SILLY CAT AND FRIENDS MAKE BELIEVE

In Abrams’ illustrated children’s book, a white cat and a dachshund in Tennessee conjure unusual scenarios in brief rhymes.

Silly Cat imagines that he can see across the sea from landlocked Tennessee, and witness wallabies or manatees; he then “rous[es] from his reverie” to see a lizard “lunching on a backyard flea.” In short verse chapters in large type, readers follow Silly and sometimes dachshund Dainty on a series of similar fantasies. Vagreti offers scrupulously lively, dynamic paintings in flat colors, which depict lifelike animals inside and outside Silly’s head, with occasional anthropomorphic expressions on Silly’s face; there are also depictions of unlikely behavior, such as Dainty carrying dishes of ice cream. The situations are lightly amusing throughout, as when Silly pretends to be a stegosaur named Brute who blasts fruit “right out of his snoot,” or sees a bear wearing knight’s armor. The rhyme scheme stays consistently simple—the end words of every line in each stanza rhyme—though Abrams often leaps into more advanced, interesting vocabulary: “My mind went fuzzy with despair, / like sort of dreaming, yet aware.” Wild animals from around the world make occasional incongruous appearances. The humor is that of a pet owner observing a feline’s inscrutable behavior and fondly projecting human emotions onto it; the result is a text for cat lovers from a range of age groups. It will be most appropriate for kids who enjoy funny poems and have learned to read on their own, but who also benefit from plenty of pictures.

Fans of funny animals will find tame humor, vocabulary-building language, and accessible rhymes here.