Book Review: The Further Adventures of Miss Petitfour by Anne Michaels

I received an Advance Readers Copy of this book thanks to Penguin Random House and NetGalley. All opinions are my own (and Pearl’s).

Miss Petitfour and her cats are back! Their further adventures include wearing sweaters, visiting a shop that carries just about everything, and meeting Mr. Coneybeare the confetti king’s brother, the coconut king. Miss Petitfour is an eccentric young lady who lives with her sixteen cats. She is kind and curious and a terrific navigator of winds. Which is a good thing because her preferred method of transportation is unfurling a tablecloth to the sky, lining up her cats, and letting the wind take them where they want to go.

Anne Michael’s is a Canadian novelist and poet whose work I’ve enjoyed (Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault) When she published The Adventures of Miss Petitfour in 2015, I bought a copy of the book for my then infant daughter and we’ve since read it together twice. Pearl is in a bit of a cat stage and was absolutely delighted when we read Miss Petitfour together last year. She dressed up as Miss Petitfour for her school’s book character day this year and lamented that there were no more books about Miss Petitfour and her many cats. We talked about what other kinds of adventures they might have and then I was then thrilled to learn that a sequel had already been created and will be available later this year. I requested it as soon as I saw the ARC on NetGalley and then read it aloud to my girls over the next few weeks.

The Further Adventures have all of the charm and quirk of the original book but even more so. We learn a bit more about each of the cats – and here Emma Block’s illustrations really add to the whimsy of the story as we get to see her drawings of the cats with their various personalities. This second book features more of Miss Petitfour’s friends and neighbours, including a local race with a number of racers with very long surnames (particularly challenging when reading aloud!) Mr. Coneybeare is a prominent figure once more, along with his brother, and while his friendship with Miss Petitfour grows, it was nice to leave it as simply a pleasant friendship without romantic overtones that would be over the heads of young children.

Miss Petitfour isn’t widely known but if you have a quiet-ish young child around the ages of 5 to 9, particularly one who enjoys cats, I highly recommend these delightful books. While you probably don’t have to start with the first one, I do think it enhances the experience. We’ll be purchasing a hardcopy as soon as it’s available so that Pearl and Rose can peruse through it at their own speed over and over again.