Keeping Cats
Digital version – browse, print or download
Can't see the preview?
Click here!
How to print the digital edition of Books for Keeps: click on this PDF file link - click on the printer icon in the top right of the screen to print.
BfK Newsletter
Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!
Cover Story
This issue's cover is a photograph of Anne Frank whose diary is discussed by Michael Rosen fifty years after its first publication. Following the arrest of the Frank family and their companions, the secret annex in Amsterdam where they had been in hiding was locked up and everybody forbidden to enter it, since Jewish possessions became Nazi property and were carted away. Before this happened, the young woman, Miep Gies, who had provided those in hiding with food and who had a second key to the annex, risked herself once more by entering it. Miep retrieved Anne's diary from the devastation together with the Frank family photograph album.
Thanks to Penguin Children's Books for help in reproducing this cover.
Keeping Cats
Sophie just cannot let Tracy's dad drown the five kittens that evening. But even when she has succeeded in saving them from this fate, narrowly avoiding drowning herself, there is a steady sequence of further dangers to avoid. This is dramatic stuff but an added pleasure is the humour of the telling and the comedy of events: dad discovers the hidden kittens in his shed and is seen 'not so much holding the kittens as wearing them'. Ashton's writing is stylish and witty and often plays on Sophie's naivet$eA, involving a host of comic incidents and characters. A funny book and a pleasure to read aloud.