This week, we're doing our first interview on ReadItDaddy! Exciting stuff! Jenni Desmond, the Author / Illustrator of "Red Cat, Blue Cat" has kindly answered some quite tricky posed by us (including a serious character assassination question from Charlotte!)
Before we show you that article and tell you a bit more about Jenni, here's our review of "Red Cat, Blue Cat", kindly supplied to us by Blue Apple Books.
Red Cat is a frisky bouncy little feline, and Blue Cat is intelligent, creative and thoughtful. Occupying different floors of a huge house, Red Cat and Blue Cat mostly keep out of each other's ways. But when they meet, chaos ensues!
Jenni Desmond has obviously had ringside seats at many a catfight, her illustrations perfectly capture the absolute frenzy of a cat-scrap. Fur stands on end, the moggies screech and yowl and scratch, and generally the best place to be in a cat fight is about 10,000 miles away from it.
But Red Cat and Blue Cat have a secret. Each wants to be more like the other, and so they try to think up various ways to achieve this. First by merely changing colour, then by altering their behaviour.
This doesn't change what happens when they meet, but a pivotal moment in the story will show Red Cat and Blue Cat precisely why they behave the way they do.
It's a finely tuned tale that uses the two characters extremely well, to provide a moral tale of jealousy, conflict and (eventually) friendship.
The way the book ends actually made Charlotte practically jump up and down on the spot with glee (naturally we're not going to tell you what happens in the end but we're hoping it means more Red Cat, Blue Cat adventures in the future).
Jenni Desmond's illustrative style is eminently attractive and such a good fit for the story. It goes without saying that we highly recommend this beautifully presented book and are glad to see that there's always room in the cat-basket for another children's picture book featuring everyone's favourite felines.
Charlotte's best bit: Greedy Red Cat scoffing blueberries (and making a huge mess)
Daddy's favourite bit: The superb, chaotic (and sometimes quite scary) cat fights in the book. Absolutely perfectly captured.