Katie the Catsitter

Colleen AF (Ann Felicity) Venable began her career designing hundreds of graphics novels for First Second Books, several of which won awards. Her most popular work is the young adult graphic novel, Kiss Number 8, with illustrator Ellen T. Crenshaw (2019), which was nominated for a National Book Award. She is also the author of the Guinea Pig Pet Shop Private Eye series of picture books, Mervin the Sloth is About to Do the Best Thing in The World (with Ruth Chan) (2016), and The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom (with Lian Cho) (2020).

The Katie the Catsitter series is Venable’s first foray into middle-grade graphic novels and draws heavily from her personal life and interests. In addition to writing, Venable spends a lot of her time helping animals and works as an adoption counselor at a local animal rescue. In Katie the Catsitter, both animals and animal rights are central to the story and its themes: Katie spends much of her time caring for Ms. Lang’s 217 cats, the cats are highly intelligent and all have unique skills and abilities, and Ms. Lang is an animal rights activist. In the author biography at the back of the Random House Graphic edition, Venable states that she wrote the book because “[she] wanted there to be more cool female superheroes” and to tell a story about the difficulties of growing apart from your best friend.