Geraldine Pu and her cat hat, too!
(Graphic Novel)

A Taiwanese American girl learns to love her hair. Geraldine Pu loves her multigenerational family, her favorite things, and getting cozy in chilly weather. She particularly loves her cat hat (or mao maotz in Mandarin Chinese) with its cat ears and whiskers--it is this hat, interestingly enough, that narrates the story. When Geraldine accompanies her grandmother to the hair salon, she looks at glamorous photos in hairdressing magazines and concludes that her own black, straight hair is boring. The next day, she decides to use her cat hat to hide her hair, but her classmates--a racially diverse group that also includes a child in a wheelchair--call her out for breaking school rules. Picture day is coming up at school, so Geraldine secretly tries to achieve her grandmother's wavy hair texture…with disastrous results. Thankfully, her grandmother steps in to stage a hair intervention and deliver some much-needed wisdom. The illustrations in this latest addition to the Geraldine Pu series are colorful and accessible, and facial expressions are rendered with precision. The informative backmatter includes a guide to reading a graphic novel, a glossary, a note on the diversity of hair, and instructions on how to make a self-portrait collage. Another engaging outing for the likable protagonist of Chang's simple but thoughtful graphic early reader series. (Graphic early reader. 5-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.