Splat the Cat: I Scream for Ice Cream by Laura Driscoll and Robert Eberz

I could have skipped reviewing Splat the Cat: I Scream for Ice Cream entirely. It's just a cute little book that I got in the hopes that someday my grandkids will come for a visit and need some reading material between the middle grade and picture book levels. But, nah. I like reviewing everything.

In Splat the Cat: I Scream for Ice Cream, Splat and his class go on a field trip to an ice cream factory. When disaster happens, they have to work hard to save the day. 

I keep coming back to the word "cute". Well, I Scream for Ice Cream is a beginning reader, after all, and meant to be enticing to little ones learning to read. I bought it primarily because it's a Level 1 reader with a cat on the cover. And, I did love the illustrations. 

As to the story, it's nothing brilliant and there's no big lesson to be learned unless it's about teamwork making things go more quickly. But, it does teach words with "eam" in them (scream, beam, dream, cream, etc.) and I think rhyming words/learning to sound them out is the easiest way to teach reading. I had one child whose teacher chose to go with teaching totally random words rather than focusing on sound and those first couple of years of reading were rough for him, so we worked on phonics at home and things improved. 

Recommended - Adorable, expressive illustrations and a fun story meant to teach children about words that rhyme with cream. Especially fun for cat-loving youngsters and their parents. 

Note: The cover says this is "Based on the bestselling books by Rob Scotton." I'm unfamiliar with Rob Scotton but I opted to use the author and illustrator (interior illustrations only; the cover art is by Rick Farley) that are written inside the book in the subject line, rather than writing whose books it was based upon. 

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