Module 2: Picture Book 5

Author	Karen Hesse
Title	The Cats in Krasinski Square
Illustrator	Wendy Watson
Readability Score	Grade level equivalent:  3.5 Lexile Measure: 990L DRA:  38
Genre	Fiction
Subgenre	Historical Fiction
Theme	This book encourages selflessness and bravery.
Primary and Secondary Characters	Narrator, Michal, Mira, Arik, Henryk, Marek, Hanna, Anna, Tosia, Stasia, Gestapo
Award(s) date of publication	2004
Publishing Company	Scholastic Press
ISBN Number	0-439-43540-4
Brief Summary	The narrator, a young Jewish girl describes life in Warsaw, Poland after escaping the Ghetto during World War II.  Along with her older sister Mira, the narrator devises a plan to use cats as a distraction while smuggling food to those less fortunate and still trapped behind the Wall of the Ghetto.
Picture of book cover
Description of how you would use book with students	This book could be used as part of a text set for World War II.  Students could use discuss the text in literature discussion groups and compare the story with other historical fiction picture books set during World War II such as Patricia Polacco’s The Butterfly, and Carmen Agra Deedy’s The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark.