MY CAT, THE SILLIEST CAT IN THE WORLD

“My cat is very fat, very sweet, and very, very silly.” A peculiar cat indeed with saggy grey skin, tusks and a very long nose. The author’s cat mostly eats and sleeps with sporadic bursts of energetic frenzy. His cat is clean like all cats, but doesn’t always land on its feet (with disastrous consequences). A friend gave the author a book on cats, but strangely he couldn’t find his cat’s breed anywhere within. French graphic artist and teacher Bachelet has crafted a fabulously ridiculous spoof; the watercolor spot illustrations of an elephant doing normal cat things (including using the litter box) are a stitch. The page on which the author’s unsold paintings of his cat insert the “cat” into Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and great works by Picasso, Miró and Mondrian, among others, will have adults giggling too. The ending feels a bit abrupt, but that shouldn’t keep libraries from adding this to their collection of elephant—er, cat—storytime offerings. (Picture book. 4-8)