Fantastic Cats

A fascinating look at felines through the ages, Desmond Morris explores the lives of some of the most famous cats in history, as well as the famous people who doted on them.

A collection of eighteen fantasy stories about cats, featuring stories by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Andre Norton, and others.

An irresistible felting book for cat lovers! From playful tabbies to fierce black cats, this book shows you how to create felted felines in every shape and posture: crouching, preening, stretching, napping and ready to pounce! Master Japanese felting artist and teacher (and a great cat lover himself) Housetsu Sato shows you how to become an expert in capturing a cat's essential form and character--especially at the kitten stage, when they are full of surprises. In this book Sato teaches you how to: Form the basic shapes and cat body parts Create a variety of familiar cat poses and postures Add realistic textures and markings to the fur Give unique expressions to your cat faces Along the way, he shows you how to infuse your felted friends with a playful sense of "cattitude," including how to incorporate fur from your real kitties into your felted models. Detailed instructions and photos for each cat piece, fur texture and marking make these projects friendly even if you are new to felting. Printable full-size templates help you form the correct shapes and proportions, and brief lessons in cat anatomy help you make your felted cats truly lifelike. Photos showing variations on the poses and markings make it easy to envision your own cat's likeness emerging from your hands.

In the city, windows light. How many cats will dance tonight? It's just a quiet evening in the city. Or is it? As the sun sets in the sky, dancing felines take to the streets and rooftops for a night on the town. Come along one night on Easy Street as a pair of cats start to groove to the beat. Count the cats by twos (and hunt for their number hidden on the page!) in this foot-tapping, finger-snapping counting book.

24 unique images of Fantastic Cats to color by illustrator Ruth Sanderson, plus a bonus selection of 12 repeated images, for a total of 36 cat pictures to color. The book contains a variety of styles, from simple patterned cat images to elaborate cats dressed in period clothing. A purrr-fect present for cat-loving family members and friends! The pictures are printed single-sided on 60lb. pure white paper. (Note: This paper takes colored pencils very well but is not as suitable for markers. If you do use them, be sure to put a sheet of paper under the page in case of bleed-through.) Visit Ruth's website for free sample downloads, plus links to her coloring tutorials and flip-throughs of all her coloring books on YouTube.

Reveals the diversity crisis in children's and young adult media as not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter. The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world. In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”

Curl up with a cat and a book. A full litter of stories—science fiction, fantasy, and mystery—all cats, every page. A dying pet gets a new life through cybernetics—but will his humans accept a robocat? Defrosted kittens run amok. Chocolate kitties from Mars change from delicious treats to something a little different. A Siamese detective fingers—or paws—a burglar. An alien furball lands on a cat-hater’s doorstop. A kitten’s gift to the Christ child gets rejected, but that’s not the end of this cat’s journey. A sphynx pussyfoots through a wormhole and finds his soulmate on the other side, narrowly escaping death. A fisherman crosses a tiger kami and is transformed into a legend. Angels dye a kitten purple and give it wings, but these do not serve it well when it plunges to Earth in the path of a speeding eighteen wheeler. And, in a Nebula nominee, an extinct cat is revived from ancient fossil material and innocently rampages in a rural Ohio township. A fun page-turner for fans of felines!

A tender and beautifully illustrated debut children’s book from a New York Times bestselling team A city savvy stray cat named Pretty Boy has always managed to make it on his own. He’s as vain as they come, and he won’t admit to being dependent on anyone. But as he discovers the pleasures of friendship, he learns that home really is where the heart is. Or, at the very least, home is where his friends are. And with friends all around New York City, Pretty Boy will always have a place to call home. The author and illustrator team who brought us the New York Times bestseller The Christmas Tree introduce an unforgettable animal adventure in the tradition of A Cricket in Times Square and The One and Only Ivan. The result is a story that will captivate readers of all ages with its warmth and wit.

This funny rhyming story starring a big orange tabby cat helps kids learn to read! Fat Cat Sat on the Mat is a proven winner—welcome at home or in the classroom—as it makes kids laugh. The fat cat sat on the mat. "Get off!" said the rat. But the fat cat just sat. Will the rat get the fat cat off the mat? Enjoy reading this silly story aloud for maximum effect! Find out if rat can get cat off the mat in this funny, phonetic Level One I Can Read that's perfect for kids learning to sound out words and sentences. With repeating sounds and words, beginning readers will grow their reading confidence as they laugh about the cat and the rat and their sibling-style squabble.

The fantastic, the supernatural, the poetic, and the macabre entwine in this incomparable culmination of storytelling. Imaginative stories of wit and intelligence weave through vivid landscapes that are alternately wondrous and terrifying. As major literary figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—from Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Edith Wharton to Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde—these masters of English and American literature created unforgettable tales where goblins and imps comingle with humans from all walks of life. This deftly curated assemblage of notable classics and unexpected gems from the pre-Tolkien era will captivate and enchant readers. Forerunners of today’s speculative fiction, these are the authors that changed the fantasy genre forever.