Cass and the Beast by Claire Mabey

Claire Mabey, author of Cass and the Beast, is well known in New Zealand as books editor for The Spinoff and the founder of literary festival Verb Wellington. She has previously written two popular novels for older children. Cass and the Beast is her first picture book.

Cass is an extraordinarily brave little girl who lives in a little house all by herself. The townspeople have warned her about a fearful beast. Cass watches as it moves between the trees. She fancies she hears its belly rumble. When night falls, thinking the Beast may be starving, she creeps outside to offer it some bread. The Beast gives a terrifying roar, but then he accepts the bread before clamping his teeth around her collar and lifting her right off the ground, like a puppy, onto his back.

‘Run!’ shouts Cass. The beast leaps forward, and Cass holds on. It is the beginning of a fantastical journey through a forested landscape that lasts all night.

When the sun comes up, the Beast delivers her back home. The villagers give Cass a new name, ‘Night Sneak’. Cass doesn’t mind, but she tells them not to call the creature the Beast, instead revealing his real name. Then she goes inside and, after having a drink of milk and an apple in her cosy little kitchen, she sits down to write a story about her wondrous adventure.

The book is aimed at 4–7-year-olds. Some may consider this story about a fearsome beast with a terrifying roar to be too dark and scary for preschoolers. But it’s not as grim as some of Grimm’s fairy tales so beloved by many young children. And, unlike The Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, or the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel, the Beast does people no harm. On the contrary, Cass has a wonderful wild ride on the Beast before he delivers her safely back home.

However, particularly softhearted children who love animals may be upset by the way the Beast stops off in a meadow teeming with hares, scoops them up and ‘crunches their bones'.  Perhaps wisely, the illustrator chose not to show this scene, focusing instead on the hares dancing merrily in the early light.

I think that Cass and the Beast is a literary gem. Each sentence is beautifully crafted, making it a pleasure to read aloud, and I love the way Claire Mabey doesn’t shy away from using more sophisticated language than that used in many picture books and literary conventions such as similes and metaphors, for example: ‘The fur was thick and warm. Cass burrowed her hands into the heft of it. She could see now that the Beast’s coat was made of all the light and all the dark of the world together. Cass felt the Beast breathe as vast as the sea.’ Prose like this will help children build rich vocabularies.

Cass and the Beast is a collaboration by an author and illustrator from opposite ends of the world. Claire Mabey lives in Wellington, New Zealand, while Jill Calder is based in Scotland. She was an inspired choice. In her atmospheric illustrations, using a combination of analogue and digital drawing, she perfectly captures the mood of this magical story.

And when Claire tells how, when Cass shouted ‘Run,’ the Beast leapt forward, while Cass held on, ran like thunder, devoured the ground, and Cass’s hair was pulled behind her, Jill captures their wild ride, and the way the world flashes by, with loose brushstrokes, in a myriad of colours.

In her illustrations, brave Cass looks sweet and charming. She is modelled on a very special girl in Claire’s family, mentioned by Claire in an interview on the Gecko Press website:

‘I dedicated the story to my Aunty Margaret who I never met-she died of cancer when she was only nine years old, and the stories about her always included how brave she was and how charming. I think I have carried the image of a quiet, brave child all my life because of those stories about my aunty.’

Knowing this backstory helps to make it an even more special picture book that encourages all children, especially girls, to be brave, resilient, and true to themselves.

Cass and the Beast is Claire Mabey’s first picture book and I hope there will be more to follow.

Reviewer: Lyn Potter

Gecko Press