“Switch Cat” has a surprisingly poetic text. It describes a little girl with “handwriting like a puddled street,” and instead of messy hair, author Garry Disher writes that she has “frenzied” hair. I was baffled by the text at first, since it seemed like a freeform poem that just doesn’t rhyme. Its short sentences present two girls who live next-door to each other, and two cats which are correspondingly neat and messy.

The messy girl loves a cat named Ms. Whiz. (“Scruffy, torn, fishbreathy, mean, a mad-eyed spark on the trunks of trees. Grubby, worn, sunloving, lean, trample-purring around my knees.”) That’s probably the book’s best rhyme, though the rhythm keeps changing throughout the book, and some of the other rhymes it presents are also much looser.

“Our parents say, ‘You must be firm!’
I hear it so often, it’s boring,
yet it’s no use saying ‘Scoot!’ at night
if I’m smack-door’d awake in the morning.”

The problem is that the messy cat lives with the tidy girl – Evangelina – while the sleek and tidy cat (Ev) lives with Cecilia. “No wonder I offend,” says the messy girl, as she describes how her fussy cat slips next door to Evangelina’s tidy room. Author Garry Disher is an Australian writer who’s written 13 crime novels with titles like “Chain of Evidence,” “Crosskill” and “Deathdeal.” But in this book, the big switcheroo happens spontaneously – the cats just like it this way – and the real crime is that eventually Evagelina moves away, taking her messy cat with her!

It’s easy to get confused, especially since the short poetic descriptions are a little low on details. There’s illustrations by Andrew McLean, but they’re simple color pencil sketches. McLean also uses water colors and gouache, according to the book’s copyright page, but most of the drawings still look like plain old color pencil sketches. I do like that they fill up most of the page, so there’s always a nice big color illustration. (I think they call this the “oversized” book size.) And they do provide lots of glimpses at the cats and their playful activities.

The book eventually finds its way to a happy ending – though I’m not exactly sure what happens. But somehow the cat escapes from its new home, and travels back to the book’s narrator.

“But I want you all to notice,
I want you all to see:
Ev now lives with Cecilia,
and Whiz lives here with me.”

The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. Moon glow lights the back of a cat, and turns the backyard a soft green. Though it’s a grey foggy night with a dark blue sky, there’s a warm yellow light coming from the open back door. It’s the house where “Elizabeth and Sarah lived,” and on a cold night, a stray cat walks out of the woods and up their steps.

Charlie Anderson is one of those children’s stories with enough warmth to touch readers of all ages. The cat “curled up next to their fireplace to get warm,” then tasted their dinner and tested their beds. With a perfect watercolor illustration for each action, the book makes the cat seems real. Every morning he disappears into the woods – but at night while he sleeps on her bed, Elizabeth can hear the cat purring in the dark.

Author Barbara Abercrombie found the perfect details to suggest the cat’s life with the two little girls. (“When it snowed, Elizabeth and Sarah’s mother heated Charlie’s milk before he left for the woods.”) And on the next page, Abercrombie shares the most crucial detail of all. “He grew fatter and fatter, and every day he purred louder and louder.”

One drawing shows the girls making a soft bed for the cat in their suitcase. They don’t want to leave him behind when they visit “their father and stepmother.” Abercrombie manages to suggest so much with these single-page moments. One stormy night, Charlie didn’t come to visit, and the girls sat on their steps in raincoats calling the cat’s name.

It’s a classic picture-with-stories, since the children’s faces say just as much as the story’s text. Elizabeth looks sad and distracted, while the rest of drawing shows her bedroom window filled with the dark night outside. “All night long Elizabeth listened to the rain beating on the roof and the wind rattling the windows.” And the next day, when their neighbor offers them cookies to cheer her up, the little girls turn them down.

The book has a twist at the end – and it’s a very funny surprise. The children ask a neighbor if he’s seen their gray cat, while the man says he has a gray cat of his own. Charlie comes strolling down the stairs, and purrs at his owner – and at the two girls. The man assumed that his cat was hunting at night, when he was really just sleeping in the girls’ warm house. On the last page, the author tucks her message – that the cat has “two families who love him,” just like the girls do with their now-divorced parents.

And meanwhile, the cat “sat at their feet, very happy and very fat.”