My House ¦ Dig, Dig

I wish I could see the point of these 'Cat on the Mat' books from Oxford. The early Brian Wildsmith ones such as The Cat on the Mat itself and The Island were excellent. They were of high quality artistically and were proper books... they had whole, natural language and had a real plot and something to talk about. These two, though, together with most of the latest books in the series, have so little to them that they are in danger of disappearing up their own vacuum. Dig, Dig consists only of those two words, together with pictures of various digging activities; My House shows a house being built and has fairly interesting non-fiction illustrations but there is nothing in the text at all. If you want a book about earth-moving machines or house construction, then Dinosaur has several good ones with some real text to go with it. These are taking minimalism to an extreme.