As you can see from the front cover, this is advertised as being by 'The Illustrator of 'What the Ladybird Heard'. Which I always feel is a bit harsh, if you write a book, I'm not sure how desperate you'd be to be selling yourself as the person who drew the pictures in another?
Anyway, this book is both written and illustrated by Lydia Monks - who is perhaps better known as the woman who has illustrated a number of other books including the Julia-Donaldson-penned 'What the Ladybird Heard'. However, I found this book way before I was familiar with Julia Donaldson, having bought this for the child of the couple who lived in the flat below me when I was being an (im)mature student doing my Masters, and so am quite pleased when I recently discovered it has made its way prominently back onto shop shelves.
So the general premise of the book is that there's a cat, and the cat is pretty hacked off because dogs get to do fun things. Such as:
However, after making his case, the cat's un-named owner basically slates dogs as idiotic creatures who eat old bones and have to do as they're told, whilst extolling the virtues of being a cat. So it's basically a 'love who you are' sort of book, though given that not much of a case gets put forward for being a dog I think there ought to be a sequel called something along the lines of 'Seriously Dog, I was just saying those things to get the Cat to stop complaining, you're alright really'.
As can be seen in the pictures above, the illustrations are bold and uncluttered, and the text is relatively minimal making this especially ideal to read to younger children (my 2 year old loves it, but my 4 year old will occasionally listen and gets more of the humour behind it) and an easy choice for a short story before bed.
Enjoyment for adults to read to children: 4/5 (knocking a point off as the rhythm of the words doesn't always work and sometimes trips me up)
Enjoyment for children: 4/5
Glumness of cat at not being a dog: 90% decreasing to 0%
Mice that cat has caught but hasn't seemed to have done anything unpleasant to quite yet: 3
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