#Booky100Keepers Day 34: The "Splat the Cat" series by Rob Scotton (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Where would we be without Bookstart / Booktrust? For those who don't know, this is an amazing organisation that aims to put a book in the hands of every child in England and Wales - and C was the lucky recipient of "Splat the Cat" by Rob Scotton as her Bookstart book.

Back in the earliest days of the blog when we relied heavily on our local library for books, C actually having a book of her own was vitally important - there's nothing quite like having a shelf of books which you know are yours, and you can read at any time.

As you can probably imagine, the original "Splat the Cat" got read time and time again as a bedtime book, always turned into something of a performance piece because I could not resist doing a ton of really silly voices for Splat (who came out sounding like Lenny Henry's squeaky brummie accent), his Mum (a softer more understanding voice) and his teacher Miss Wimpydimple (A quavery-voiced old dear with the best intentions).

Splat is about to go to 'big school' for the first time, and his tail is wiggling with worry. He decides to bring along a friend, his long-suffering mousey companion Seymour who ends up tucked into Splat's lunchbox.

Splat isn't keen on school at all until he realises that maybe it's not quite as scary or as bad as he first thought - and perhaps Splat might even be able to teach other cats that mice are NOT food, they're friends!

Rob carried on with the series in a whole collection of books that are hugely popular with young readers, largely thanks to his fantastic illustrations and simple entertaining stories.

We were always a little puzzled by what happened by the time "Splat the Cat: Fishy Tales" came out.

With the books rebranded as "Based on the creation of Rob Scotton", we always wondered if there had been some sort of titanic 'falling out' between Rob and his publisher, as they demanded he serialised Splat stories rather than working on other stuff (Rob also created the Russell the Sheep books, which we never quite got round to reading alas).

"Splat's Fishy Tales" is also in our keepers pile regardless, and still a ticklishly entertaining tale based around Splat's school trip to an aquarium - and Splat's rather coy infatuation with 'the love of his life' - his classmate Kitten - and his rivalry with class bully Spike.

These are still fantastic little books. One or two are a bit hit and miss ("Splat Says Thank You" is a bit too saccharine for us but still has some wonderful illustrations in it). But back to the top of the review and that whole Bookstart thing, we really don't realise how lucky we are in this country to have such a wonderful organisation promoting reading for fun with kids, rather than basing their reading material and curriculum on academic achievement and fronted adverbials (which is just a rubbish way to encourage kids to love books IMHO).

Original Review Links: 

Splat the Cat

Splat the Cat - Fishy Tales Based on the Creation of Rob Scotton (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Splat Says Thank You! by Rob Scotton (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Secret Agent Splat by Rob Scotton (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Love, Splat

Booky Advent Calendar Day 8 - 8th December 2013 - "Merry Christmas Splat" By Rob Scotton (HarperCollins Children's Books)