By Colleen AF Venable and Stephanie Yue
Earning enough money for summer camp gets complicated when your new boss owns 217 cats with secret superpowers and a potential life of crime.
Colleen AF Venable and illustrator Stephanie Yue bring us Katie, a New York City ‘tween’ who is stuck at home while her best friend is away at camp. Because her family cannot afford the camp fees, Katie takes on a series of odd jobs before landing a gig catsitting for her mysterious neighbor, Madeline Lang. She soon realizes these are no ordinary pets; the 217 cats have specialized skills that seem linked to a string of animal-rights-themed “supervillain” attacks occurring across the city. With four books currently available and a fifth on the way, this series offers plenty of material for students to dive into once they are hooked by the first mystery.
This series is a fantastic choice for students who find dense blocks of text intimidating or are still mastering English. The graphic novel format uses expressive character designs and clear panel layouts to help readers track the plot through visual cues alongside words. Since the vocabulary is grounded in everyday dialogue and the Lexile level is quite accessible at GN340L, readers can focus on the deeper ethical questions about justice and friendship without getting stuck on difficult sentences. Teachers can use the consistent art style and recurring cast of cats to help students build stamina; because the visual world stays the same in every book, readers don’t have to “relearn” the setting each time they start a new volume. This familiarity allows hesitant readers to feel like experts by the time they reach the second or third book, which is a massive boost for their confidence in a classroom setting.
Total Books in Series: 5 (4 published, 1 forthcoming) Best Starting Point: Katie the Catsitter
