Madeleine Floyd

Captain, a handsome cat who lived with his people in a house by the river, liked to do all the normal feline things: sleeping (in every place imaginable), washing (in every position imaginable), and eating (every food possible). But he also had some rather unusual habits, including a predilection for stealing out late at night, and taking his sweetheart boating under the stars. Fortunately, this cat-about-town knew how to slip between his two worlds, purring all the while...

I had mixed feelings about Captain's Purr, which started out strong - gorgeous illustrations, that perfectly captured the beauties of the feline form (I loved the washings scenes!) in all its many activities, and a simple but charming text - but then took an unexpected and rather unwelcome detour into fantasy land. The anthropomorphic scenes, in which Captain rows his lady love about, seemed completely unnecessary (couldn't he have visited with her in a suitably catty way?), and took me right out of the story, destroying that warm feeling of seeing things from a feline perspective. I wavered between two and three stars with this one, but in the end, I simply couldn't give artwork this beautiful two stars...… (meer)