I have very mixed feelings about Kat Kong by Dav Pilkey. On one hand, I love the style and silliness that is in the book, but on the other hand-the ending pretty much, well-sucks. We bought this book after being given a copy of Dogzilla another book by Pilkey. I really wish that the author/creator/director had kept the endings similar –and fairly happy.

The Book And The Story-- This book is extremely silly, for the most part( again ending-which I will get to.). The book is set up like a movie, with credits and a TS rating for Terribly Silly-some material may be too silly for grownups.

The book Stars a cast of mice who live in a city named Mousopolis. the cast is: Flash as professor Vincent Varmint, Rabies as Rosie Rodent, Dwayne as Captain Charles Limburger and Blueberry (the cat) as The Monster. The book itself reads like a classic old time radio show or old movie.

The Story: Captain Charles Limburger, Doctor Vincent Varmint and His Beautiful Assistant Rosie Rodent sail out to a strange island shaped like a giant cat. There they find a tribe of jungle mice offering up a ”Sacrifical can of tuna” and chanting ”Heeeer, Ki-Tee Ki-Tee!”. Out of the jungle comes The Mighty Kat Kong! Kat Kong trips, knocks himself out cold and the exploring trio decides to take Kat Kong back to Mousopolis and put him on display.( one cute point is that Rosie doesn’t want to take Kat Kong away from his natural environment for science, but Dr. Varmint wants to make money off Kat Kong).

Back in Mousopolis, Kat Kong is put on display for the citizens. Despite the assurances of Dr. Varmint, Kat Kong manages to get loose and terrorizes the city. He tears up the streets, the power lines, the buildings and then he snatches Rosie Rodent from her window and climbs up to the top of The Romano Inn.

Airplanes buzz the “Meowing Menace”, to no avail . then Captain Charles Limburger comes to the rescue, tempting Kat Kong with a shiny package, causing Kat Kong to loose his balance and go crashing to the ground. In the end ”Curiostiy Killed The Cat”.

Throughout the story there is humorous lines-on the way back to Mousopolis, the explorers are careful not to ”let the cat out of the bag. Mice comment on Kat Kong’s final fall-He’s fallen and he can’t get up. You can almost her the Ba-Da-Bump-Bump-CLANG following these silly lines. The writing is extremely silly, cute and funny reading it is a blast, especially if you make yourself sound like an overacting radio announcer :D.

The Illustrations: What makes this book so cute and unusual is the way the creator did the pictures. He combines rough drawing of building, boats etc with pictures of live animals-the mice and the cats. The animals used in the books are, according to the book-the authors pets and not harmed while making the book. The authors other book-Dogzilla is done in the same way, with pictures of live action animals placed into the drawings to create a “movie” like atmosphere. This book is defiantly different from other children’s picture books.

What I Didn’t Like I loved the story, the silliness and the over-acting style script of the story. What I didn’t like was the ending. Kat Kong dies-and that isn’t cool. The ending upset my 6 year old-who is very sensitive, especially when it comes to her favorite animal CATS!. She asked me why Kat Kong had to die-and I told her that he didn’t really die, -that it was fake and he was just pretending. I wonder why the author couldn’t just have had Kat Kong fall, hit his head and get knocked out. He could have sent Kat Kong back to his island and it still would have been a cute story. I know that in this book and in Dogzilla the author is doing a parody of the classic movies Godzilla and King Kong and I know that in King Kong the gorilla dies at the end. BUT this is supposed to be a children’s book, and letting Kat Kong live would have lost nothing.

One of the things I did, that helped my daughter feel better, was to read her the credits at the beginning of the book-particularly the part where it tells the reader that no animals were hurt. Explaining that this book was sort of like a movie, where there were real animals used, but it was all pretend, made her feel a lot better-and made mom feel better too.

Overall, I would recommend this book with some reservations attached-this book is NOT for ALL children. If you have a slightly sensitive child who might become upset with Kat Kong dying-then I would recommend you pass on this book and check out Dogzilla instead. Dogzilla is done the same way with ‘hammy, movie style atmosphere and mixed live animal pictures with drawing. The ending in Dogzilla is Much, Much better-no animal “dies”.

This book is not cheap; retail it costs $7.00 for a large sized paperback in the USA. ($10.00 in Canada). Online it is available for: $6.40 paperback and $10.40 hardback at Barnesandnoble.com and $6.30 paperback and $10.40 hardback at Amazon.com. both online bookstores carry Dogzilla as well.


Recommended: Yes