The Cat Man of Aleppo by Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-Basha, Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“This is a story about cats and war and people. But most of all, it is a story about love… Remember: both people and animals suffer pain, and all of them deserve compassion. Together we can make the world a better place!” — Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel

This felt like the perfect book to wrap up 2024, considering collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime earlier this month (though the Syrian conflict is ongoing). This story deals with an extremely serious and continuous topic, and several reviews are critical of the lack of particulars and historical context. But this is a children’s picture book, and I don’t think the format leaves much room for nuance. The point of the story is that beauty and hope can be found in the ugliest and most hopeless situations, and in my opinion, The Cat Man of Aleppo illustrates that point charmingly.

I have four main reasons to love this book:

1. The aforementioned celebration of hope and beauty in otherwise terrible circumstances. It’s a story about caring for animals that helps give you faith in humanity. As one of the authors (Karim Shamsi-Basha) put it, “caring for [animals] illuminates what it means to be human.”


2. Cats!!! I love them!!!


3. Both authors are Alabamians like myself. I was very excited when I learned this! Alabama needs all the good press it can get.


4. Yuko Shimizu is one of my favorite illustrators of all time, and her work for this book contains some of my favorite illustrations in her portfolio. These illustrations are what first piqued my interest in The Cat Man of Aleppo.

Illustration by Yuko Shimizu

༻❁༺

𝓟.𝓢. This review was crossposted from Goodreads because it contains actual thoughts rather than a typically facetious single-sentence remark. View all my book ratings and pointless takes on Goodreads or The StoryGraph.