On the page's lower half, a thick yellow line indicating the table top juts out from the gutter as Max tips the bowl toward him, "Excuse me, please, but are you Mouse?" Vere connects the two vignettes while also conveying the passage of time. In the top half, Max sits on a yellow table beside a goldfish. For a scene with a goldfish, he cuts the page in half. Vere sets apart each encounter with a different background color, and varies them through skillful pacing. "But I just saw Mouse scurry by a moment ago." In the lower right corner, a fly appears, triggering the pattern that extends over several pages: "Are you Mouse?" asks Max. Max spies a metal can, looks inside ("Mouse? Are you in there?"), climbs on top, then crawls inside, all against a yolk-yellow backdrop. Instead, he uses the page itself like a series of four horizontal planes. Vere sets up a classic comics-style sequence but omits the construct of a panel. The matter-of-fact text sets up a playful tension with the pictures.
The supercat alter ego's shadow balances the tempest cloud of the upper left-hand corner, almost as if Max has transformed his anger into action.īy the next spread, Max is depicted normal size and on the hunt to "find out what a mouse looks like.
A page turn reveals a vignette in the upper left corner of Max stomping on the now-rumpled pink bow, a black cloud above his head, the universal comics signal of an emotional tempest: "Max does not like being dressed up with bows." Vere uses the text that appears in the lower right corner of that same left-hand page as a caption for a full-page portrait of made-over Max, opposite, standing in a power pose, sporting a red cape: "Because Max is a fearless kitten./ Max is a brave kitten./ Max is a kitten who chases mice." Both "fearless" and "brave" appear in a larger font, and "mice" is in bold. The author-artist uses all the tools at his command. "Doesn't Max look sweet!" Opposite, the red backdrop telegraphs a change in mood: "Max looks so sweet that sometimes people dress him up with bows." But the feline's furrowed brow, yellow eyes and too-tight pink bow foreshadow trouble. "This is Max," says the text on a sunny yellow background. With a turn of the page, Max is awake, the round white orbs of his eyes resembling fried eggs with large, black pupils in place of yolks. Blue-gray pen strokes indicate his closed eyes and a button nose, with only a slight twitch of a tail to suggest movement. Youngsters will fall in love with Max, the wide-eyed, jet-black kitten with an insatiable curiosity, and the mouse who outsmarts him.Įd Vere ( Banana!) introduces the enchanting hero on the title page as he's waking from a nap.
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