It is the world we know but not as we know it. The experience is something like the seeing an image of a garden imagined from the perspective of an insect. Wenzel’s wonderful illustrations invite the reader into the eye of other animals. Bats recognise the cat through echolocation.

A worm underground senses the cat through vibrations in the soil. Does a cat look the way we see it? As this book demonstrates, animals all perceive the world in different ways.Ī dog sees the cat as a nuisance, the mouse sees the cat as danger, and a fox sees the cat as prey (or certainly an easy target). They All Saw A Cat works along similar lines, with the text and the illustrations working together to challenge the reader to think more deeply about things that they take for granted. A Stone Sat Still stands out among the picture books I have reviewed for its apparently simple language and abstract themes. It is as simple – and as complex – as that.īrendan Wenzel’s work is always mind-blowing. Along the way it greets a child and a mouse and fox and all kinds of other creatures. One student said that there is an “essence” of a person that has nothing to do with appearance, and we puzzled over in what that might consist.A cat walks through the world. This week I had a conversation with a group of fourth and fifth grade students about whether we know ourselves in ways others don’t and whether there is anything that makes us who we are that doesn’t change no matter the perspective. One child commented that this would require “exchanging eyes” with someone else or “being inside someone else’s body” for a time. The book (and this video version) have inspired many thoughtful conversations with children, including questions about whether it is ever possible to see the world another person or creature does. If every creature sees the cat differently, is there anything that is objectively true of the cat? What is a cat? Is the way the cat sees itself privileged in some ways, or just another perspective? The book raises lots of interesting questions about perception and identity.

Cartoon Cat: A very sweet film version of the children’s book in which a child first sees a cat, followed by many other animals such as a fox, a bee, a flea, a fish and a. observe when they see a cat.Īt the end of the book, we are asked to imagine what the cat sees when it looks into the water. Synopsis: An animated version of Brendan Wenzel’s book finds various creatures looking at the same cat from various points of view. The picture book They All Saw A Cat by Brendan Wenzel describes what an array of different creatures - a child, a snake, a mouse, a bee, etc.

The all saw a cat