Slinky Malinki couldn’t be anything other than a cat; not with a name like that. What’s more, he couldn’t be anything other than a “blacker than black”, mischievous “rapscallion” of a puss who slinks out of his domicile every night to filch and horde all manner of useless curios. It’s the perfect fodder, really, for an admonitory children’s verse.
Lynley Dodd’s words and pictures do a splendid job of evoking the titular tom’s nocturnal world and his illicit revelry in it. The structure of the rhymes and the onomatopoeic words that Dodd uses to form them cleverly betray Slinky’s wayward charm; even the youngest of children must appreciate that he is a naughty cat - a “criminal cat” - and as such they won’t be able to do anything but champion him, giggling all the way.
If your child is finally - and, no doubt, begrudgingly - growing out of Hairy MacLary, then Slinky Malinki is the obvious next step up Lynley’s literary ladder.
