Saphie the One-Eyed Cat, Vol. 1

Gr 3-5–Saphie, the titular feline member of a home with four cats, rules the roost. An expert at getting her family to feed her, Saphie puts her powers of persuasion and mercurial temperaments on full display. Various attempts to control Saphie’s weight do not work and readers will enjoy seeing how she gets around all of them. A particularly humorous scene is when the dad tries to get Saphie to walk on the treadmill. The other cats get their time as well with stories displaying their typical cat behavior, what toys they like, and relationships with other family members. The book is made up of many short comics about daily life with cats, however, two seem to depict a god-like being creating these cats from bread dough, with a prankster teenage Lucifer adding soda to the youngest cat creation, apparently to add flavor. With the rest of the stories being realistic, these chapters could be confusing. The color scheme is predominantly muted tones of brown and green with black outlines. The action is conveyed with lots of close-ups, sound effects, and cat vocalizations. The panels overlap, tip, and change point-of-view; the dialogue balloons are easy to read.