Thursday, September 17, 2020

Five Minute Pete the Cat Stories by James Dean


I bought this Pete the Cat collection out of curiosity and because I love cats. It's clear the stories are meant for beginning readers. In fact, it's such an easy-reading book that I felt like I'd been caught in the act of doing something subversive when my husband walked in the door while I was reading 5-Minute Pete the Cat Stories

Having said that . . . they're simplistic, yes, but I love Pete's attitude. His boundless cheer had me smiling all the way through the book. Too bad my grandkids are 1200 miles away. I'll hang onto this book and hope we can read it together (or eldest granddaughter can read it to me) when the pandemic ends. 

Recommended - Simple text for early readers, cute illustrations (who doesn't love a blue cat?), and everyday happenings and adventures that most children can probably relate to make 5-Minute Pete the Cat Stories a great book for gift-giving or having on hand when grandchildren visit. As to parents . . . sorry, guys, you're really going to have to fight to keep from being asked to read 12 stories in a row. I'd make sure to have a bookmark on hand for bedtime reading and say, "We can read X Pete stories, but then we'll save more for later!" Been there with the begging for more. 

On a different note: Blogger has rolled out its new platform and no longer offers the option to revert to the historical version. I don't like it; I never like dramatic change because I become accustomed to a certain set of icons and learn to use them quickly. I'll get used to it, I know, but there is one thing I haven't figured out and if anyone knows how to work it, I'd appreciate the help. I tried to remove the image above and replace it with one that is more accurate as to color (Pete is blue, not black) but I cannot find a "remove image" feature, anywhere. And, now the option to contact Blogger about problems with the new platform has also disappeared. Anyway, let me know if you can help!


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9 comments:

  1. My youngest did love Pete the Cat- the first one we read was about his shoes. We learned the tune to his song at library storytime- wow, that was quite a while ago! Never found twelve Pete books though- I think at most we read three? might be fun to see the ones I missed.

    I'm annoyed that for some reason with the new blogger platform, images I put at top of my posts don't show in feed readers at all. Yours does! To remove an image, I always just click on the image when editing a post, it hightlights the border and then just hit 'delete'. Tell me if that works.

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    1. I got this particular Pete the Cat book from Book Outlet when I went nuts, a couple months ago. I've always wanted to read something with Pete the Cat but he came along well after my kids were the right age. It's a fun read!

      Yes, that worked. I *just* figured out that you can remove an image by clicking on it and deleting, as I was finishing up this post. I still hate everything about this new Blogger. The biggest problem I have, though, is always the fact that they tend to take away words and replace them with symbols. OK, yeah, a little disk icon is cute and eventually I'll understand that it means "save" and remember it. But, the word "save" is so much more obvious. Why mess with a good thing?

      Delete
    2. Oh, and now we have drop-down menus for things that didn't require the extra two steps, now. Grrrr.

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  2. I hate the new blogger. I actually DID revert to "legacy blogger" when we had the option, but every time I signed on, I had to go to the bottom of the left column in "design" and click "revert to legacy blogger." Then Blogger would tell me I'd reverted. I know that, but they couldn't seem to remember. And now, even that is gone. I'm so frustrated. I can't think of a single thing I like about the new version. I may quit blogging.

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    1. Yes, I did, too. I kept reverting to legacy blogger until they took the option away. Every. Single. Day. And, then they took it away completely, anyway. I really just hate that it's so much more clunky. I did think of one thing I like. They've brought back more text color options. But, I'd rather they didn't have drop-down menus for important things like saving a post. Why would you put that it a drop-down menu??? That's insane. Same for adding images. It's no longer *right there* at the top. Now, you have to click "more" and go to another drop-down to find the image symbol. Pfffft. I'm with you. I find blogging is just something I do to purge. Might just open up a word processing document and go back to journaling privately. This may not be worth the effort.

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  3. I don't like the formatting- how it adds extra breaks between paragraphs now. At the start of making every post I switch to HTML and strip out all the paragraph symbols, then it works normally for rest of the post even if I switch back to compose mode. But it's annoying to have to do it every time. I don't have an issue with using drop-down to save- particularly since it does an autosave every few minutes? but some other aspects bug me, and they just changed something about how to edit features for images when you add them- I'm still not used to that yet.

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    1. I haven't had any formatting trouble but I'm paranoid about saving. Just this week, I worked on a blog post and had trouble with it not saving. It's become a habit to hit save repeatedly, so it *should* have saved. But, when I went to look at the preview, none of what I'd written was there. It was still there in the window where I was composing, so I cut the entire text, opened a second Blogger window, pasted in a new post, saved, and checked to see if it had worked. Yep, that worked fine. I would have been livid if I'd lost the entire post. But, now and then, that does happen. Maybe I need to reboot more often but just in case it stops saving, I feel obligated to hit save regularly.

      Yes, the images are a nuisance. I'm still working on that. I think my frustration boils down to gettin' old. Learning new things is one thing; learning new stuff that's forced on you and isn't as intuitive as the older version just ticks me off. LOL

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  4. Interesting about the paragraph breaks. I have to go in and add in more than I think I need because otherwise the paragraphs all run together.

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    1. I still haven't had any issues with text formatting, knock wood, but images have been a bear to deal with. There's always some sort of bug when they roll out a new platform, unfortunately.

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