drawn first into the various anecdotes, and then in an effort to locate the Taiwan site of the tales; sought out the large world map hanging in our classroom.

Each of the individual accounts portraying schoolgirl Ming-Shu included in the edition is certain to appeal to children. I like the format. I especially like the concept of providing children space to add their own illustrations to the book. For classroom use I give the children blank paper on which to draw their illustrations. We display them in the hallway right outside our classroom.

The vocabulary and discussion pages are an added plus for classroom teachers and home use alike.

Writer Danes is a curriculum developer and writer for English Language Schools in Taiwan, she puts her expertise and experience to good use in this little 42 page work for children. Each of the four tales found in "Ming-Shu and Her Cat" is long enough for children to become involved, while at the same time each is short enough to read at a setting.

While I read the whole book to the 4th grade, over a period of several days, I read individual stories to my first grade. My resident critics moved close to listen to the readings. They too were intrigued with the idea of blank 'pictures' and enthusiastically produced pictures to go with the narrative.

My 4th graders in particular were quite interested in learning about another culture and were able to verbalize that although we live miles apart and our lives are very different there are many similarities between the lives of the people portrayed on the pages of "Ming-Shu and Her Cat" and our own. Ming-Shu and Mei-Mei as do we enjoy jaunts with their family, want to hold baby tigers, don't like worms very much, and as children the world over do; ask millions of questions.

"Ming-Shu and Her Cat" is a read- to-book for the younger set ages 3-6. Vocabulary used by the author is such that most youngsters in the 6-8 group should be able to read for themselves with a little explanation of the vocabulary pages and is a read alone for the 8 – 10 year old.

Discussion pages are an added plus for helping children firm up some of their thoughts regarding each of the stories.

"Ming-Shu and Her Cat" is a book I use in my own classroom. This is a good sturdy book with hardcover, and is produced on good quality paper pages. Happy to recommend especially for middle grade classroom use during 'multi cultural' unit teaching. Ming-Shu is a good choice for children's pleasure reading, as well as for the classroom, school and public library catalog.