Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite children's book of the year, 28 Oct 2007
This book is fantastic. I had been looking for something new to read to my children that wasn't going to be boring for me, and in this book I found it. It is absolutely hilarious, beautifully written, exciting for kids and with the most amazing illustrations. My eight year old loved it and my four year old begged for more story every night. As soon as it was finished they wanted me to start again from the beginning. Ottoline is a little girl who lives alone, except for her hairy companion Mr Monroe, who her parents rescued from a Norwegian Bog. Ottoline is a precociously clever child, a mistress of disguise and a compulsive collector, a trait she has inherited from her explorer parents who are constantly circumnavigating the globe, sending her postcards from far away places along with collections of new things. Ottoline gets drawn into a mystery as the dogs and jewels of her neighbours start to go missing. Luckily, Ottoline and Mr Monroe are on the case. The book has beautiful production values and is a thing of joy in itself. A future classic.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Book that is a pleasure to own on several levels, 20 Nov 2007
Beautiful and detailed illustrations, attractively produced book, and a good story. I find it very hard to find books to appeal to my daughter (10) but this was a resounding success. It is a joy to hold and to look at. It is also quick to read as it has fairly large print and a wealth of illustrations - tentative readers get the satisfaction of having read a whole 'proper' book fairly easily. Fergus Crane and Hugo Pepper (same author, subtle links between the stories) are a bit longer but also excellent.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly fantastic - an amusing and quirky story told through a marvellous mix of words and pictures, 20 May 2007
My six-year-old daughter picked up this book in the book shop the other day and we both absolutely love it. It's an absolute triumph - a multi-faceted story in every way that will transfix any child from age 5 and surely will stay a well-thumbed favourite on their shelf when that same child is long grown up.
Ottoline and the Yellow Cat is a chapter book yet it is absolutely crammed with fantastic pen and ink drawings in Chris Riddell's brilliant and memorable style.
This is such a wonderful book in so many ways that it is hard to know how and where to begin describing it and how to do it justice.
The story has intrigue, cunning and excitement: is it a coincidence that the photo of each victim of a jewel theft includes a lap-dog? There's the feisty little heroine who is a master of special disguise and works closely with her funny unidentified-animal sidekick, Mr Munroe and there's the Yellow Cat, ring-leader of the double-crossing lap-dog gang, and her cockatoo accomplice. The well-written story is presented through a great mix of textual body, beautiful detailed pictures (including some striking double page illustrations without text), the odd bit of newspapers, with the occasional posters and postcards, a cross-section and a room plan thrown in.
As well as the inherent humour in the pictures, there are lots of little deliberate asides throughout such as Robert the mouse who pops up throughout yet is not integral to the story and the `1000-strong lightbulb changing company'. Also, on the bottom of every postcard from Ottoline's absent parents, there is a P.S. to make you smile relevant to the current point of the story. There's the sequence where Mr Munroe adds elements to his disguise, trying to become unrecognisable, which made us cry with laughter, and lots lots more.
This book reminds me in some ways of a cross between two great titles Allan Ahlberg's The Cat Who Got Carried Away and the now-collectable classic of my own childhood by Graves and Sendak, The Big Green Book, and it deserves wide acclaim and recognition now and for a good time to come.
I very much hope to see a lot more of Ottoline over the next few years. Well done and thank you, Mr Riddell!
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