Cat Goes Fiddle-I-Fee

9:25 am 26 April 2025

This is one of five books with black and white cats on the cover that I spotted scattered around the children's section which I picked up in loving memory of Calder Eno, who was enormous and affectionate and funny.

Given that context, maybe it was bound to disappoint? I didn't care for it: the limited palette didn't work well with the style of the art, nor did I like either. I was not familiar with the traditional poem? song? that the text is pulled from, which has some very odd noises for the cat, hen, and goose, as indicated in the title. There are a lot of close ups and open mouths and the whole thing felt vaguely threatening to me. Maybe if I look at a different version this one will bother me less?

Well, I'll show more have a go at the other four and see if they feel less like a disturbing montage in Rosemary's Baby or A Clockwork Orange. On the off chance anyone is reading this in real time, I invite you to stick around for comments on the others. Maybe I am just weird this morning, who knows?

Library copy show less

This book is really repetitive for the whole entire book and can get really boring. It needs to be paired with other activities to make it more entertaining.

This book is more of a poem than a story, so I would use it for fluency work. The narrator, a little boy, talks about all his different animals and the sounds they make. This book repeats the same phrases over and over, so it might be beneficial for struggling readers.

The illustrations are beautiful and fun--I love singing this one to my daughter. When we get to the end, she ALWAYS says, "I want to read it again!" So we do.

A little boy had a bunch of animals (cat, pig, cow, horse, dog, goose, and duck) and he fed them all under a tree. The story goes through all of the animals and tell what they say. With each new animal, he repeats the old ones. It ends with just the cat going "Fiddle-i-fee".