Reviewed by Joanne Watson
I planned on waiting for my son, Zack, to get home from school before I started reading this book, but when it arrived, the front cover looked so lovely, I thought I’d have a quick peek, but I ended up reading the whole thing cover to cover! It is a hardback book, with beautiful illustrations and the pages had a quality feel to them. It is an easy read, and is perfect for a bedtime story.
The story is about a cat who goes to the theatre with his owner – the leading lady. He is meant to stay backstage but gets distracted by a mouse! He runs on to the stage and chaos ensues, resulting in the cat sitting in the spotlights with various people trying to coax the cat back down. He finally comes down for his ‘leading lady’ but ends up on stage again in time for the applause.
It has the most beautiful illustrations, that really engage the reader, and when my son and I looked at it together later on, I found we spent ages discussing all the pictures in depth. I know a little about the world of theatre, but he doesn’t know much at all, so we talked about what was in each picture, and related it to when we went to the pantomime together.
This seems to me to be the purpose of the book – to introduce children to the world of theatre, and in particular, what happens backstage. A lot of the vocabulary used was quite technical; words such as intermission, stage hand, cast, scene, character etc, but we discussed each word as it came up, and he definitely came away having learnt some new words about the theatre.
We enjoyed the book, particularly when the cat was being naughty! The only bit we weren’t so keen on was when the leading lady ‘sang’ to her cat. I made up my own tune to the lyrics, but Zack felt it sounded a bit odd! Maybe it’s just the way I sing though!
We will be reading this book again and would recommend it, especially to children who are keen on the theatre!
Rating: 4/5
Available to buy from Amazon here.
