Parragon Book Buddies - The Adventures of the Owl & the Pussycat

This month's Parragon Book Buddies book is The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat by Coral Rumble.

The Owl & The Pussycat in the story aren't the ones you remember from the Edward Lear nonsense verse, these are a young boy & girl, dressed up, having an imaginative adventure in their own little boat.  Beautifully illustrated by Charlotte Cooke, it's not quite the story you expect.  I won't spoil it for you, but be ready for a cheeky seagull, and lots of fun.

Squeaky loved the story, once she stopped asking me where the owl was, and arguing that it was just a little boy dressed up (she didn't seem to have the same issue with the pussycat), and loved pointing out the various things the children had found in their adventures as the story went on.  The rhyming scheme is awkward in places, if I've got my English Literary critique hat on, but it's bouncy, lively and funny, and that matters far more than a strict iambic pentameter!

I think maybe she likes it more because she hasn't yet encountered the Edward Lear poem, though I can see that ode raising a whole lot of questions of its own when we do finally come to read it.  For me, I liked the winks to the original (the children's boat is called Petit Pois, though it isn't pea green), but there's always a little bit of the first version of something you encounter being your personal benchmark against which everything else is judged. (I can't watch a lot of movie remakes for just this reason).  Don't get me wrong, we love it, it just gives me a little shake when it doesn't go in the direction I expect it to - there's no honey, money or Five Pound Notes to start with, though they do sail away for a year and a day.

Squeaky loves this book a little more than I do, and it's a welcome addition to our bedtime collection.

The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat is released on 13 October 2013, and is available from Amazon and other retailers.

Disclosure: I was provided with the above book free of charge for the purposes of this review. I was not told what to write and all opinions are my own. Links are provided for convenience only, I am not a member of any affiliate scheme and will not receive reward for their use.