Beebop and I are so excited to be reviewing this book! We’ve been waiting for it to come into the library for what feels like forever! The person who had it before us clearly didn’t want to give it up! If you’ve read our previous posts, you’ll know we are huge fans of Catherine’s books and have previously reviewed Augustus and His Smile which we love!

Smelly Louie is the story of Louie’s adventures to find his own Special Smell. His awful family make him take a bath and he loses his Special Smell so he doesn’t smell like Louie anymore! He then goes on an adventure to find his Smell again. If you have a dog at home, this tale will sound very true to you. Granny Beebop has two dogs, one of whom is Phoebe. Phoebe regularly (according to Granny Beebop anyway!) regularly needs a bath. She likes to roll in mud, drinks water out of the small algae filled pond in the garden, gets snacks and nibbles out of the bin and is chief bird chaser, usually into bushes! She seems to have a special intuition when it’s Bath Day and will sit in the tiniest of places where Granny Beebop can’t get to her or hide in the bushes in the garden for hours on end!

Illustrations: The thing we love most about Catherine’s illustrations is they are painted by hand and look as if they’ve been painted onto the page. They’d look just as beautiful in a frame in your house! The colours and the way she paints makes the illustrations so expressive! Catherine sells her artwork if you love it as much as we do, her website is here 

Story: We love this story, not just because it reminds us very much of Phoebe, but it’s just a sweet story. You can imagine a dog thinking like Louie when they have baths! We love Louie’s imagination and the things he thinks will give him his smell back! We read this at our library’s Read and Rhyme session and the children were laughing along! They really enjoyed it and were “Ewww!”-ing and “Urghh!”-ing along! It’s a good job this isn’t a scratch and sniff book!

Catherine has her own Twitter and Facebook pages so make sure you go and see what else what she’s up to!

This post is dedicated to Beebop’s great nan, Nanny Noo who passed away yesterday. Mummy Beebop has great memories of her sitting on Nanny Noo’s knee and reading When The Tiger Came To Tea. When Nanny Noo tried to skip pages, mummy Beebop would tell her off and make her read it again from the start! We love you Nanny and we’re happy you’re at peace now xxx