Kate and Pippin

Kate and Pippin (CAN, JP, US, INT)

Written by: Martin Springett

Photography by: Isobel Springett

Published by: Puffin Canada

Puffin Canada

Puffin Canada

Published on: February 28, 2012

Ages: 3+





This story of an unlikely animal friendship is all about the awww factor. Maybe make that awwwwww.

Kate, a puppyless Great Dane, bonds with a motherless fawn at photographer Isobel Springett's property. Could Bambi have been more adorable? The Springetts improve on the classic Disney movie by virtue of this being a true story.

Martin Springett is a musician, and this shows through his simple but memorable prose. The photographs are so endearing that the text doesn't need to add much, but the story of the baby deer adopted by Isobel Springett and her canine companion is easy to follow even for emerging readers.

There are so many threads pulled together in this picture book- friendship, family, adoption, animal life cycles, and even the relationship between humans and the nature that surrounds them. Springett lives on the edge of a forest, but because of its location on a temperate island in the Pacific, it is vastly different from the forests near our home in Japan, as well as the Alberta forests I grew up with. Pippin the fawn looks like a Japanese spotted deer though, rather than the blacktailed deer I would have expected! To my completely untrained eye anyway!

This book will appeal to emerging readers who love animals, as well as the sappy types who fall for heartwarming stories (I'm the sucker in the latter category).

 This post is for Nonfiction Monday, hosted this week by Jennifer at The Jean Little Library.