Review: Quaky Cat

Quaky Cat

Written by Diana Noonan

Illustrated by Gavin Bishop

Publication Date: 2010
Publisher: Scholastic New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 978-1-77543-029-2

Summary/back cover:
“On a cold Christchurch morning, while the city was sleeping,
before the birds roused him with twitters and cheeping,
curled up on the end of his friend Emma’s bed,
Tiger woke with a start… and a feeling of dread.”


Written in response to the Canterbury earthquake of 2010, Quaky Cat is an evocative, uplifting story that will touch the hearts of all who read it.

Review:
The earthquakes we’ve experienced, here, in Canterbury, over the past 12 months have had a profound impact on our family. My kids’ grand-dad lost his job and him and Nana moved away. My kids no longer wave Daddy ‘good-bye’ at the front door because his building was in the cordon and he now works out of our third bedroom. The kids tell us the washing machine is “noisy like ur-cake (earthquake)”, and they are often subjected to the sight of crumbled remains of demolished buildings around the city.

It’s difficult to fully understand the emotions of children who were only a year old when the first earthquake struck last September, but my best deduction is that they’ve found the earthquakes and associated events both scary and intriguing. Those seem to be their emotions about Quaky Cat, too.

Quaky Cat is a regularly requested story in our house. The illustrations are quite unique, often depicted through paint-splattered silhouettes. I wasn’t sure what the kids would make of them, but my boys love the illustrations. I think they love the character of Tiger, the cat, too. I get the impression they feel they can relate to his fears and confusion over what’s happening around him. I think this book has given the kids a way to understand what’s happened to their city and to give them a way to discuss what happened through the careful use of images and language that bring the impact of this natural disaster within the scope of a child’s limited vocabulary and comprehension.

The flip-side is that the book appears to remind the kids of the earthquakes and sometimes seems to upset them by reliving the trauma.

Despite that, I still think this story is important and would recommend it to all families in New Zealand as a sweet story of what’s really valuable in life, and a way to approach the discussion of earthquakes with the littlies.

My rating: 4.8 out of 5

Review written by team_s



Side note from Bronwyn:
If you're interested in purchasing a copy of this book, you can find it here at Fishpond.