Scratchie: A Touch-and-Feel Cat-Venture with board book bite

Great board books leave older readers grinning when they finish them. The purpose of a board book is to entertain those young readers with introductory vocabulary, bright colors and durable pages, just in case they get chewed on. Scratchie: A Touch-and-Feel Cat-Venture succeeds in all of those categories and one more. It does the rare thing for a board book in allowing older readers (see: the adult reading the book) to grin when they finish presenting the book to the young audience. The result is a board book with just a little bit of bite.

Let’s be clear, I’m not talking ‘bite’ as in societal commentary or controversial parenting opinions.

Scratchie starts out talking directly to the human who is reading the book. The cat invites you to scratch along with them, first off the doormat and then climbing the wooden table that leads to the kitchen counter. Along the way young crawlers to pre-K kids can scratch the surfaces that present themselves on each page.

As cute as cats can be, they sometimes lead to trouble, which is what happens to Scratchie. Towards the end of the book our cat takes things one scratch too far and makes a big mess, just before the human in the book comes to break up the party. Suddenly Scratchie is at a loss of what to do. All that our cat can do is lie on her side and offer for you to pet her.

See, it’s just a little ‘bite’. However, this is just the sort of non-saccharine board book that some parents clamor for. Every bit of Scratchie is fabulous for children. It’s a board book that will allow their emerging senses to touch, chew and turn every page with glee. It also has that ever so slight gleam in those last two pages that accept and expect a mess, or just a little chaos to happen. And that is just the spirit that some new parents need to know is headed their way as said young reader grows.