Good Cats/Bad Cats - Hardcover

Kindergarten-Grade 3-- Simple rhyming texts describe the various good and bad things about cats and dogs. Some of the portrayals are amusing, but many are confusing, questionable, or inappropriate. Both have potty humor, including an illustration of a yellow puddle in Dogs, which is more indicative of a bad owner than a bad pet. A reference to the Carnac character from the Johnny Carson era of "The Tonight Show" will be lost on most kids, while cats with horrified expressions in a washing machine is just plain cruel. Catrow's colorful watercolor illustrations usually enhance the spare text, but sometimes they add to the confusion. The books need to be flipped over at the halfway point to enable readers to begin the other side of the story. Happy Blanket (Farrar, 1990) by Tony Ross is one of the few titles to employ this gimmick successfully. In both of Ghigna's books, the bad qualities outweigh the good ones. --George Delalis, Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.