Oh what fun this was! I love cats. I love women doing incredible things. A cat telling me about her Mommy doing incredible things? Yes! Please do! Especially when you do it this well. ( )

What a disappointment! Turns out I am unable to read this on my Kindle Paperwhite because the font is too small and there is no way to enlarge it. I've never run into an issue like this and don't know if there are any workarounds. So, until I figure out how to get it to open on my tablet or laptop, I can't read it. It looks so good, too. I may just have to buy a copy.

I received a copy of The Only True Biography of Mae Jemison by Sneeze, Her Cat by Dan Greenburg from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I am on my public library board and we are focusing on EDI this year. I requested this book with an eye to recommending it for inclusion in our library. I’m happy to say I will definitely be making this recommendation. This is a charming story that makes an extraordinary woman seem very human through the eyes of her cat. It also should improve people’s opinion of cats, as Sneeze is both wise and funny. It was a nice relief from the pandemic to read this enchanting tale. ( )

Jemison's story is very compelling, and it's wonderful that there's a biography of her for young readers. The book includes vivid descriptions and you get a feel for Jemison's personality as well as for the life of an astronaut. The cat biographer persona is fun, reminiscent of Robert Lawson's Ben and Me.
However, a couple of elements of the book stuck out for me as disruptive to the flow or annoying. At points, it feels like Sneeze's voice tries so hard to be conversational, off-the-cuff, and kid-like that it comes across as affected. Kids pick up on this affectation even if they don't have words to describe it. The explanations of the "Cattish" language are similarly a little too much; even a young reader doesn't need to be told multiple times that "squeek-squeek" is Cattish for "mouse." My other quibble is that the first several chapters bounce back and forth between biography and fun facts about African wildlife; by the time I got used to alternating and they no longer felt like strangely long digressions, the book stopped doing them and every chapter was biography. On the other hand, I tend to have an enthusiastic young reader in mind when I read children's books, and the book is explicitly targeted at either reluctant readers or reluctant readers of history, and it's possible that the elements that are concerns for me would be good features for those readers.
Overall, this book wasn't the delight to read that it could have been. ( )

Review of eBook

Writing for the Feline Historical Society, Sneeze the cat tells about the life of his human, Mae Jemison. He relates how Mae “drove” the family car when she was a toddler, he tells when she decided she wanted to be a scientist, and he explains how her mother set her on the path to her future when she challenged her to research sickle cell anemia.

Sneeze goes on to tell about her time in the Peace Corps and describes her astronaut training with NASA. And then there’s her history-making flight aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. What did Mae do? What did she think about being in space? And what do STAR TREK and Lieutenant Uhura have to do with Mae’s dreams?

In this book, the second in a series of cat-written biographies of American heroes, Mae’s cat, Sneeze, serves as the snarky narrator. Translated from the original Cattish, this middle-grade novel [for young readers ages eight through twelve] is cleverly tongue-in-cheek as Sneeze relates everything young readers want to know about Mae Jemison. He shares how Mae joined the astronaut corps in 1987 and was a mission specialist [and the first black woman to travel into space] for STS-47 [STS is short for Space Transportation System]. This was the fiftieth Space Shuttle mission of the program; the September 1992 mission was the second flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Beginning with several vignettes from Mae’s early years, the biography tells a bit about her family and her growing-up years, her schooling, and her dreams for the future. Along the way, Sneeze meanders a bit from telling about Mae to share some tidbits about what cats consider the most dangerous animals, expressions about cats, some Krio words and expressions [Doctor Mae worked with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone where Krio is spoken], and what Houston folks say about Houston. There’s also a Cattish Vocabulary list at the end of the book.

The captivating black-and-white drawings highlight various moments in Mae’s life and providing an aesthetic for the biography. Readers will find much to appreciate here; the mixing of cat-humor with Mae’s story, [often as a conversation between Sneeze and Mae], gives the biography a whimsical tone that is sure to appeal to young readers. The book offers readers a great deal of information, most [as one might expect] focused on Mae’s NASA training and shuttle flight. This makes the book of particular interest to young readers interested in space exploration and astronautics.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Readers program ( )