Bookworm: ‘Joyce’s surreally witty and wonderful stories have been made into books’

Published on 17/11/2012 00:00

THIS is a great year, you might have noticed, for children’s books about cats. First up, James Joyce.

No, I never knew that he had written a children’s book either – and strictly speaking he hadn’t, because both The Cats of Copenhagen and The Cat and the Devil were stories he wrote in two letters in 1936 to his grandson Stephen.

But this year, with Joyce’s work finally out of copyright, the surreally witty and wonderful stories have been made into books available in the US and Ireland. Joyce loved cats – you may remember Bloom’s conversation with one in the first chapter of Ulysses – but hated dogs, which in Bookworm’s opinion just goes to show how even otherwise bright people can get things hopelessly wrong.

HAPPY AND GLIORIOUS

Meanwhile, on Mull, renowned illustrator Debi Gliori and her publisher Hugh Andrew returned last week from a triumphant visit to launch her new book, The Tobermory Cat (Birlinn, £9.99).

Again, it’s a surreally witty and wonderful book, but one that is tolerant enough to star dogs as well as cats – specifically Millie, Hugh Andrew’s dog, who is drawn along with him throughout the book. “I must have published over 1,000 books, but it’s taken me till I’m 50 before I’ve appeared in one myself,” says Andrew. “He wanted me to give him more hair in the drawings,” says Gliori. “I told him: ‘No way! You’ve got all you’re getting’.”