STACEY PATTON

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DR. STACEY PATTON is an award-winning journalist and child advocate who teaches digital storytelling and media literacy at Howard University. She writes frequently about race and child welfare issues for The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, BBC News, and The Root, and has won numerous journalism awards and academic honors. Dr. Patton also is the author of the memoir That Mean Old Yesterday. Not My Cat is her first picture book.

Visit her at SpareTheKids.com.

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Not My Cat

Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (April 23, 2024)

Based on the author’s real experience, this charming and hilarious picture book follows a solitary homeowner who insists she’s much too busy to adopt a stray cat…until the cat adopts her.

Staceypants lives in a beautiful yellow house in Charm City where she stays busy fixing things, planting pretty flowers, and keeping her home clean. One day, she finds a scruffy gray cat perched on her fence. But Staceypants definitely does not want a cat. Cats scratch furniture, jump on everything, and they need a litter box!

No, this is not Staceypants’s cat. Not when the cat comes back again and again. Not when Staceypants buys the cat a fancy cat bed. Not even when she and the cat sunbathe and do porch yoga together. But what will she do when the cat that’s not her cat disappears?