Cat Kid Comic Club: Perspectives

Pilkey, Dav. Cat Kid Comic Club: Perspectives (Cat Kid Comic Club #2) 
November 30th 2021 by Graphix

Copy bought for the Blendon Library by the wonderful Mr. Woodruff

Cat Kid is back, helping Flippy to teach his cantakerous children some art techniques. This is somewhat difficult since Melvin and Naomi insist on bringing all of their negative sibling energy to the class, bickering, tattling, hitting, and generally causing a ruckus. Flippy threatens to send them to time out or home, but relents, so the low level chaos continues. Cat Kid does manage to teach a couple of lessons on perspective, showing the tadpoles how to draw 3D bubble letters and buildings with windows, but that's about all the art tips we get. The other students do continue to churn out their own comics in a variety of formats on a range of subjects, from a very George and Harold Skelopup to a nicely photoillustrated Haiku reflection. Melvin is punished by having to write a comic about Naomi, and he is inspired by an instance where Naomi has to work harder to be rewarded because she is a girl, so we get a nice but slightly odd message about gender equity, and the siblings, after Naomi engages in quite a bit of  obnoxious "I'm not touching you" behavior, seem to get along a little better. 

Strengths: There aren't a lot of books that deal with siblings fighting; I think there were more in the 1980s. I suspect that children still fight, although my own personal children usually got along better than my brother and I did. Certainly Naomi and Melvin's interactions seemed very familiar to me! The art techniques were interesting, and the range of student products gives a lot of inspiration to Cat Kid readers who might be interested in writing their own stories. 
Weaknesses: Were I Flippy, I would have come down a lot harder on the bratty behavior a lot sooner. Also, this didn't have quite as much of a plot or a clever message as the first book, and seemed to ramble a bit more to me. The readers who like Pilkey are not necessarily going to care. 
What I really think: I'm glad that my long time supported and volunteer bought this book for the library, because it will be in high demand, but it wasn't quite as clever as the first book in the series, Cat Kid Comics Club, which was quite delightful and subversive.