Kirkus Reviews, print edition June 1, 2025:

STARRED REVIEW, CAT NAP:

A felicitous feline with mice on the brain leaps into adventure—and art.

In the late afternoon, a kitten’s attention is seized by a wayward mouse. When the rodent jumps into a framed poster for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kitten is close behind. What ensues is a chase across the museum—and into a variety of pieces spanning time and geography, all of which hail from the Met and are labeled and further explained in the backmatter. On each spread, both Kitten and his prey are visually transformed, matching the style of the work in question—and wreaking a bit of chaos along the way. At last, it’s the lure of home and dinner that brings Kitten’s wanderings to an end. As Caldecott Honor winner Lies notes at the book’s conclusion, he painstakingly brought to life each sculpture, painting, and illuminated manuscript, as seen in his jaw-dropping array of styles. He glued layers of wood to fashion a Mblo mask, fitted stained glass for a sequence where Kitten and his quarry dart through Friedrich Brunner’s Gathering Manna, and, using dental tools and a chisel, carved plaster to re-create an Egyptian relief. Amid this meticulously rendered art, the kid-friendly storytelling, anchored by a spirited refrain (“Does Kitten follow? Of course he does”), remains at the heart of the narrative.

Utterly beautiful, playfully fun, and, above all, breathtaking. (Picture book. 3-6)