The Mousehole Cat

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: A wonderful story with beautiful pictures. If it doesn't warm your heart, you're not human! It is so good, I've bought a stack of copies to send out as Christmas gifts.

Rating:
Summary: charming story, lovely pictures
Review: This book is absolutely beautiful - both the story and the illustrations. My daughter and I were enchanted. I think its best audience is for six and up. It was not as much appreciated by my four-year old.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, stirring, my kids loved it!
Review: This is an extraordinary book. Antonia Barber has produced a superb story, based on the legend of the Cornish village of Mousehole. Tom is an old fisherman who lives with Mowzer, his cat, who is also aging gracefully. Their lives--organized around fish, firesides, milk, and scratching of ears--fill the first few pages, and then the Great Storm-Cat arrives, howling around the harbor and bottling up the fishing fleet. Food in the village starts to run low. Finally, the day before Christmas, Tom and Mowzer go out to fish together in the teeth of the storm, so that the children of the village should not be hungry on Christmas Day.

The text is powerful--remarkably so for a children's book. But Nicola Bayley's paintings are, if possible, even more astonishing. There is a gorgeous picture of the Great Storm-Cat and Mowzer at sea; fine, characterful pictures of Tom, Mowzer and the village of Mousehole; and among other treasures, one picture that always moves me to tears. Another reviewer said the book made them weep: I know the page they were talking about. It's where Tom and Mowzer sail back to the village, to discover that the villagers have realized they are gone, and are waiting for them.

Enough. It's a beautiful picture. Buy the book, even if you don't have kids, though you'll get far more pleasure from reading this to a child. The language is a little complex for a child under five, but you can simplify as you read. And you'll read it again and again.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most perfect children's books I know
Review: This is an extraordinary book. Antonia Barber has produced a superb story, based on the legend of the Cornish village of Mousehole. Tom is an old fisherman who lives with Mowzer, his cat, who is also aging gracefully. Their lives--organized around fish, firesides, milk, and scratching of ears--fill the first few pages, and then the Great Storm-Cat arrives, howling around the harbor and bottling up the fishing fleet. Food in the village starts to run low. Finally, the day before Christmas, Tom and Mowzer go out to fish together in the teeth of the storm, so that the children of the village should not be hungry on Christmas Day.

The text is powerful--remarkably so for a children's book. But Nicola Bayley's paintings are, if possible, even more astonishing. There is a gorgeous picture of the Great Storm-Cat and Mowzer at sea; fine, characterful pictures of Tom, Mowzer and the village of Mousehole; and among other treasures, one picture that always moves me to tears. Another reviewer said the book made them weep: I know the page they were talking about. It's where Tom and Mowzer sail back to the village, to discover that the villagers have realized they are gone, and are waiting for them.

Enough. It's a beautiful picture. Buy the book, even if you don't have kids, though you'll get far more pleasure from reading this to a child. The language is a little complex for a child under five, but you can simplify as you read. And you'll read it again and again.

Rating:
Summary: A really good read
Review: This is one of those books that I can never read out loud to my children without weeping. There is something so touching about the devotion of Mowser, the cat, to Tom (her human); of Tom to the hungry children of his village; of his village to the old fisherman who risks his life to try to save them from starving. The depth of the pathos is probably most apparent to the adults reading this book; my kids always know I am going to cry, but I don't think they quite understand the sweetness of my tears. They appreciate the excitement of the story, and Mowser's pluck and skill. Bayley's illustrations are stunningly detailed and really elevate the story like a vividly remembered dream. This is a perfect book.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, stirring, my kids loved it!
Review: When my children were young, this was one of the bedtime stories they loved best. It's particularly good for cat lovers! The illustrations are gorgeous, and the story moves through suspense to a beautiful resolution -- a feast at the end of a storm-tossed fishing trip.