Alfie Cat in Trouble

Rachel Wells's Alfie Cat in Trouble is a warm, funny animal story for 11 year olds, told by a cat who can't help poking his whiskers into other families' business.

What happens

Alfie is a doorstep cat. He has three families already and doesn't see why he should stop there (you can never have too many humans, or pilchards). Right now, though, he's in trouble at home. Baby Summer won't sleep, everyone's grumpy, and he's just trodden his breakfast into the carpet.

So he lies low round the corner, where a new family is moving in. The Clovers are wonderfully odd. Mr Clover paints fruit for a living and gets very attached to his eggs. Mrs Clover makes custard instead of mushroom soup and serves it anyway.

Stanley is eight and always in trouble. He's clumsy and bored, and he's sure his parents love his piano-playing sister Viola more. Viola is lonely too. She quietly wishes Stanley would play with her like he used to.

Alfie can see what nobody else can. Can a cat fix a whole family? He's certainly going to try.

Reading it is like having a very confident, slightly vain cat tell you all the gossip. He falls into a bucket of clay, gets shut inside a piano and ends up covered in egg. His best friend Tiger keeps telling him to stay out of it (he never listens).

A couple of things are worth a word with younger readers. Stanley practises being an adventurer by holding his breath under the bathwater, and later he sneaks off to the park on his own. The book treats both as frightening and he's in big trouble each time, but they're not things you'd want copied.

Underneath all the chaos it takes feeling left out seriously. Any child who sometimes feels overlooked next to a brother or sister will probably see a lot of themselves in Stanley.

What to read next

For more of Alfie with the Clovers, Alfie Far From Home has him nod off in their camper van and wake up on the road to Devon.