Discover Why Kids Love The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza #1,

Young readers and reluctant readers have more in common than they think. Reluctant readers in most cases just think that they don’t want to read. Assuming that we’re talking about young, elementary school ages, both groups have to find the vehicle that can get them to realize that reading is not punishment. It’s got to be a book so relentlessly fun, over the top silly that it commands young people to engage in something by themselves, for their own enjoyment. The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is the first book in the series that takes its rightful place alongside Dog Man and Investigators as the go-to graphic novel series for ages seven and up. This book also came out a couple of years ago, so if you’re judging as to why it’s just being reviewed now, I say be curious, not judgmental.

I saw The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza at our local comic book store. Even amongst all of the other graphic novels it stood out. One can see the art, done by Shawn Harris, as being at home on a sidewalk, as well as, having its place in a graphic novel. The art is soft, detailed to a subtle degree, and the sort of illustrations that speak to ages seven and up. From the spine of the book young readers will see the words “Cat”, “Space” and “Pizza”, and at least two of those words are in the Venn Diagram of a kid’s favorite things for those ages. The idea of a cat in space takes root at the bare mention of the concept. Then, once young readers dig into the story and the layers, upon layers of jokes and gags that hit the mark they’ll be easily sold on the series.

The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza is loaded with sight words and a couple of vocabulary instances that they’ll need help with like ominous, peril or redundant. The illustrations match the absurd surrealistic premise of a cat being the last hope for humanity. It’s further driven home by the cast of characters that surround the cat and the fact that the feline is only able to meow, after all, it’s just a cat. The joke is that it’s just a cat in the same way the Perry from Phineas & Ferb is just a platypus. It’s not important if today’s book audience has seen that show (although they should), they will get the unstated joke, the ones that follow it and be ruthlessly entertained.

The only thing predictable about this graphic novel is that you don’t know what to expect. Another business platitude to describe The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is that the only constant is change. This review could tell you about the cat (in their space suit) going to the moon that’s being eaten by the rats and meeting the toenail-clipping robot, sailing on the sea with space pirates and relaxing on the beach, but the finer points would be lost. There’s also a bigger action story at play that seemingly changes every third page. But before you can say “oh my dough nut holes”, the story makes sense, has fun at every turn and gleefully has the audience in the front row.

Dog Man is dead, long live Dog Man. Really, I thought we were done with business platitudes, but I guess we have one more. It is great that young elementary readers have ‘big kid’ books that they can read to call their own. They usually start with graphic novels and then go on to chapter books of varying length. The graphic novels don’t have to be what everyone else reads. It’s an endless field of possibilities that young readers can entertain. Up to a certain point the masses will follow the most common variable, but then the brave readers will branch out and experience something on their own.

Elementary school libraries can have more variety. The graphic novel sections that I visit in those libraries always, and I mean always, 100% of the time rarely have a Dog Man on the shelf because they’re always checked out. I’m not saying that it should be all graphic novels all the time in order to have more of the books checked out. More often than not, books like The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza are first appearing in person book collections of those families that are more aware of what their kids want to read. This is a graphic novel that those elementary ages want to read.

You’ll read it too. It was on bed and my wife came into the bedroom and half jokingly said, “oh, it’s a book that’s tailor made for you.” I know she was only half-joking because she’s read most of the Investigators graphic novels after I read and laughed only just a little less than we did. The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is cut from that same cloth and will entertain middle school audiences (and their parents) when they decide to see what the kids are reading. It’s also a graphic novel that will end up in your forever book shelf, just like some of the others.

The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris and is available on HarperAlley, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

There are affiliate links in this post.