Cat Traps

Brooke has been making books for some time now. She will disappear for hours at a time and emerge with a new creation. Sometimes she will come up with her own storylines and other times she will recreate a story she already knows. She literally has piles of her homemade books in her closet. I can't bring myself to throw any of them away since she puts so much love and effort into each one. Last week, we were at the library and she checked out a book called "Cat Traps". It is a beginning reader that she was able to read all by herself. That same day she announced that she was going to make her very own copy of Cat Traps. I was surprised since this book has 32 pages, but she is a persistent little girl. Two days later, she proudly presented her completed book! Each page had been copied (pictures and words) in her own handwriting. I guess we'll need to have a conversation about plagiarism later, but for now, she's five and in love with book-making, so I won't interfere. After she finished Cat Traps, she announced that she was going to make more copies so she could sell them. Steve encouraged her to make up her own twist on the story, rather than copying the same book again, and so Bat Traps was born! Today she made two books for Ali; one about colors and one about numbers. What will she think of next?

Here is the original Cat Traps and Brooke's Cat Traps side-by-side