Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield

Simon’s Cat started off life as an internet animation that developed a cult following. The short films featuring a hungry cat on Youtube gained enough viewers to interest Canongate publishing, who’ve made it into a book. This would seem to reverse the norm, but it works well enough. For those who haven’t seen them, the short films were black and white line drawings of a cat pestering its line drawing owner (who we’ll presume is called Simon), usually for food. The book is much the same, and as the films were dialogue free, so is the book. The main difference is duration; the stories in the book never take more than a page, sometimes with around six pictures, but usually just one. The book does build up a world for this Cat – he lives in a suburban home, with plenty of gardens and open space to roam around in, and there are recurring characters other than cat and owner, like a dog, a hedgehog and some birds – but it’s not really what you’d call taxing reading, nor is it meant to be. Extremely amiable, this is a book to dip into occasionally. [David Agnew]