Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell

Ottoline Brown is a small girl who lives in the Big City in a large apartment. She has parents, but they are travellers and collectors, often leaving her alone with Mr. Munroe, a small hairy man from Norway. But Ottoline doesn't have to fend for herself- a variety of businesses help her keep the apartment tidy, change the lightbulbs, make her bed, fluff her pillows and serve her food.

Her parents aren't the only collectors, for Ottoline also loves collecting, and she collects odd shoes (her own, for she wears one and keeps another whenever she gets a new pair), and she also collects the postcards her parents send her from faraway places.

But Ottoline is a very good thinker, and when lapdogs start going missing in the city, Ottoline starts to notice. And she also notices that the rich women who are missing their lapdogs are also being burgled of their jewelry and valuables. At the same time, a lapdog adoption agency has started up.

Could those behind the lapdog adoption agency be stealing women's lapdogs? But who would steal someone's valuables and their dog? What horrible thief would do such a thing? When Ottoline sets out to find the culprit or culprits, they had better look out! For Ottoline always gets her crook!

I loved this book a lot. I've long enjoyed Chris Riddell's illustrations in "The Edge Chronicles" and "Barnaby Grimes", but here he shows he can carry an entire book by himself. Ottoline's world is much like London-often raining, and filled with tall buildings. The costumes here are more modern than in other books Riddell has drawn, but still rather early in the 20th century.

Character drawing is where Riddell excels, and this book almost becomes a graphic novel, judging by the mainly black and white (but enlivened here and there with a touch of red that sprawl across the pages. But there is also a lot of text, so the pictures merely illustrate the story rather than tell it.

The book is about a cat burglar, but with a twist. The cat burglar is an actual cat, aided and abetted by the talking lapdogs that serve it as spies and accomplices. Even the purely human characters are so full of character that you easily accept a talking cat and dogs as merely another character in the story.

But I could talk about this book for ages and give you only a small idea of all the wonderful ideas and pictures and characters in the story. This is a book more than zany enough for kids to really enjoy, while having a wonderful story as well. Recommended.