The Adventures of Miss Petitfour - Hardcover

Michaels, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1770495002 ISBN 13: 9781770495005

Publisher: Tundra Books, 2015

Synopsis

Miss Petitfour enjoys having adventures that are "just the right size - fitting into a single, magical day." She is an expert at baking and eating fancy iced cakes, and her favorite mode of travel is par avion. On windy days, she takes her sixteen cats out for an airing: Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Pirate, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Grigorovitch, Clasby, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Cothespin, Your Shyness and Sizzles. With the aid of her favorite tea party tablecloth as a makeshift balloon, Miss Petitfour and her charges fly over her village, having many little adventures along the way. Join Miss Petitfour and her equally eccentric felines on five magical outings -- a search for marmalade, to a spring jumble sale, on a quest for "birthday cheddar", the retrieval of a lost rare stamp and as they compete in the village's annual Festooning Festival. A whimsical, beautifully illustrated collection of tales that celebrates language, storytelling and small pleasures, especially the edible kind!

About this title

About the Author

Anne Michaels is an internationally award-winning novelist and poet emeritus of Toronto. Her adult books have been translated into more than forty-five languages. She is the winner of the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Trillium Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and twice for the Giller Prize. She has also been twice longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was made into a feature film.

Emma Block is the author and illustrator of Tea and Cake and has illustrated several books for children. She has worked for clients including Blue Apple, Harper Collins, Orla Kiely, Uniqlo, Anthropologie, Time Out and Hallmark. She likes charity shops, tea and very sharp pencils. Her art is inspired by the people she meets in her everyday life, old photos, vintage clothes, travel, 1950s illustration and 1930s jazz. Visit her online at emmablock.co.uk.

Reviews

Gr 1–4—Meet Miss Petitfour—baker, adventurer, cat-lover, reader, stamp-collector, and storyteller—and her multitudinous cats in this episodic, begging-to-be-read-aloud illustrated chapter book. Its comedic irreverence and spirited play with words, names, and pirate lore will remind readers of Mary Poppins and Pippi Longstocking. Children will savor the whimsical language and conversational tone as well as the nameless village with its wordless wooden signs ("[T]his village was friendly to all even the youngest who didn't yet know how to read and to a stranger who spoke a foreign language."). The bookstore has two sections: the "hum" section, where adventure is king, and the "ho-hum" section, where nothing much happens. There is plenty of hum in this tale, such as the stormy day when Miss Petitfour and her cats get stuck on the bell tower while traveling by a transparent plastic tablecloth "as invisible as the rain itself." A subplot concerns what makes a good story, explicitly highlighting (in font and tone) words that govern pacing: "Some words are like rays of light, white knights or a safety pin at the right moment…like 'unbelievably' or 'by great fortune.'" Then the author proceeds to use those words herself, ostensibly instructing young ones how to write digressive adventure stories. VERDICT Highly recommended for story lovers of all shapes and sizes.—Sara Lissa Paulson, City-As-School High School, New York City

Edition details

• Publisher: Tundra Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1770495002
• ISBN 13: 9781770495005
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144