posted on 22 Aug 2016

Baker Cat by Posy Simmonds

For many years I only knew Posy Simmonds as a cartoonist in The Guardian where she gently – and sometimes not so gently – satirised the anguished, intellectual middle classes of the 1980s. The Weber family became a touchstone for understanding the dilemmas facing the relatively affluent but socially and morally liberal denizens of Thatcher’s Britain.

What I wasn’t aware of was that Simmonds had another incarnation as an exceptional illustrator of children’s books. Her comic strip style transferred neatly across to her book illustration and helped immensely with her storytelling and the style of her drawings for her adult satire was perfectly suited to the children’s genre with only a small tweak here and there.

Baker Cat was first published in 2004 and immediately became a favourite of mine. Cat (whose name turns out to be Tiger!) lives in the baker’s shop but is terribly exploited by the mean baker and his wife. He’s been brought in to control the mice but he effectively does all the hard graft in the bakery – leaving him with no energy to chase mice. The baker decides that in future he will only be fed if he produces the tails of the mice he has killed overnight – and the result is inevitable as he is almost starved to death.

Then, one day, the mice propose a deal – if he stops chasing them they will make artificial mice tails to fool the baker. Both cat and mice strike a deal and a period of plenty follows – until the mice overdo their freedom and eat all the bakers stocks. A new plan is needed and this time it’s a hum-dinger – but you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens...........

Simmonds manages to bring a lightness and a sense of space to what is essentially quite a dark story. Her illustration has a light touch and her use of the white page is an important part of the fairy-tale feel she achieves.

There are plenty of copies of this book available on the second hand market and even the hardbacks are pretty cheap. The book would make a lovely present for a child or a cat-lover (don’t worry, it all works out fine in the end!) or for someone who only knows Simmonds as an adult cartoonist.

 

Terry Potter

August 2016