My favourite thing about this book is the personification of the sea as a cat, combined with the illustrations by Nicola Bayley it's so beautiful and clever. Mowzer purred to tell him that she understood, for it was the same with her.' But my wife and parents are dead long since and my children are grown and gone.' It cannot be the young men, for they have wives and children and mothers to weep for them if they do not return. ''Someone must go fishing come what may, and I think it must be me. But it does it in a simple manner and doesn't shy away from it. The Mousehole Cat also deals with some quite deep subjects for a children's book.

I get a warm feeling in my stomach when I read this book, and I'm only a little bit embarrassed to admit it! I love that the language is very simple and matter of fact, yet still somehow magical.

The story of Mowzer and her pet human Tom facing the Great Storm Cat to save the village of Mousehole (pronounced Mowzel) is very sweet and heart-warming, but not in a slushy way. This book really reminds me of my holidays with them. The Mousehole Cat stirs up so many memories from my childhood my Grandparents lived in Cornwall, not far from Mousehole (yes, it's a real place and the book is based on a real event), and I spent most of my summers there. The dramatic and moving Cornish tale of Mowzer, the cat, and Tom, the old fisherman, who brave the fury of the Great Storm Cat to try and save their village. I haven't written a review of a children's book for a while so I thought I'd re-read one of my favourite children's books, The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber. Is written by Antonia Barber and illustrated by Nicola Bayley.

'At the far end of England, a land of rocks and moorland stretches itself out into a blue-green sea.'

The mousehole cat by antonia barber