I am happy to see a book about continents. This is a fun way for children to learn about them while using their skills to find the cat. Each of the continents has a group of facts about the continent. It is a fun and engaging Seek and Find. This would be a fun way to introduce the continents in a homeschool Geography class and be able to include all ages.

‘Catch Cat’ by Claire Grace is an engaging search-and-find adventure for young readers. Within seven beautifully illustrated maps, readers can spot the world-traveling cat. Each map features fascinating creatures, iconic buildings, and unique geological features specific to that continent.

I'll be honest, I wasn't really the <em>biggest</em> fan of <em>Catch Cat</em> by Claire Grace. The premise behind the book, namely teaching the geography of various places in the world and intermingling it with a search and find feature wasn't <em>bad</em>. As a book, though, I think it sort of fell somewhat short. To fully appreciate this fact, you have to understand that the biggest reason I didn't care for this was because it reminded me of a computer game I played when I was a kid that basically does the same thing this book does...but, in my opinion, does it better. The key difference? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie-FtR3hM_g"><em>My First Amazing World Explorer</em></a> is interactive in a way that <em>Catch Cat</em>, or any book, really, is not.

Honestly, there's a lot of good that comes from kids having a book like this. It's very educational--if a bit touristy--and provides a fun game (that of finding, or "catching" the cat) to keep young readers engaged throughout. And sure, it works fairly well. I can honestly say that I feel like a number of kids will enjoy reading this book and will likely learn from it.

But at the same time, the artwork is overcrowded, the text a bit dense in areas, and often leads me to imagine kids simply looking for the hidden cat and not even bothering with the rest. Everything else requires a little more sustained attention that many kids may very well not quite be in a place to be giving. Which is fine and understandable. Many children struggle to remain entertained by the same thing for an extended period of time. And I don't personally feel that the setup in this book lends itself to keeping a child's engagement once it's been garnered.

So, ultimately, while I love and appreciate the idea I don't really see this book as something I'd recommend. I'd rather it be in the format of an educational video game. 

<em>I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</em>

This is a fun exploration book for children to enjoy and anyone really as it's an animal version of a Where's Wally book with the same find it idea.



The illustrations are beautiful and so detailed kids will be hooked and find it a fun activity too.



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

At times this was a little difficult to look through as an ebook so I would love the opportunity to go through it with my kids in person one day. However, I really like that there were lots of interesting facts that could be used as conversation moments with my 7 year old while my 2 year old was more interested in just looking at the many beautiful illustrations. This is the sort of book you can come back to and find something new in each time you open it up, which is always great for children.

Catch Cat by Claire Grace is a neat seek-and-find book of the Where's Waldo type that also teaches kids about notable places to visit and things to see on each continent. There's an initial spread with information on major countries, and several things to see. Following is a spread of the continent filled with drawings representing Various regions, sites, and attractions. The goal is to find Cat and each of the items discussed on the previous pages. My qualms were with the resolution of the pictures in ebook format. Probably much better to read as a hardcopy!

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

4★
“Are you ready for a seek-and-find adventure like no other? Think you’ve got what it takes to travel around the globe and track down our elusive, furry feline friend? Then get ready for a journey like no other!”

This is a good one for visual learners, young or old, showing us all of the continents of the world in minute, vibrant, imaginative detail. Here’s the introductory page, explaining how to look for the cat.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration titled: Opening pages of the book

Each continent is introduced with a page of bright drawings with information and details of landmarks, people, creatures, and natural phenomena that are to be found there.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration titled: Some historic sights and landmarks from Europe

After reading about these sights, the reader tries to find them on the following page.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration titled: A “map” of Europe, incorporating the drawings from the previous page

And here is Asia, with the cat in full sight (middle left edge).

My Goodreads review includes an illustration titled: Asian continent

I always love maps full of things that make me want to go see them, whether it’s historic sights or monuments or flamenco dancers. I have a soft spot for maps anyway (I am MrsMap, or PattyMap when we travel), and I have a pretty poor sense of geography without them. My own little autistic quirk, I suspect.

So I’m predisposed to enjoy these sorts of books. This is bright and informative and is something that old people can use to pin children down with and regale them with stories of their own adventures. Whether the children will be as thrilled, I don’t know!

Apparently National and International Cat Day is Oct 29, so this has been published just in time for your cat-fancying kiddies.

Bright, cheerful, and horizon-expanding, no doubt. Thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Wide Eyed Editions for the preview copy.

This book makes exploring geography and maps interesting with the addition of a search & find cat. Students will enjoy discovering new places with the vivid illustrations that really capture the locations. The search and find aspect will draw readers in and help make geography not as intimidating!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!

wellllll..i have to admit.. my two children weren't really impressed with this book at all.. they honestly found it pretty confusing and messy. ;/

Catch Cat is a brilliant search and find book and unlike any others I have seen. The children love search and find books and they always keep them busy alone or with friends and so they love when there is a new one for them to read.

This book is so much more than a search and find book though as it is filled with interesting facts about different countries across the world. The book has a two page spread for one continent and then the following two with a big map filled with relevant sights and items to do with that country. That page is the one where you can look for cat who may be anywhere, he is trickier to find than it might first seem! As there is only one double page for each continent this means there is not as many search and find pages as the children would like but with all of the fun facts the book is filled with I don't think this takes away from the qualities of the book.

The illustrations in the book are fantastic with so much detail and bright colours to keep the children's attention and I think it's great that each fact gets its own picture as this draws the children to facts that they might be interested in and is far better at keeping them reading than plain text.

This is a really great book that we have learnt lots of new things from and all whilst having a search and find adventure across the world with cat, it is a little shorter than we'd like but definitely worth a read!

Andy Council and Claire Grace’s Catch Cat is an educational and fun picture book that takes readers on a world tour. I like the little facts about each continent. I also enjoyed trying to find the globetrotting cat in each map. However, the illustrations in the maps were too blurry to see things in great detail.

The book is well-illustrated with large full-colour maps. Each continent gets its own section and each map is fully populated with Council’s cute and bright depictions of animals, people, and popular natural and man-made monuments. However, I wish the maps were less blurry. I really hope that this is fixed because it’s difficult to find anything.

Did you know that cattle in Austria are celebrated during a fun yearly festival? Did you also know that there are eight churches in Antarctica? I had no idea until I read this book! I really enjoy the twelve facts for each continent. They are nicely brief, interesting and informative. The lovely little depictions accompanying each fact are also a nice touch.

However, I would have liked more diversity and variation of the facts. For instance, most of the North America facts are based on The United States of America. I would have loved to learn more about Mexico. Additionally, many of the facts are nature based and I want more facts on festivals and landmarks of continents like Africa and Asia.

This book is a great introduction to the world for young readers. It will inspire an interest in geography and learning about other cultures. This book is also fun for adults because it has unusual facts about the world that we may not know.



🐱🐱🐱 cats out of 5!

Thanks Net Galley for the preview!

This book was loads of fun! I enjoyed the expansion of the classical search and find with facts, history and landmarks. Would love to see this book in print for an activity for students who finish social studies early. The illustrations were wonderful and captivating!

What a neat search and find concept. This book list items that can be found on a particular continent with a short description about it. Turning the page, you find a map for which the reader to search for those items. Meanwhile, try to find the cat in each puzzle.

What a fun way to impart information about a variety of things while the child thinks he/she is just playing a game. The colors are bright. The illustrations are fun. The puzzles are busy so the reader has to actually look for an item instead of it being readily apparent.


I received an ARC from Quarto Publishing through NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book. I am voluntarily submitting a review.

I like the idea of the book as well as its funny maps. The children enjoyed hide-and-seek game, but the book was a "one time read only". The images in the e-version are very blurry, the actual version in paper should be much more enjoyable.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Wide Eyed Editions for an early copy of Catch Cat, Discover the World in this Search and Find Adventure by Claire Grace. This was a cute find the hidden cat book, but with additional facts and things to find. The book was divided up by continent. For each continent you were provided with around 12 facts and then the next page you had to find the cat and items representing each fact.

The facts ranged from dry to silly, such as sloths leave the safety of their trees only once a week to use the bathroom, and there are only about 1,000 windmills remaining in the Netherlands when there used to be almost 10,000. This was a great read that you could learn from, but also have fun trying to catch the cat. (The location of the cat on each page is provided in the back if you get stuck.)

The continents are introduced with a teaser of landmarks and things of interest that are small portions of a map that follows. Readers can read about each item and then try to locate it on the map. The map pages look a bit pixelated (I assume they are computer generated). Given the blocky world of Minecraft, that fact may not bother kids. Has a sort of vintage charm (like you are viewing an old Pac-Man graphic). I assume the print version is less blocky and would therefore recommend that over the digital version.

Each continent has a double page spread highlighting famous landmarks, geographic features, as well as native wild life. The illustrations are well done and information is offered in kid-friendly chunks. The next double page is the continent with animals, landmarks, and other interesting features illustrated on the surface of the map. It offers children much to examine and explore. Almost like taking a drone tour above the continent and getting a bird's eye view.

The title gives readers the clue that there will be some hunting for the feline that has been travelling the world. (Rest assured, the answers for cat locations are included in the back). This is a beautiful introduction to the world for young readers. A sort of primer atlas that offers quick facts and entertaining illustrations that bring the wonder of our world into sharp focus. Perhaps these pages will inspire future world travelers!

Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy of Catch Cat from NetGalley for the purpose of review. No other compensation was received.

This book combines learning about theT continents with a search and find, I Spy concept. Each continent has an intricate picture with things to locate. The illustration for each continent is in the shape of the countries therein. The sought objects are described before each two page illustration. In addition, the challenge is to find the cat on each continent. There are many fun facts in this book; happily at the end there is an answer page so the searcher can find any thing that they ay have missed.

The resolution in the illustrations was not always clear. This is most likely not an issue in the hard copy.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for my honest review.

This is aimed at providing fun and interesting facts about the world, continent by continent, but it was designed from the ground up as a print book and I got to review only the ebook which was disturbingly low-resolution. The problem was that this very resolution defeated one of the stated challenges in the book - that of finding things in the picture of the continent in question, including the 'Catch Cat' of the title.

The book is laid out in a series of descriptive pages, each of which is followed by a color image of the continent being covered. The challenge is to find those things described in the descriptive page, in the continent image, including the cat. While the descriptive pages seemed fine and even interesting, the continent page was so crowded and of such poor resolution that I couldn't see anything reliable in any of them. It reminded me of those old computer games way back when resolution was poor: blocky and ugly. It certainly wasn't possible to see anything useful let alone pick out things described on the previous page. Even when I looked in the area the cat was supposed to be (there are 'solution' pages at the end of the book which highlight it), I still couldn't pick it out.

That wasn't even the worst problem. Judged by the first continent covered - North America - I can judge fairly confidently that the author is of USA origin, and is white. I've never seen her so I don't know, and I may well be wrong, but I got this impression from the fact that despite being home to nearly forty countries, North America is described by the author as consisting only of Canada, the USA, and Mexico. The 'landmarks' page covers solely things found in the USA, with the lone exception of the Canadian Mounted Police! Disturbingly, there's not a word about Mexico - nor any of the other countries. It's like they don't exist.

I'm used to the USA behaving as though it's the only important country on the planet, and being so insular and provincial as to be laugh-worthy, particularly under this president where hatred toward Mexico is being daily fomented, but even so, this was a bit much. It's put right there front of the line for no good reason. Alphabetically it comes almost last in a listing of continents. It's a USA-produced book, aimed at USA audiences presumably, so I can understand North America coming first, but it was entirely inappropriate to treat North America like it's only the USA and nothing else matters or is of interest. That I can't forgive. And yes, in case you wondered, the book is printed in China! I guess the USA isn't everything after all, huh?!

I would like to assume that the print book is larger format and higher resolution than my iPad, but since I didn't get the print book to review I can review only this one, and based on what I saw here - or more accurately in some regards, what I failed to see - I cannot commend this as a worthy read.

One of those books that acts as a primer to geography through using a character and things to look for. Each continent gets a double-page spread, containing information, then (either portrait or landscape) we get a second spread, which is where we do our searching. It all looked very easy to me, even with a horrendously bad resolution on my netgalley copy. What I found lacking was what so many other books like this do – namely a second list you only find at the end, so you're looking back over the same pages and absorbing them all over again. Still, in the textual side of things you do get some very pleasant trivia, if that's your thing – if you wanted the weight of Christ the Redeemer, or the history of Russian nesting dolls, then here's where to turn. Also, as hardly needs saying, each continent gets an equal weight, even if some have a lot more nature to look for than in the more urban Europe. Worth considering for school libraries etc – only the use-once nature keeps it at three and a half stars.

This is both a geography book as well as a Find Walldo book. I think if i had to choose between the two, I would have just had the geographical elements of this book. It seems sort of a waste to search through the images to find the cat.

On the other hand, looking at the little facts about the different continents was very interesting.

<img src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/catch-cat.png" alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5320" />

It may be when this book sees print, that the images on the maps will be cleaere, but in the review copy, they were too pixilated to see clearly where the cat might be, which could have been part of the issue.

A cut enough introduction to geography.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.