The main character in Granny the Pag is Catriona Brooke. Cat is left with her grandmother when her actor parents decide to tour the country, going from one theater to another. In the beginning, Cat hates the idea, and in her anger, she writes that her grandmother is a pig. At the time however, Cat is too young to know how to spell and writes "Pag" instead of pig. The name sticks and becomes a term of endearment. As Cat is about to turn 13, her parents settle in London, and they decide that they want Cat back. She doesn't want to live with them anymore, which creates the main conflict in the story.
I loved the character of the Pag. She rides a Harley and smokes whenever she wants to. Unfortunately, the Pag isn't the main character. We get bogged down in the day to day problems of Cat and hardly get to know the other characters in the book. In addition, the story is set in London, and some of the references are strictly British making them hard to understand. Also, there isn't a whole lot of action in the book, and the drama is very understated. It is a fairly slow and predictable story. ( )

I'm older than the target audience for this book (which I will guess is young adults). I enjoyed seeing the growth/maturing in Catriona and her friend Rosie.

Pag started out as a misspelling of pig and was meant to be an insult, but somewhere, over time, it became more of a good thing to Catriona. She stated it meant someone powerful and different. I was also glad to see that although Cat started out not really liking her grandmother, when it came time to choose between living with her parents (who left her with her grandmother when she was ver little) and staying with her grandmother, she wanted to stay with her grandmother.

Another area that shows the growth of the two girls is deciding that making up names for people isn't a good thing to do anymore, particularly since many of their names are derogatory. (Hairy Ears, Willie Snotnose, Fish Breath as examples) though there are a few that are not as bad, such as their name for a beloved teacher which I think was meant to honor her.

Rosie seems to be a good friend, although it was her idea for many of the names in the first place. I'm glad that Cat seemed to be sympathetic toward Willie as she learns more about his circumstances. ( )

Granny the Pag is the story of Catriona, or Cat, who lives in London with her Granny instead of her actor parents. A Pag, originally a misspelling of pig, has come to mean someone who is amazing, who has special power.

The Pag is a psychiatrist of great renown, drives a motorcycle, dresses like a bag lady, has too many animals, and chain smokes, but she is the best parent Cat has ever had. When Cat’s actor parents come back into the picture and decide they would like Cat to live with them, Cat fears she will lose the life of safety and love she has grown to treasure. If she goes to live with her parents, who are the most pretentious, selfish, disgusting characters ever, she will lose her safe home. She will lose her friends, Rosie and Tom. She will lose the Pag. That cannot happen.

Cat struggles with the same issues every preteen girl does, but her struggles are compounded by the imminent loss of the stability that every young girl needs. The story is funny, heart wrenching, and beautiful; a laugh out loud book and a tear jerker at the same time. Any young girl would adore this book. I found the characters to be so well developed I felt I knew them. The story had be giggling and crying. Five Stars.

Nina Bawden is a fairly recent discovery for me. I've still only read a few of her books but I have yet to be disappointed by her. She sticks pretty much to the children's book "formula" and yet I always feel that she doesn't necessarily always believe in all the conventions, either the conventions relating to books or children. In some ways her characters are comfortably "normal" but in other ways I feel that they are playing with me, telling me that they aren't really being put in boxes.

I liked The Pag the moment I saw her on the cover and was somewhat surprised that the main character was embarrassed to live with a "not normal" grandmother who zooms around on a Harley. I would have thought that would make her cooler than anyone else in school! If anything frustrated me, it was the bowing to conventions at all - I would have been pleased if Cat had been a little more original and less inclined to turn out the way children are "supposed" to turn out. In the end, this book failed to have the sheer originality and quirkiness of, say, Noel Streatfeild's The growing summer - a book that for some reason kept coming to mind as I read this one. And I liked The Pag more than I liked Cat. But I still admire Nina Bawden's spirit - and The Pag's. ( )