Construction Kitties


This evening I read Construction Kitties to La Serpiente. This is a book in which a family of cats put on hard hats and then use a variety of heavy machinery to (spoiler alert) build a play area. I think La Serpiente chose this book from the library on purpose, but what malefic and occult purpose that was, no human mind could comprehend.

The illustrations are woefully inept; crude images of excavators and dump trucks, while the cats may be wearing orange beanies or hard hats – you cannot be sure. The words accompanying this travesty are few in number, and laid out on the page to suggest poetry, but there’s no thought of rhythm, rhyme or meter here. There are some cats. They eat their breakfast (fried eggs). They drive to work in trucks, playing discordant music they are apparently singing along to. And then they use a series of diggers, bulldozers and other machinery (ludicrously over the top) to build a playground.

La Serpiente looked with confusion at the end result. "Where are the mummy and daddy cats?" she asked at last. I could not tell her. I masked my ignorance by suggesting that the lack of perspective in the pictures might mean the size of any particular cat could not be interpreted as indicative of its seniority, but I felt she knew that I was no trustworthy witness here.

Ashamed, I discarded this book and then found the other one I had to read her was The Make More with Abney and Teal, a book about idiots who find a mirror. Again, a favourite of La Serpiente without redeeming features. I am in hell. Send books.


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