A Friend like You

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

Roger Pare has illustrated many children’s books and has specialized in children’s programming for the Société Radio-Canada in Montreal for 25 years. This is his first book as author and illustrator. The book was originally published in French as Plaisirs de chats; this is a translation, and not a very good one. “Spring is as gentle as the fur of kittens” and “At night all cats look grey only you never do” are tricky images for any adult to contemplate. “Gentle” reappears two pages later: “Let’s just rock and enjoy the gentle summer,” again a rather clumsy image with the awkward “gentle.”

Ten full-colour illustrations with a short caption on the opposite page make up the book. The theme is friendship, with cats representing friends. Their relationship is ambiguous; the two cats seem more like lovers dancing together, walking holding hands, cuddling in a chair, lying together on a couch, sleeping together. It is an adult friendship, not one a child can relate to or appreciate. There is no story on continuity to sustain a child’s interest. The drawings are well done, although the cats are large, very fat animals with immense legs and faces, more suggestive of bears than of cats. The book, which has little to recommend itself, seems like a poor attempt to imitate Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter books.