Cat Goes Fiddle-i-Fee

December 1, 1985
PreS-Gr 2 -This traditional barnyard song is readily available in collections (with music and/or accompanying motions) and also in at least one other picture book version, illustrated by Diane Stanley (Little, 1979; o.p.). Nevertheless, Galdone does a workmanlike job both in the retelling and the illustrations. His cast of charactersunlike Stanley's tarted-up pigs with ties and cats in silk and plumesappear in their natural fur and feathers, crunching apples, pecking for bugs and eating hay. The line-up is the traditional onewith the addition of a grandmother for the final stanza, presumably to lend a sense of conclusion to the text. The cartoon illustrations are bright and cheerful, with each new animal being individually introduced on a double-page spread, then joining the other animals under "yonder tree" in the succeeding double-page layouta design device that reinforces the rhythm and balance of the song itself. This edition will prove useful to librarians and parents who feel more comfortable holding and showing a book while they sing. Kristi Thomas Beavin, Arlington County Public Library, Va.