Celebrity Cat: With Paintings from Art Galleries Around the World
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Felissima Cat, an artist, and her fellow London felines take a nocturnal visit to an art gallery and discover a paucity of cats in famous paintings. Returning to her studio, she repaints Van Gogh'sChair, de Hooch'sThe Courtyard of a House in Delft, and Rousseau'sTiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!), adding the missing cats. Her friends are pleased and applaud her improvements, and Felissima soon becomes a celebrity. She travels to other great museums of Europe and repaints more works, including the Mona Lisa. As her fame grows, she misses her privacy and she begins to think about why cats weren't in the original works. She realizes that the independent creatures have CHOSEN NOT TO BE IN THEM. Felissima explains this to her fans and goes back to her London studio to work on her self-portrait. The text is sophisticated and artsy, yet easy to understand. Well-chosen words and smooth pacing follow the feline's travels, thoughts, and feelings. Done in a combination of pencil, oil pastels, acrylics, and Photoshop 7, the illustrations create a unique artistic atmosphere for this adventure. Bright colors and smooth surfaces give a luminescence to the pages as the cats creep through the streets of London and Felissima looks out over Paris from a rooftop. Photographically designed city skylines, museum interiors, and paintings fit smoothly with the manually created elements. Cool cats and artists will certainly appreciate this tale. The writing style and vibrant illustrations work well for individual reads and group presentations.–Carolyn Janssen, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OHCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.