The Sweetest Cat in the Whole World

This week's read-aloud story is Jim Aylesworth's The Fully Belly Bowl, illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin. To connect students' background knowledge to this story, I ask them about the magical object in Strega Nona, a story most know. Many willing volunteers talk about that magic pasta pot and Big Anthony's negligence in not blowing three kisses to halt the flow of pasta. I share examples of other stories with a magical bowl/pot idea and then read about the Fully Belly Bowl.

It is the story of a very old man who lives with Angelina, the sweetest cat in the whole world. He is given a mysterious and beautiful gift by a wee small man whom he has rescued from a fox's jaws. This bowl refills with whatever has been taken from it - unless it is placed upside down. The man enjoys strawberries and other things...and then discovers it will reproduce coins! He greedily takes hundreds of pennies to town and gets three gold pieces. Upon his return, however, he discovers that he neglected to place the bowl upside down in his absence, and his house is overrun with great big mice. Ugh. I hate mice. The very old man takes one glance at Angelina, folds her legs under her, and places her in the Full Belly Ball. The children gasp at this point, of course. In the end, one knocks the bowl off the table, shattering it, and the very old man is content to live with the numerous cats, all of whom he thinks are the sweetest cats in the world.

A first grader pointed out to her class that the story ends the way it began, with that sweetest cat idea. Many students have imagined what things they would place in the bowl. Some wonder if a person could be placed in it. What if a book were the object? Would it come out as the same book or another title? The threads of imagination linger.