If Not for the Cat

by Jack Prelutsky

For ages 2-6 years

View "If Not for the Cat" at Amazon

You could easily think that a collection of haikus is well beyond the ken of our adored preschool set. You could also be wrong. Yes, this is a book you should keep around on the shelves for some grade school project when your much-grown former preschooler is writing her own haikus. But yes, this is also a book you will dive into right now, long before your tiny one can count syllables. From the title haiku ("If not for the cat, / And the scarcity of cheese, / I could be content"), you and your very own little mouse will enjoy these little sketches of the natural world. And they just might be concise enough for our parenting-addled minds to remember, so you can rattle off a few when trapped in traffic with a wiggler in the back seat who needs distracting. Mr. Prelutsky was named the first ever Children's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, and another of his collections, Good Sports, is an especially good choice for engaging a child who might be otherwise daydreaming of getting outside with a ball and an open field. It too is a charming collection.

$16.99
$11.55

Review provided by The Savvy Source.