What is JacketFlap

  • JacketFlap connects you to the work of more than 200,000 authors, illustrators, publishers and other creators of books for Children and Young Adults. The site is updated daily with information about every book, author, illustrator, and publisher in the children's / young adult book industry. Members include published authors and illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, booksellers, publishers and fans.
    Join now (it's free).

Sort Blog Posts

Sort Posts by:

  • in
    from   

Suggest a Blog

Enter a Blog's Feed URL below and click Submit:

Most Commented Posts

In the past 7 days

Recent Posts

(tagged with 'Lucy Truman')

Recent Comments

Recently Viewed

JacketFlap Sponsors

Spread the word about books.
Put this Widget on your blog!
  • Powered by JacketFlap.com

Are you a book Publisher?
Learn about Widgets now!

Advertise on JacketFlap

MyJacketFlap Blogs

  • Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.

Blog Posts by Tag

In the past 7 days

Blog Posts by Date

Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Lucy Truman, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 1 of 1
1. Poppy’s Place: The Home-made Cat Café

That we refuse to have a pet cat is an ongoing source of frustration for my kids (if you’re curious as to why, several of the reasons are covered in this article) and so when M and J discovered poppysplacePoppy’s Place: The Home-made Cat Café they hungrily swallowed it whole, making notes as they read, plotting quietly with each other when ever they though I wouldn’t notice.

Isla is cat crazy, but her mum refuses to let her have one as a pet. Isla’s mum works as a veterinary nurse and the last thing she wants after a busy day at work is to come home to more animals who need looking after. But then Poppy appears in their lives…

This especially lovely cat, in need of a home, turns up at around the same time as Isla’s granny comes to stay for the first time since becoming a widow. Gentle strands exploring family relationships, the grieving process, and the adjustments that have to be navigated as family shapes change all come together in this sweet story where Isla comes up with an entrepreneurial way to persuade her mum to finally let her dream come true and have a cat at home.

And as the title alludes to… not just one cat, but a full on fantasy for many a feline fan: the creation of their very own cat café, a place where you can not only get great cake, but can enjoy a coffee with a cat purring in your lap. The experience of reading books is often about escaping into dreams you wish could become reality, and for my girls this was definitely the case with Poppy’s Place: The Home-made Cat Café!

This is a feel-good, gentle comfort-read of a story, ideal for fans of Holly Webb’s animal stories, or perhaps those who like Jacqueline Wilson’s younger fiction. Isla’s persistence and her tech savvy big sister’s kindness are great, and the way the community comes together to support a project is another charming side to this story. Both my kids are very pleased there is to be second book later in the year following the characters they’ve met in Poppy’s Place… even if they’re still getting nowhere when it comes to persuading me that we should have a cat. At least now they can live vicariously through Isla!

I wouldn’t want you to think that I have a heart of stone, even though I refuse to have pets. I really do have a soft side, and I even let it show one day after school when the kids came home to this:

catcafe1

The girls ordered from the menu…

catcafe3

Can you spot all the different feline-themed food?

catcafe4

catcafe5

We may not have had any real cats in our café, but we certainly had a few who stepped out from stories. Who can you spot?

catcafe2

menubothpages

If you’d like to make your own cat café at home, please feel free to use our menu template. It has endorsements from all sorts of fictional cats (Garfield says of the café: “Paw-sitively the yummiest place to eat even if there isn’t any lasagna…“), and also some cat-themed book recommendations on the back. You can download the menu cover here (pdf), and the inside (ready for you to fill with your own choice of food) here (pdf).

Except for the book covers and the silhouette cats, all the images used in the menu come from the British Library Flickr Stream, an amazing set of over a million images from British Library held material, free for anyone to use, remix and re-purpose.

Whilst dining in our home made cat café we listened to:

  • C Is for Cat by The Pop Ups
  • Walking My Cat Named Dog by They Might Be Giants
  • Kitty Fight Song by Joe McDermott

  • Other activities which might work well alongside reading Poppy’s Place include:

  • Visiting a real cat café, like this one in Cardiff, that you could help fund!) or this one in London.
  • Virtually browsing a variety of cat cafés in Japan
  • Finding out about volunteering with a cat charity, for example with The Cats Protection League. Some volunteering opportunities are sometimes available to older children.

  • If you liked this post you might like these other posts by me:

  • That Cat who came in off the Roof by Annie M. G. Schmidt
  • The Tip-Tap Dancing Cat by Joanna Boyle, plus making your own disco ball
  • I am Cat by Jackie Morris, plus how to make a giant cat mobile
  • catextras

    If you’d like to receive all my posts from this blog please sign up by popping your email address in the box below:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

    4 Comments on Poppy’s Place: The Home-made Cat Café, last added: 3/10/2016
    Display Comments Add a Comment