Girl Meets Cat

Gr 3-5–With this collection of page-long vignettes, Cazenove chronicles the daily adventures of a young girl named Cat, her dad, and Sushi, their spry orange tabby. The author mines humor from the mundane—in one scene, no matter how many times Sushi goes through his cat door, he can’t seem to get back inside (the final panel reveals that the door to the house is open, with Cat’s dad giggling at the confused feline). Sushi’s constant scratching of everything from furniture to the wallpaper provides another running gag; on one page, based on all the claw marks, the mailman assumes that Cat and her father own multiple cats. A muted palette pleasingly complements the silly if somewhat uninspired narrative. With action lines aplenty, Cazenove’s energetic drawings flow into one another without any hard borders, encouraging readers to plow through this fluffy book stuffed with every manner of cat clichés, feline puns, and kitty jokes, though the text may be a little small for some readers. All characters appear to be white, except for one cutaway gag that depicts an Asian character located “in a distant land,” who wears wooden sandals and is accompanied by a yin-yang symbol, a lucky cat statue, and a Buddha statue. This unfortunate and unnecessary mash-up of Chinese and Japanese culture does a disservice to this otherwise enjoyable work.