Barney Willow thinks life couldn't get any worse. He's weedy, with sticky-out ears. Horrible Gavin Needle loves tormenting him - Barney has no idea why. And headteacher-from-hell Miss Whipmire seems determined to make every second of Barney's existence a complete misery! Worst of all, Dad has been missing for almost a year, and there's no sign of him ever coming home.
Barney just wants to escape. To find another life... Being a cat, for example. A quiet, lazy cat. Things would be so much easier - right?
Barney's about to discover just how wrong he is. Because he's about to wake up as a cat - and not just any cat. Gavin Needle's cat...
A fast, exciting story from the winner of the Gold Smarties Award, with illustrations from the brilliantly dark and mischievous Pete Williamson.
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To Be a Cat will certainly appeal to readers of his earlier book, Shadow Forest, which won the Smarties Gold Award, and the book will be publicised by way of a national tour by the author - The Bookseller
I loved To Be A Cat. It's very funny and surprising and somehow the basic concept, which is certainly an unusual one, works brilliantly. I believed every moment . . . Miss Whipmire is a villain from hell but the sense of frustration that Barney has in his dealings with her are quite moving actually; it reminds me of many of the frustrations of childhood. And I absolutely love child protagonists who READ! -
To Be A Cat is about a 12-year old boy, Barney, whose hellish existance...makes him wish to find another life- as a cat. Paul Gallico wrote a plangent novel along similar lines in Jeannie, but here instead is the black comedy that made Matt Haig's Shadow Forest so irresistable. The short chapters make the wise advice about dealing with bullies slip down effortlessly, and the parallels with puberty are well worked out as our hero gets hairier. Barney's discovery that a cat's life is not all snoozing by the fire and not going to school comes all too soon once his King Charles spaniel routs him as an enemy. The cats are slightly dull creations, but the demented spaniel's delicious pomposity is hysterically funny. Barney's other friend, Rissa, is a coolly courageous girl. A true friend, she could almost be a dog. - Times, The
Magic and grim realism meet in this sharply comic tale of wish fulfilment and the inherent untrustowrthiness of felines...there are definite echoes of Roald Dahl throughout...the chapter describing the morning after the transformation (Waking Up) is a particularly magnificent piece of writing... - Teach Primary
Matt Haig was born in Sheffield in 1975 and grew up in Nottinghamshire. He has lived in London and Ibiza. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Sunday Times, Independent, Sydney Morning Herald and the Face. His first novel for children, Shadow Forest, won the Gold Smarties Award. Matt has also written several novels for adults.
