Fiction Readers: Patrick and Paloma

Patrick and Paloma is a humorous and fictional animal fantasy story about a cat, Patrick, that was very happy and content with his life. One day, his owner brought home a kitten. The kitten started sitting in his chair and getting fed before him. When the kitten curled up to Patrick, he started to have a change of heart! The story is narrated with dialogue, illustrations, onomatopoeia and illustrative text. 

Patrick and Paloma is a simple narrative story. Illustrations match the text. Draw students’ attention to the visual features including the illustrative text (italics), layout, and design. Opportunities arise to discuss with students how the text style changes to show when the cat is thinking. 

Readers develop vocabulary such as verbs (listened) and adjectives (comfortable). Focus on suffixes and base words (started). Opportunities arise to discuss apostrophes to show possession (Paz’s), apostrophes within contractions (didn’t), capital letters at the beginning of sentences and names (Paloma), question marks, quotation marks, exclamation marks, and commas. 

This title is from the Fiction Readers series from Teacher Created Materials. Stimulate the imagination and promote creative thinking through real-world themes captured in entertaining stories.