Customer Reviews

Have You Seen My Cat? (World of Eric Carle)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I agree with other reviewers that this is a good read-aloud for very young children. But just because the text is so repetitive doesn't mean it is inappropriate for beginning readers. I teach kindergarten and nearly all of the words in the book are sight words, common words the students have to know on sight without sounding them out. The repetitive text also builds confidence in children who are learning to read. This is a book that your child can read to you. On top of all this, Eric Carle's illustrations are so great. I gave this book to my niece for her sixth birthday and her seven year old sister said, "Ooooh, that's a great book!" Don't stop reading this book to your child just because you think it's too easy, or because you're bored with it.

HAVE YOU SEEN MY CAT? is now a favorite at our house. It did not excite me when I received it as a shower gift. I said something polite, and thought that we would not get much use out of it. I was not wild about Eric Carle's collage-based pictures, and the very simple text seemed dull. However, I am not the audience for this book. My 10-½ month old baby tells me that HAVE YOU SEEN MY CAT? is a lot of fun! Reading it at his speed has taught me to love it too!

I am also happy to note that an older baby we know, close to two years old, also likes this book. So it is going to be a good book for a while!

The illustrations are very colorful, and overall a little more detailed than THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR, the book that taught me to love Eric Carle's work. They look like collages with details added in crayon and pencil. My baby loves these pictures. I think it is the combination of color, simple lines and detail.

The text initially seems way too simple. The question and reply "Have you seen my cat?" and "This is not my cat!" are repeated nine times in the book. At the end, of course, the boy finds his cat and says, "This is my cat!" This initially seemed insanely dull, but Carle is an artist, and there is method to his madness.

If you just focus on the words, HAVE YOU SEEN MY CAT? is monotonous. However, there is a lot of room here to talk about what we are seeing. If you follow the story told in the pictures, you see that the boy takes a trip around the world looking for his cat. The people we ask for the cat are: a businessman, an American cowboy, a Mexican man on a burro, a South American Indian man, two African women, an Arab in the desert, a man from India who looks to be a farmer, a Persian prince, and finally a man in a park with his wife and child. Each person directs us to a cat. Before we find the boy's cat, we see (I think) a lion, a bobcat, a cougar, a jaguar, a black leopard, a cheetah, a tiger, and a Persian cat. (I had to go read up on kinds of cats and where they are found.) Eventually we find the boy's cat, a big mama cat with six kittens.

So, the book looks simple, but it has a more complex story in the pictures. I just needed to educate myself a bit to follow it and to tell it to my baby as we read it. This is not the first or last time that being a parent will drive me to better educate myself, I am sure!

I did not really start to "get" HAVE YOU SEEN MY CAT? until I read it at my baby's speed. He wanted to spend time looking at those bewitching pictures. If you talk to your baby about the whole story, there is a lot more to say. My baby loves going through the book slowly with me, looking at all the different kinds of cats as I name them for him.

My baby pulls HAVE YOU SEEN MY CAT? out of the basket to read regularly. Now that I can talk about the whole story, I like it too!

We own several of Eric Carle's illustrated books, and this is our least favorite! Repitition is good for children, but this book goes a little over board. "Is this my cat? This is not my cat" is on every page of the book until the end.. the illustrations are great, as usual, but the excitement ends there. If you do not own an Eric Carle book, this one will turn you off to him, and his books are wonderful. Skip this one and choose 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?'(teaches colors and animals), 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'(teaches days of the week, numbers, and how eating healthy affects how you feel), 'The Very Busy Spider', 'The Very Lonely Firefly', 'The Very Grouchy Ladybug' or any others.

This is really a cute idea and something you don't see often - a boy looking for his cat. Usually, it's a girl going after her cat but I think this is a cute twist because there are bunches of boys out there with great cats, and ours is one of them too! :) I agree with the other reviewer that there should definitely be more words in this book and that Carle should have taken the time to indicate the types of various cats he has pictured from all over the world. The idea of having the boy look all over the world for his cat is pretty neat because if you've EVER looked for a lost cat, well, you know it feels just like you are looking everywhere for him/her. It's a cute little story, one that is read quite often in our house and I do recommend it. My little one actually quotes it during the day. Great fun!

This book misses the mark. Here's all the words in the book "Have you seen my cat", "this is not my cat", "this is my cat". While I agree repetition is good, the fact that there are no OTHER words to describe the different scenes in the book is a huge annoyance and my 18mos daughter seems bored with it too.

One reviewer wrote that they add to the phrase "this is not my cat" the type of cat they see. Well, I think that's exactly what Eric Carle should have done and didn't: "this is a bobacat. this is not my cat". That way, children learn different animal names, but still get repetition of language. Honestly, some of the pictures are a little hard to distinguish...I doubt a toddler figure out the difference between a cheetah and a panther without some type of indication in the book.

Here's my suggestion: take the 3 phrases listed above and come up with your own story and skip buying the book. Spend your money on "The Hungry Caterpillar".

Ok, so I'm getting closer to 30 than I am to 3, but as a lifetime lover of Eric Carle books and a die-hard cat person, I loved this book. I first encountered it in an undergraduate children's lit. class during my senior year in college. From there, I took the book home to my roommates (two guys and another gal) and it became a permanent resident on the coffee table!

It was great to pick up after a long day -- even just to look at Carle's whimsical art work. But, more importantly, the memorable line "that's not MY cat," became the motto of our household. It didn't matter if the subject was a mismatched sock or an extra plate of leftovers in the fridge -- my roommates would jubilantly yell out "that's not MY cat!"

Have You Seen My Cat is a great book for the kid in all of us -- even if you don't have a special child to read to, I highly recommend this book.

This book was recommended to me by a speech therapist to promote social, "turn taking" language in my toddler. Others have criticized this book as too repetitious, unfairly I think. For a toddler or pre-schooler developing language, and the social skills that go with it, it is quite appropriate. We have enjoyed the book and benefited from it as well. Highly recommended.

Good kids books can be read over and over and still be enjoyable. This book makes me mental. Like most Eric Carle books, the pictures are neat (though often cringe-worthy. Really? A native South American in a loin cloth squatting by a hut? An Arab in a tent with a camel nearby?). There's only 3 lines in this book, and one is only used once. Have you seen my cat? This is not my cat! Repeat. Repeat. and... Repeat. Obvious effort was put into the pictures. Can't say the same for the words. This book is only good for giving to a parent you know as a punishment.

Other reviewers have criticized this book as overly simplistic, even for very young children.

The entire book makes use of but nine monosyllabic words. They are as follows:

1. My

2. You

3. This

4. Have

5. Cat

6. Seen

7. Is

8. Not

9. Where

This meager vocabulary is sufficient to convey the plot - a boy's worldwide quest for a missing kitty. The action is fleshed out by the author's arty and engaging illustrations.

My problem with the book is not its repetitious simplicity. Rather it's the opposite; the complex and obscure nature of its ending. In the end the cat is found and the boy exclaims, "This is my cat!"

But what the reader sees is not one but a total of seven cats.

Which one is it? Or is it all of them, in some mysterious expression of many facetted feline fascination?

Or did the cat have kittens while its owner was away?

Who knows?

Who cares?

We are big Eric Carle fans in my house, my son is 2 and loves all of his books, except this one. We enjoy cats, but this book was just plain BORING. In the beginning (before reading starts) it identifies all the different types of cats, but throughout the book it doesn't identify them again or their home/habitit. It shows different cultures for the various cats, but doesn't even say one word about them, just says "That's not my cat" for the ENTIRE book. Disappointed that I bought this book.