The Forgetful Mog

Thanks to the #1970 Club,  I have a new mog in my life and a new literary best friend in Mog the Forgetful Cat. 

“Once there was a cat called Mog. She lived with a family called Thomas. Mog was nice but not very clever. She didn’t understand a lot of things. A lot of other things she forgot. She was a very forgetful cat.”   Judith Kerr,  Mog the Forgetful Cat,

Just look at round-faced, well-fed Mog with her white bib and paws and tail like a stripey sausage. 

As befits her name, Mog, is an ordinary cat who lives with an ordinary family and lives an ordinary life in an ordinary house with a back garden and scary street out front. Mog is not very intelligent and is very forgetful. She forgets she has been fed, falls into a dream half way through washing her leg, forgets she cannot fly, and forgets she has her own cat flap and does not need to demand to let in and out. 

Mog has Feelings

She may be ordinary and not very bright and she may do bothersome and annoying things but Mog has feelings.

She is ,as you may have gathered, both a species of small child and a recognizable domestic cat who does typical cat things like sit on the television and dangle a tail over the screen (Remember – cathode ray tube TVs used to be warm places and cats are always seeking places to boil their brains. They were also box shaped and so convenient for cat perching.).

I’m surprised that the flower vase is not upended (yet). 

Fun facts: Judith Kerr based Mog on her own cat (called Mog)  and the house on her own family home . The two children were named after the middle names of her own son and daughter and the family name “Thomas” is from the first name of her husband, Nigel Kneale, upon whom the appearance of Mr Thomas was based.

Neale is best know for his creation of Bernard Quatermass the scientist who was a character in various very scary sci fi productions. The Quatermass Experiment was a terrifying TV serial broadcast in the summer of 1953 that I was too young to watch and anyway we didn’t have a TV.  The very name scared me nonetheless or maybe that was because of the later Quatermass and the Pit.   There’s a link to the first episode below.

Dark Thoughts

But back to Mog. As I was saying – Mog has feelings and she feels most dreadfully hurt, misunderstood and mistreated and sorry for herself.

Mog sat in the dark and had dark thoughts. 

Poor misunderstood, under-appreciated Mog. 

But then something happens and Mog gets the recognition she craves 

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot but this recognition comes by chance and not because Mog does anything sensible or brave. It involves a crime and because Mog saw a chance to be given her supper. (Remember, she is forgetful. There is no suggestion of cat neglect here.)  Mog saves the day by mistake. 

And all is well.  And so the adults – including the criminal – have a nice cup of tea and Mog has her award.  

It’s all highly satisfactory.

The brilliance of a book like Mog is in how the words and the illustrations are tied together to tell the story.  Sometimes the pictures do the work and when Mr. or Mrs. Thomas cry, “Bother that cat!” it is through the drawings that we see why. Lucky the child who learns to read with books like this. 

Another Fun Fact: Mog’s Pronouns

There are seventeen Mog books in all and they have been translated into many languages.

When the German translators gave Mog the wrong pronouns Judith Kerr’s response was to give “Mog kittens and let them sort it out”.

As always – one book leads to another, and another. 

Outstanding picture books like Mog brings the work of the Margaret Meek Spencer to mind. She was another remarkable colleague of Jimmy Britton’s at the University of London Institute of Education. 

I heard her speak the year How Texts Teach What Readers Learn was published. it’s a about literacy and learning and how children learn from stories and read the world.  And it’s about children’s pictures books and what they teach. It was this talk that introduced me to classics like John Burningham’s Mr. Gumpy’s Outing and Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s the The Jolly Postman. 

The Quatermass Experiment 

The opening is 1950s chilling high drama at its best.