LoveReading4Kids Says
Who doesn’t love a story about an odd couple, best friends who seemingly have little in common? Maybe your favourites are Pooh and Piglet, or Rabbit and Bear; now meet Cat and Dumpling.
Busy, knitting-loving, guitar-playing Cat needs somewhere new to live, with lots of cupboard space. Quiet Dumpling needs somewhere new to live with a garden big enough for all his plants. They end up as flat mates almost by accident, but discover they like each other very much, their new flat becoming a real home sweet home.
With its short chapters, fun story and lovely full colour illustrations, this is a sweet and rewarding adventure for first readers, who will definitely want to get to know Cat and Dumpling.
Andrea Reece
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Cat and Dumpling: Home Sweet Home Synopsis
The first in a charming new series by author Nicola Kent. Packed with beautiful full colour illustrations and a delightful story about best friends, Cat and Dumpling.
Cat and Dumpling are best friends, but they're very different. Cat is an impulsive dreamer who loves to knit, and Dumpling is a cautious planner who loves gardening.
In these chapter books for early readers, the pair's far-fetched schemes and conflicting ideas wreak warm-hearted slapstick havoc, but always with a happy ending and a reassertion that despite their differences Cat and Dumpling will always be the very best of friends.
In Home Sweet Home, Cat and Dumpling meet for the very first time. They're both searching for the perfect home and have very different needs. Eventually they stumble across the perfect place-the only problem is, they both want the same flat! Can the pair survive as flatmates, or will their differences just be too much to overcome?
The perfect blend of text and four-colour illustrations for newly independent readers, specifically designed to be a stepping stone up from picture books.
Look out for the next book in the series:
Cat and Dumpling: The Talent Show.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780192788450 |
| Publication date: |
6th March 2025 |
| Author: |
Nicola Kent |
| Illustrator: |
Nicola Kent |
| Publisher: |
Oxford University Press an imprint of OUP OXFORD |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
96 pages |
| Series: |
Cat and Dumpling |
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About Nicola Kent
Nicola Kent is an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books that have been published in over 20 different languages.
Nicola has been working with words and pictures all her life. She did a degree in Art and English, worked as a TV producer for the BBC and Channel 4, wrote scripts for children’s animation, and finally kickstarted her dream of a career in children’s books via an MA in Children’s Book Illustration.
Nicola likes her books to feel handmade as if created at the kitchen table especially for her reader. Her illustrations are made with ink, watercolour, pencil and various printing techniques which she collages together digitally.
Nicola grew up in Holloway, London and now lives up the road in Hackney with her family, cat and dog. She loves gardening and cycling and thinks knowing how and when to be silly is one of the most important life skills.
Nicola has a tracheostomy and a very quiet voice. This was caused by damage to her airway during treatment in intensive care when she was a child, and multiple surgeries since. The left side of her diaphragm is also paralysed which means her breathing is difficult on stairs or hills!
Nicola’s experience of chronic health issues and disability are very specific but have given her insight into more universal challenges of coping with difference. She also understands from many years of experience the difficulties of juggling normal life with the patient’s life: treatment, appointments and health admin all add to the often tiring repercussions of functioning with a physical difficulty. And through her direct experience of a sudden and critical childhood illness, she has great empathy and understanding of children coping with the aftermath of trauma.
Nicola’s books often draw on her personal experience to create universal ideas that resonate widely, for example in The Strongest Mum and Giraffe and a Half. She regards warm humour as massively important and feels strongly that books that give those qualities to children can be hugely healing as well as entertaining and life affirming.
Nicola feels strongly that children with differences and disabilities should also feature in books in which that difference or disability is not the focus. Most people with a disability do not want it to define them. In Measuring Me, for example, there is a girl with a tracheostomy and a boy with a walking frame, but these are incidental in a book which is about extraordinary facts of measurement and scale in the human body.
Nicola enjoys events and school visits and feels it’s important and valuable that children are given the opportunity to meet people living with a disability who are also getting to work in a dream job!
More About Nicola Kent
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