The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat: Guest blog review

Today's review has been submitted by Grade 6 student Bronte L.

Written by Caroline Adderson
Illustrated by Stacy Innerst
Groundwood Books
978-1-55498-964-5
128 pp.
Ages 8-11
April 2019

In The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat by Caroline Adderson, Pudding Tat is a blind cat who explores 1900s North America, travelling from Wellington County to Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Atlantic City, the Titanic and the Western Front of World War I, with the help of a needy flea.

When Pudding Tat was a little kitten, living in a barn with his family, he decides he would explore the four corners of the world like his ancestors. Pudding Tat may have been blind but his hearing was exceptional. His family couldn’t hear the drunken conversations of the fleas, but he could. Before Pudding Tat leaves the barn to explore the four corners of the world, a flea decides to jump into his ear. This flea was different from the other crazy drunken fleas in that he had taste, though he was bossy, rude, and constantly complaining.  Yet Pudding Tat never gets rid of him because the flea provides him sight, and it’s nice to have some company while exploring the world. As Pudding Tat travels from location to location, he encounters lots of kind owners who care for him while he gives them joy.

The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventure Cat is great for grades 5 to 8. It’s full of adventure and fun as well as including “mostly true” accounts of famous North American events. The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat has 179 pages, making a great light read, with each chapter a new adventure for Pudding Tat and the flea.

I love the concept of the book and the idea that the same visually-impaired cat was a part of all these events and changed peoples' lives. I also found the way Pudding Tat was able to find his way around using his other senses and the flea was very creative. The descriptions were great while not being wordy and I was able to visualize what was going on clearly. I also loved how Caroline Adderson added songs into her writing. I would give Caroline Adderson’s The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat  9 out of 10.

~written by Bronte L.

The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat

Written by Caroline Adderson

Illustrated by Stacy Innerst

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-964-5

128 pp.

Ages 8-11

April 2019

Pudding Tat, so named for the special dessert Farmer Willoughby brought to his Wellington County barn cats on Christmas Day, was always a concern for his mother. White as snow and eyes as pink as his tongue, Pudding could not catch mice or avoid dangers as well as Mother Tat had taught her kittens. But, when his siblings are pushed to leave the barn, Pudding literally gets a flea in his ear that encourages him to do the same. That flea, tired of the loud partying of the others, steers Pudding to water, hopeful of drowning his fellow parasites, while keeping the cat safe as a host. 

From The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat by Caroline Adderson, illus. by Stacy Innerst

With each new chapter, Pudding and his flea evolve, developing their relationship from one based in parasitism to one of mutualism. Their first major adventure starts in 1901 when they join Annie Edson Taylor for her barrel ride over Niagara Falls. Next, Pudding and his flea travel to Buffalo, New York, and the site of the Pan-American Exposition. En route, they see the discrimination levelled against the African American railway porters and the indentured child street musicians. They are present when President McKinley is shot and when Vincent Bryan and Gus Edwards compose “In My Merry Oldsmobile” – a tribute to Gus’s new car. In 1910, they’re on-board as Walter Wellman and his crew attempt their first cross-Atlantic airship flight. They even survive the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and a crossing into No Man’s Land at the beginning of the famous Christmas Truce during World War I. While they experience long periods of confinement and hunger, there are moments of opulence, filled with comfort and food. And there is always music to which Pudding Tat is drawn. Relying so much on his hearing, he is lured by songs sung and instruments played, taking him into new circumstances, sometimes comfortable, sometimes perilous. In the end, cat and flea make their way home, having defied all expectations had for and by the visually-impaired feline.

Caroline Adderson, author of award-winning books for adults and children – including Middle of Nowhere (Groundwood, 2012) – blends the right mix of history and fictional narrative to create a story of cooperation, resiliency and risk-taking. She gives Pudding Tat the voice of a modest but heartfelt hero, albeit an accidental one, who experiences big adventures but is surprised by his exploits. He really is a feline Forrest Gump. His poor eyesight and lack of camouflage may make him vulnerable but it doesn’t stop him from living beyond them. With Stacy Innerst’s multi-panelled graphics detailing the breadth of Pudding Tat’s adventures in each chapter, it’s clear that, like the period of innovation in which he lived, the white feline reached beyond his potential and achieved more than expected.

🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈

(A version of this review was originally written and paid for by Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2019, May 7). Review of the book The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat. Quill & Quire. https://quillandquire.com/review/the-mostly-true-story-of-pudding-tat-adventuring-cat/

The Elevator Ghost

by Glen Huser

Illustrations by Stacy Innerst

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-426-8

168 pp.

Ages 7-12

August 2014

I do believe that this will be the year of scary stories, as I'm seeing a lot of anthologies of ghost stories, scary picture books and, here, scary stories embedded in a middle grade novel.  While some may like to keep these youngCanLit books for occasions at which getting scared is part of the experience e.g., at Halloween or camp fires, some readers love frightening themselves at least a little (and sometimes a lot!) in everything they read.  Hey, we all have favourite genres.  So, for those who enjoy a bit of a fright now and then, without going for all out horror, The Elevator Ghost by award-winning author Glen Huser will appease that hunger for trepidation.

As an assortment of children from the apparently haunted Blatchford Arms go trick or treating within the apartments' two towers, Carolina Giddle is driving there in her trinket-covered VW bug, with her pet tarantula, Chiquita, to become its newest resident.  Though Carolina doesn't know any of its living residents, she soon becomes a welcome addition, especially since her card lists her as "Experienced babysitter, mah-jong instructor and vegetarian caterer.  Will do light housekeeping and séances upon request." (pg. 29)

Carolina is first snatched up to babysit the Fergus twins, Dwayne and Dwight, whose pranking has lost them all prior babysitters in the building.  Though the boys try to pull a variety of pranks on her, Carolina barely acknowledges them, finally setting down to tell them a ghost story while they munch on bone rattlers in the light-less living room. Mesmerized by the story of a skeleton's foot and a couple of jokesters, the boys lose focus on their own antics.

She's similarly successful with other children in the building, including taming the night frights from the Croop children, the painting mischief out of one of the Lubinitsky girls and the tantrums from Angelo Bellini, 5. With her spine-chilling stories about ghosts, aliens and monsters and her miscellany of treats and props, Carolina wins over all the children, one family at a time.

However, Carolina has a few secrets she's not quite ready to share, though if anyone had been invited to join her for tea in the building's sunroom each evening, they'd have their own story to tell.  But the Halloween party she has for all the residents finally brings Carolina's own story to life, in a manner of speaking.

For the requisite fright that Halloween demands, The Elevator Ghost will fulfil the purpose eloquently, without terrifying younger readers.  Glen Huser has the dry wit that imbues the text with humour, thereby minimizing its scariness, but without turning the book into one that could only be classified as a funny read.  He has a light touch when it comes to spicing the story with evocative details, knowing when to add a touch of ridiculous imagery, or eerie characters, or wry dialogue.  Not surprising he's won the Governor General's Award for Children's Literature (for his book Stitches from Groundwood, 2003).  Glen Huser obviously knows what children like to read (he was a teacher and school-librarian) and what does and doesn't work, because he has all the right stuff to engage his young readers.  The trick for adults will be to wait until Halloween to share The Elevator Ghost so you won't need any other treats. Good luck with that one.