10 Cats

This is a counting book and more for it also introduces the primary colours and colour mixing as well as being ideal for beginning readers.

On the opening spread we meet a mother cat and her ten little ones. The remaining spreads show what happens when the mother cat falls fast asleep leaving her mischievous kittens free to play by themselves. This involves investigating three cans of paint, one red, one yellow and one blue, getting the lids off and creating increasing chaos as they spatter first red, then yellow and finally blue splodges all over each other, the floor and end up turning their entire surroundings into a playground where they mix the three primary colours to make orange and green, until there are ten multicoloured cats. Eventually the mother moggy wakes from her blissful slumbers, sees the messy mayhem and decides her little ones need a jolly good bath.

Highly entertaining and an absolute delight: there’s plenty of detail and Emily Gravett has created ten distinctly different, utterly charming feline characters in this seemingly simple book.