Reviews: The Comic Adventures of Boots

This review first appeared in Junior Magazine, issue 57.

   Any child who has read the Smarties Silver Award Winner 2003 Me And My Cat? [satoshiland: actually this is incorrect - Boots didn't feature Me and my Cat? but in two earlier board books, namely Bathtime Boots and A Friend for Boots] will be ecstatic to see that Boots the comical cartoon cat is back with more mischief in mind. This latest installment is split into three short comic-strip style episodes and is bursting with all the witty observations fans have come to expect.

   "I have always wanted to do comics and the idea of Boots stories did seem right in that format," says author and illustrator Satoshi. "I found it was very different from writing a picture book. If writing and illustrating a picture book is equivalent to writing a novel or a poem, then creating a comic strip would be very much like writing a play or movie script.You have to tell a story through dialogue and actions."

   Starting with a basic palette of colours, the pictures all harmonise well on the page together, but what makes these 'scenes' work best is that they have all been given a different size box according to the action taking place, which adds to the animation and subtly manipulates the pace of his story. In Operation Fish-Biscuit, for example, he uses a succession of small boxes to gather pace as the cats all pile on top of each other to climb a wall - then the turn of a page reveals an indulgent full-page picture showing them all tumbling back down again. Not only is it expertly constructed, it's also a complete hoot. But Satoshi allows his characters to take on a life of their own and this is evident in the stories.

   "Usually I try to write something funny for myself,? explains Satoshi, "but I don't create characters - they create themselves. Personally I like the duck, Madam Quark best. Once I put her on paper, she started doing things in her own way. But basically I aim for something universally humorous."

Having triumphed in Britain, Boots is being translated into his native Japanese, so it's definitely on its way.

Publisher's Weekly review

   Kitamura (Angry Arthur) wittily depicts cats as easygoing layabouts in these cinematic comics. In "Operation Fish Biscuit," the marmalade-colored Boots schemes to clear a brick wall of napping felines so he can snag a spot for himself. In play-by-play panels, Boots gets a bag of treats from a cupboard and leaves it on a nearby roof. "This is a necessary sacrifice," he mutters. When his dozing friends catch a whiff ("It must be fish biscuits!"), they form a "cat pyramid" to reach the loot, then teeter and fall with wry commentary ("Timber!" "How many lives do we have?" "Nine, I think..."). In the next story, Boots's visceral responses to a duck ("My claws are sticking out. How peculiar!... I must get it!") are interspersed with the duck's own logic ("Oh no, a cat!... I must run. As fast as I can!"). In the third tale, nine cats play a none-too-skillful game of charades. Leonardo from Me and My Cat? puts in cameos in these episodes, which are punctuated by wordless interludes showing Boots achieving surprising results when he draws and paints. Kitamura expertly storyboards the action and encloses all the written narration in conversational voice bubbles. With their big ears, dazed eyes and nonplussed expressions, his cats are anything but quick thinkers, and their neighborhood "adventures" unfold at a leisurely pace that heightens the absurd humor. Ages 5-up.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

   Grade 1-4. The feisty feline from A Friend for Boots and Bath-Time Boots (both Farrar, 1998) is back, this time in three comic-strip adventures. There is "Operation Fish Biscuit," the strongest of the three, in which clever Boots regains his prized sleeping spot from the local squatter cats. He tries to learn how to swim and fly from a duck in "Pleased to Meet You, Madam Quark," and plays in a wacky game of charades organized to ward off kitty boredom in "Let's Play a Guessing Game." Each panel is clean but there sometimes are 12 or more per page.

   The pen-and-brush illustrations are zany and welcoming. Some pages are positively cluttered with dialogue balloons. Good readers will be undaunted and those who are less accomplished will most likely persevere because of the format and content. The humor is simultaneously sly and outrageous even on the endpapers and in between the stories.

Linda M. Kenton, San Rafael Public Library, CA.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

A Booklist review

   Gr. 2-4. It is shaped like a tall picture book, but the content is more like a graphic novel for young readers. Comic-style panels relate three episodes in the life of Boots the cat. In the first, Boots lures a line of cats off of his favorite sleeping wall with a few fish biscuits. Several of the panels show the strategies the cats use to reach the food. When their enormous pyramid of biscuit-seeking cats falls down, funny comments appear in little balloons: "How many lives do we have?" "Nine, I think . . ." "So eight, then."

   The other two stories are equally goofy and laugh-out-loud funny, especially the third, which is essentially a group of cats playing one-word charades. The comic-book illustrations, in jaunty watercolors outlined in black, depict the cats in agreeably skewed fashion. With a format that forces children both to read and observe details in the drawings, this is a fun choice for improving reading and visual literacy.

By Susan Dove Lempke. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.