Released in 2012, Cat Girl’s Day Offintroduces readers to Natalie (Nat) Ng, a typical teenager…except for the fact that she can talk to cats, which she tries very hard to hide. When one of her best friends, Oscar, shows her a viral Internet video featuring a famous blogger being attacked by her own cat, Nat realizes what’s really going on. Soon her and her friends are caught in the middle of a celebrity kidnapping mystery that takes them through Ferris Bueller’s Chicago and on and off movie sets.
Now we’re excited to release a new paperback version of Cat Girl’s Day Off. Check out the new cover below! Continue reading →
I had two Korean roommates in college. Ever since then, I’ve said, “Someday I will learn Korean and visit Hyun Mi in Korea.” Last year, when I made new Korean friends here in New York City, I decided that “someday” needed to finally be today. I started to learn Korean from a book and a podcast, got addicted to Korean dramas, and this May, finally made that trip to Korea I’ve been meaning to make for over a decade.
On my way to Korea, I had a 7-hour layover in London, another place I’ve never seen in person before. I got to meet Cat Girl’s Day Off author Kimberly Pauley, who showed me 221B Baker St. and the whole area around Parliament—Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Cathedral, for example (the outside—no time for the inside), and then we finished off our whirlwind tour with a full English breakfast.
(center) Kimberly Pauley and Stacy Whitman at Paddington Station with Paddington Bear; other sights in LondonA subway entrance in Busan, South Korea
I didn’t get to visit my old roommate, but I did visit my new friend from New York, who had moved back to Seoul. I stayed with her and her family in Mokdong, a suburb of Seoul, which I loved not only because I was visiting my friend, but also because I got to experience Korean culture from a closer point of view, not as a tourist in a hotel but as a guest. I got to do normal everyday things with my friend, like going to the grocery store and post office, to the bookstore and to the repair booth on the corner run by the ajussi who might know how to fix my purse (sadly, he didn’t have a good solution). I was greatly impressed with the public transportation system, which got me everywhere I needed to be, and often had malls in the stations!
I also met up with the Talk to Me in Korean crew (from whom I’m learning Korean), who happened to have a meetup when I was in Korea. Here I am with Hyunwoo Sun, the founder of Talk to Me in Korean, and his wife, Mi Kyung. A few of us went out for a kind of fusion chicken, the name of which I’ve forgotten, and then patbingsoo—sweet red beans over shaved ice—after the meetup of over a hundred TTMIK listeners.
Meet-up with Talk to Me in Korean teachers and students
I love Korean dramas, which are often historical, so of course I wanted to see places like National Treasure #1, the Namdaemung Gate (officially known as Sungnyemun), which burned down in 2008 and was just recently restored and reopened, and Gyeongbokgung Palace in the heart of Seoul. The folk museum was fascinating, letting me see Korean history in person—for example, they had a living replica of a Korean street that brought you forward in time from the Joseon era to the 1990s.
In this guest post, Cat Girl’s Day Off and Sucks to Be Me author Kimberly Pauley offers some advice for authors who want to write humor. Her books have been called “entertaining, hilarious, and exceptionally creative,” (School Library Journal) and been praised for their “pitch-perfect humor” (Booklist).
My son is five and he’s (obviously) a boy. That means he finds slapstick humor absolutely jaw-droppingly hilarious. Tom and Jerry make him laugh so hard that he will literally fall out of his chair. My husband has (mostly) outgrown that style of humor, however, and tends to laugh at more intellectual Eddie Izzard-style jokes. That’s the great thing about humor-it’s not all one-size-fits all. Different things make different people laugh. So how do you write a funny story to appeal to more than just yourself?
For those of you who didn’t know, Cat Girl’s Day Offtakes place on the set of a remake of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Since its release in 1986, this movie has achieved the status of cult classic and become the source of countless pop culture references and movie quotes (Bueller? Bueller?)
For me, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off evokes fond images of playing hooky in sunny Chicago, adventures you could only have with your best friends, and the loveable Ferris himself. I would love to be Ferris Bueller!! But what exactly is it about the movie that makes it an all-time favorite?
Author Kimberly Pauley tells us her top five reasons why she chose the film to tie in to Cat Girl’s Day Off:
A few weeks ago we did a giveaway to celebrate the release of Cat Girl’s Day Off and asked readers what they’ve always wanted to ask their cats. We pulled a few of their questions and asked our resident cat translator, Natalie Ng (a.k.a. Cat Girl), to get us some answers. Straight from the cat’s mouth:
What’s the secret to always landing on your feet?
Rufus Brutus the Third: You point them towards the floor. What a silly question.
What’s the most annoying thing your pet parent does?
PD: It’s hard to pick just one thing, don’t you think? There’s the nasty medicine they make me take, for one. Not to mention the dry cat food they give me. They only give me wet food once a week, like I need to be on a diet. Ian does sneak me food from the table though, so he makes up for it a bit. Oh, and trying to keep me in the house all the time! A cat’s gotta roam, you know?
Just one week until the release of Kimberly Pauley’s Cat Girl’s Day Off! In celebration, Cat Girl’s star celebrity blogger Easton West has commandeered the Lee & Low Blog kindly volunteered to share her thoughts on the book, her cat, Ty McKenzie’s underwear, and what it’s like being kidnapped by a crazy, psycopathic—well, let’s not give anything away…
Hello there my little poppets! O, Easton, you ask, whatever are you doing here? This isn’t your home-away-from-home-on-the-web where I go for all the celebrity news I can handle. This is the blog of a publisher. They do serious things here. They don’t gossip. They don’t talk about the color of Ty McKenzie’s underwear (red, dearies, in case you were wondering and no, I’m not going to tell you how I know that!).
In this guest post, 
humor. Her books have been called “entertaining, hilarious, and exceptionally creative,” (School Library Journal) and been praised for their “pitch-perfect humor” (Booklist).
