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Cool Daddy Rat

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COOL DADDY RAT; Kristyn Crow; illustrated by Mike Lester; G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008; unpaged. Picture Book.

Who would have thought a policeman's wife from Layton could so capture the big city beatof jazz and scat. But Kristyn Crow's three years in Manhattan have served her--and her readers--very well as Cool Daddy Rat (bass player) and his jazzy little boy be-bop their way through the city to Cool Daddy's gigs at The Big Swig, on the Schmooze Cruise, and so on. Mike Lester's movement-filled pictures perfectly complement Crow's alternating lines of interior rhyme and Cool Daddy's scat singing. Any storyteller who could shake his/her inhibitions even a little bit could make Cool Daddy Rat into one of the great read-alouds of the year. . . . witty kitty shoo bat!
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