"Last things first - this is hopefully the first book in a series, with the next one being advertised as The Curse of the Kraken. I hope sales of this go well and we can all get hold of the second one in the series. It's a graphic novel, in that it's a story told in comic-strip pictures. But with its impressive size and hardback format it can certainly hold its own with other good-looking books. I can see it in the Sophisticated Picture Books collection in libraries. Using classic and expert comic-strip features, the story focuses on an open, honest, positive cat called Jack Scratch who ends up involved in a complicated and dangerous quest for treasure. The other characters in the quest (mostly cats) are swashbuckling pirates in the true sense of the word. There's Billy Fishbones, and a mysterious mariner called Catnip, and Tom Silver the cook, and Paw the female pirate, and we mustn't forget the skeleton of Captain Blackclaw... The superb comic-strip pictures are an absolute delight to read and study, full of action and humour and spooky happenings. My eight-year-old grandson will love it to death, but will have to fend off the demands of his brothers. The author/illustrator is an award-winning professional artist living near Lake Taupo. He has created many book covers for popular children's and young adults' books, as well as rock posters for several well-known bands. His most recent success is winning the Russell Clark Award in this year's NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults for his anthology of fairy tales called Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts: Ten Tales From the Deep Dark Woods. This is an excellent gift for boys (and some girls) of primary and intermediate age, and it will surely become one of the most popular books in your primary and intermediate school libraries. Buy it!" - Reviewed by Lorraine Orman, Kids Books NZ