Customer Reviews

The Alley Cat's Meow

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Here is a book with rich language, written in a syncopated, jazzy style. My 3 year old granddaughter loves it, and so do I. This book is a joy to read. What other book describes someone as looking luminous, or being la di da di da? I've fallen in love, and you will, too.

This is one of the most delightful books I've ever read to my granddaughter - and I love it as well. The illustrations are so imaginative and colorful. The rhyming text is almost a song as you read it aloud. I rate it up there with "Mr. Maxwell's Mouse, another truly imaginative cat story.

The story is really a thinly disguised nod to a cliche of the 30s and 40s. The two dancing cats, Red and Ginger, could be fRED Astaire and GINGER Rogers respectively. My son of course, asked, what an 'A' train was and he interpolated an 'h' into the Catanooga Choo-choo since he knew the song, both conveyances of which feature in the story. And he loved it, because despite its coded references to cultural archaeology, it really is a children's story, like the one about Jack and Jill going up the hill, or better yet, like the tale of the owl and the pussycat sailing to sea.

Here are little boy cats in striped shirts, posed kisses between Red and Ginger, a waiter bringing a drink of milk in champagne glass and a fantasy dance tour of exotic locales. And both cats live happily ever after. Not a stain crosses the pages of childhood. And that's good enough for me.

This is the worst kind of book. A competent writer. A competent illustrator. Horrible, saccharin poetry. Virtuosic, deathly boring pastel illustrations. A story ill-suited for young readers (and their parents). The kind of book that would have made me never want to read another book ever again. Please, no more books like this. Ever.

Surely all of the collective talent that went into creating this book could have been employed more fruitfully. Kids need smarter books. Ones where the author and illustrator are less in love with their own abilities, amd more genuinely interested in what will appeal to, and challenge, young minds.