Cat Nap
by Brian Lies; illus. by the author
Primary    Greenwillow    48 pp.
9/25    9780062671288    $19.99

An unusual game of cat-and-mouse takes place in this visually stunning and highly creative picture book. Kitten snoozes on the back of a couch until “something scritches, waking Kitten. A mouse? A MOUSE!” The mouse then climbs onto the frame of a print from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and into the picture. “Does Kitten follow? Of course he does.” The chase continues through an ancient Egyptian carving, into a miniature French prayer book, and alongside a ceramic dog from Mexico. The mouse escapes, leaving Kitten alone. But the lure of dinner and a little help from his friends in the artworks lead him back home. In all, Kitten encounters nine pieces from the Met’s collection, all of which originate in different countries and time periods. Lies’s illustration style morphs to match whatever piece Kitten is in; e.g., Kitten is portrayed as a ceramic sculpture while interacting with the dog; in carved wood when encountering a mask created in Côte d’Ivoire; and in glass in a fifteenth-century German stained-glass panel. In his author’s note, Lies discusses the original works of art and his fascinating process for re-creating them using a wide variety of styles and mixed media, including various paints and “colored glass, lead, gold leaf, ink, graphite and colored pencil, plaster, wood, goatskin parchment, twine, and clay.”

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.