Chester

Chester
Written and illustrated by Melanie Watt
Kids Can Press, 2007

Chester the cat wants his own book so badly, he takes a big red marker and marks up the original book that Melanie Watt wrote about a mouse. He plays a big of a game of “cat and mouse” (ha!ha!) with the author’s story. He draws all over her pictures with his red marker. He keeps interrupting her story with his red marker. They fight back and forth until the author finally agrees to give Chester his own story. But she makes it up HER way, which doesn’t make Chester very happy—but at least he gets his own story.

This story really does look like a regular book with red marker all over it. Chester even crosses out the author’s name on the front of the book and writes his own, crosses out her dedication and dedicates the book to himself, and doodles on the author’s picture at the back of the book. From cover to endpapers, Chester leaves no part of the book untouched. It’s a laugh-out-loud funny book because a character tries to tell the author what to do, instead of the other way around. Young children will get a kick out of this cat!

This book was nominated for the Cybils fiction picture book category.