Cats in Chaos

Peter Bentley

John Bond

HarperCollins, 2022

32pp., pbk., RRP $A19.99

 9780008469184

In the dark of night, as their owners sleep, the cats of the city are all headed to one place: Catsby’s Great Circus! Step this way and see conjuring cats, felines that fly, Siamese that swing from above, and don’t miss the mighty PURRCULES CLAW. But with so much activity, it only takes one little mouse in the wrong place to put the whole circus in chaos…

I have to confess to not being  a “cat person”  although I have always loved T. S. Eliot’s Macavity’s Not Therethat lingers in the back of my childhood memories as one of the few poems I truly loved from my schooldays.  But this rhyming, tumbling jumble of cats would be up there too, now, as one to share with students just for the fun of the language, let alone the storyline.  Bright, eye-catching pictures capture the chaos as the story hums along with humour and madness – all the qualities that are going to engage young readers who are going to wonder what their cats do at night.  Are they cunning criminals in league with Macavity, the Hidden Paw, or are they secret circus artists with talents hidden from their owners?