Can't Catch Me

by Michael Foreman

A little monkey doesn't want to go to bed. He dances through the jungle chanting 'Can't Catch Me!' So of course all the other animals try to do just that. You have never heard such a hallooing, and hollering, not to mention wallumphing and grazumping! But the little monkey is much too quick for everyoneâ except his mom!

32 pages, Hardcover

First published May 5, 2005

About the author

Michael has worked on magazines, book jackets, animated films, TV adverts, and even for the police, sketching criminals described by witnesses. As well as illustrating many of his own books, Michael has illustrated over a hundred books for authors such as Shakespeare, J. M. Barrie, the Brothers Grimm, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. Michael has travelled widely - to Africa, Japan, the Arctic Circle, China and Malaysia, the Himalayas, Siberia and New Zealand - to research his books. "I do a lot of research when I'm travelling - I find it thrilling to discover the particular 'art' of different landscapes and work them into a book. But I find I have to travel by myself, otherwise I'm constantly getting involved in other people's impressions of a place... I try to be invisible when I'm travelling, so I tend to listen in on conversations rather than participate in them - I just want to look and draw."

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis]

It's sort of a cute idea, but one of those stories nodding and winking at adults rather than entertaining kids. We all know a kid like the monkey in this and we all relate to that AS ADULTS. Then the book has rhyming onomatopoeia which is somewhat contrived but I quite possibly enjoyable by very young people and I was enjoying that and the pictures until I got to the page with the spaceship (what would a 1-3 year old make of that?) and then the following age has unpronounceable alien language written as punctuation marks which could be a neat trick in an adults' comedy SF book but in a book designed for reading ALOUD (think about it, how else do small children experience this story) that is a major error!

Then I have some doubts about what the book is really saying as well. It's ok to ignore bedtime and run about the streets until strangers tickle you? Seems a bit questionable. Also what is the mother monkey's headscarf meant to be evocative of? I wonder if that is passive racism there?

[Hannah]

My 16-month-old wasn't interested the first time I showed this book to her, then warmed up to it and enjoyed it as a bedtime book this evening. We ended up reading it twice, at her request.

As an adult, I like the illustrations. The story and rhymes aren't anything special, but they're not bad either, and I enjoyed reading the book out loud.

[Jenna Mills]

Gosh this was awful. Just ludicrous!

[Wetdryvac Wetdryvac]

Dude. Just. Dude.

A for-adults kids book, methinks, and in that context, five stars. Otherwise... not so many.