Cats and Us: A Ten-Thousand Year Fascination; and This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake
Refreshingly, two kids’ picture books show animals as reality rather than myth
In “The Cat that Walked by Himself,” one of his Just So Stories (1902), Rudyard Kipling famously portrayed your typical cat as independent, happiest when alone. It’s a charming image that by now has become almost mythic—but perhaps, with today’s threats to the environment, we should also be encouraging children to read realistic depictions of animals.
Two recent picture books meet that goal, and so delightfully that children won’t realize they’re absorbing that most dreaded of story types: a good lesson.
In Cats and Us: A Ten-Thousand-Year Fascination, writer/illustrator Marta Pantaleo begins her trip through feline history with two cave-era humans huddling by a fire. Nearby, their child quakes at the sight of a wild intruder: a black-striped gray cat in a tree.
The journey through time continues, kitties stealing every scene with their bright, alert eyes. A ship’s captain takes cats along to keep voyages rodent-free. A woman in pearls, a pink fluffy dress and Marie-Antoinette-ish bouffant snuggles nose to nose with a, well, aristocat. In a modern setting, a woman in a wheelchair has a cat on her lap—a cross-looking cat, as the woman is two-timing him by smiling at another cat nearby.
Every image in Cats and Us is rich in both colour and evocativeness. Pantaleo notes that, “just when we think we know everything about [cats], they can seem incomprehensible to us.” Cue an illustration of a cat squeezing itself into a box while looking the reader with a smug blue gaze. Anyone who’s ever had a cat in the family will recognize that expression: Aren’t I clever?
Pantaleo ends her book with a feline version of Where’s Waldo? Showing the 36 kinds of cats featured in her story, she challenges readers to go back and find each one. Again, children will have such fun searching for a long-haired Persian, medium-haired Ragdoll, etc., they won’t realize how much they’re learning.
Full disclosure: I’m a Kipling devotee. “Totally,” as the kids say. However, I’m now rethinking another Kipling story. In possibly his most famous, “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” from The Jungle Book (1894), the villains are a cobra couple. Again, a riveting, but somewhat misleading animal portrayal. Evil Nag and Nagaina hiss out a plan to kill a human family. Rikki, a heroic and lithe mongoose, vanquishes them.
Thanks to this frightening duo I, along with I’m sure many other kids, was terrified of snakes. Never mind cobras; just the sight of a garter snake sent me fleeing.
But now This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake, by Nicholas Ruddock, pictures by Ashley Barron, slithers up to the plate with a more refreshing and realistic depiction.
The book begins with a beautiful yellow- and black-striped snake the narrator almost steps on:
“We trapped her in a coffee cup,
a playing card to seal,
and moved her to the nearby woods,
no longer under heel.”
Safe, the wee snake gleams out from lush green leaves and purple flowers. A shy friend, not a threat.
Co-starring with the tiny fragile snake are other animals we’ve mostly stereotyped as scary and/or yechy. For example, a skunk shows up on the porch,
“and we thought that we should scream,
for he smelled like rancid oil
and rotten fish and gasoline.”
But nary a vindictive stink-zap from the fluffy visitor. Wrinkling his nose, the skunk “strolled off without a fuss.” Which is pretty much what happened the time I met a skunk in my former ’hood of East Van: we looked at each other, me noticing how cute he was. Then we both turned away and went on with our day. (I seem to be channelling Ruddock’s rhymes. Not hard to do. They’re catchy!)
Like Cats and Us, the Tiny Fragile Snake picture book is welcome for its understanding portrayal of animals. Sure, myths are fun. But maybe reality-based stories are more caring.
About the Authors and Illustrator
Marta Pantaleo, internationally award-winning author and illustrator of Cats and Us: A Ten-Thousand Year Fascination,studied graphic design and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where she lives, and illustration at MiMaster in Milan. She has illustrated children’s books and such international publications as The New York Times.
Nicholas Ruddock is a Guelph, Ontario writer and physician whose novels, short stories and poetry for adults have won awards in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. He has also been shortlisted for a CBC Short Story Award. The poems in This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake, his début children’s book, are inspired by personal experience.
Ashley Barron, illustrator of Tiny Fragile Snake, is a multimedia artist best known for her paper collage work. The illustrator of more than a dozen picture books, she has worked on a wide assortment of advertising and editorial projects over the years.
Book Details
Cats and Us: A Ten-Thousand-Year Fascination, by Marta Pantaleo
Translated by Debbie Bibo and Yvette Ghione
·Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd., September 2, 2025
·Language: English
·Hardcover: 40 pages
·ISBN: 9781779460394
This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake, by Nicholas Ruddock, illustrated by Ashley Barron
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd, February 6, 2024
Language: English
Hardcover: 36 pages
ISBN: 9781773067841
About the Reviewer
Melanie Jackson is a Vancouver freelance writer/editor. She’s also the award-winning author of middle-grade/YA suspensers, including Orca Books’ Dinah Galloway Mystery Series, and several chillers set in amusement parks. Visit Melanie at The Writers’ Union of Canada site.