Gato guapo

"His miau miau was sweet / as he pranced down the street, / calling, 'Oye! Que paso, papo?'" This lighthearted counting book, written in a smooth blend of Spanish and English, follows Gato Guapo and nine kitten hermanitos on a jaunt through town. When Gato Guapo stops to count the kittens, however, he discovers numero nueve is missing: "OH NO! Where's Rodrigo?" A page-turn reveals "silly Rodrigo" sporting Gato Guapo's sunglasses and declaring, "Yo soy Gato Guapo!" With each counting attempt, from nueve down to dos, another kitten disappears (we never see where), always popping up on the following spread wearing an article of dapper clothing and claiming to be Gato Guapo. Finally, with just "one lonely gatito" left, Gato Guapo realizes: "Who took all my clothes?" Playful drawings, rendered digitally from watercolor and colored pencil, provide a clever and engaging backdrop that features other animal characters and Spanish vocabulary. A list of Spanish words and phrases is appended. (c) Copyright 2023. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A fashionable feline with nine siblings teaches Spanish words and counting as part of a trip to town. The titular cat, who walks on two legs and wears a top hat, a scarf, boots, and a vest, is followed around by a varied group of sibling cats who walk on all fours, each of whom playfully pretends to be Gato Guapo. Each time, he counts the cats ("Uno, dos, tres…"), looking for the missing cat, who then appears, shouting, "¡Yo soy Gato Guapo!" and wearing one of Guapo's items of clothing or accessories. Along the way, the book mixes in unitalicized Spanish words or phrases within the English text, unobtrusively working in enough context that most may be easily understood by young non-Spanish readers. (A word list at the end translates all the Spanish in the book.) Unlike in similar books, this story doesn't clumsily blend languages or rely on the oft-used technique of parrot-repeating a Spanish word with its English equivalent. Instead, the phrasing flows well. However, what works so nicely in the first few pages is abandoned for the cat reveals. It would have been nice to have seen more of the well-combined bilingual flow. Still, Gato Guapo's got a lot of style, and so does the book--the anthropomorphized animals cut winsome poses and will readily endear themselves to readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Playfully and skillfully balancing two languages, this cat tale proves cute and clever. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.