With Kitty, Rebecca Jordan-Glum (The Trouble with Penguins) makes a funny/goofy picture book contribution to a long-standing comedy tradition: mistaken identity caused by clouded vision.
"Don't worry about a thing," pet-sitting Granny tells her grandkids as they're leaving the house. "The cat will be just fine!" Sure, but what about Granny? When stripy-tailed cat Satsuki has a scare and leaps from atop the refrigerator, Granny's glasses go flying. Fortunately, she can still read the pet-care instructions that her grandkids left for her: "Please don't let the cat out." But uh-oh: Satsuki is already out the door. Granny's got this--or so she thinks: using cat food as bait, she entices a stripy-tailed critter back indoors, only it isn't Satsuki. Unbeknownst to visually challenged Granny, the creature is a neighborhood raccoon, and it proceeds to wreak havoc on the house and her nerves.
Jordan-Glum's text is spare, her jokes either marvelously underplayed (the omniscient narrator refers to the raccoon as "Kitty") or purely visual (the attentive reader will spot Kitty modeling Granny's glasses). In a devilish juxtaposition, the Satsuki-care instructions, which declare the cat to be "very sweet!," sit among the rubble in a room being trashed by the sweetness-impaired raccoon. Kitty is teeming with other choice visual touches, including cute curios like penguin salt-and-pepper shakers, color-bursting vintage-style wallpaper and intermittent glimpses of Satsuki, who, peering in the window, enjoys the show. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author