Ready to engage in their nightly squabble over space in the bedroom they share, Tom and Lynn are distracted by a tall green cat who asks them, “What do you like the most?” They both love toast, so Green Cat brings the kitchen table, chairs, a poster and, of course, the toaster into their bedroom. But he doesn’t stop there. He fills their room with everything from flapping geese and napping cats to a little Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Tiffany lamp, and the Mona Lisa until it’s full to bursting and Tom and Lynn are crowded out. In classic folktale style, Green Cat then empties the room, leaving the pair satisfied with the space they share, and wishes them good night.

Green Cat is a newly published picture book by the late Dayal Kaur Khalsa, best known for the eight extraordinary picture books she created in her brief career, including Tales of a Gambling Grandma, I Want a Dog and How Pizza Came to Our Town. A wonderful contemporary rendition of a classic Yiddish folktale, it’s truly a welcome addition to her unique body of work. It shares the whimsy of her books Sleepers and Snow Cat, with its simple rhyming story line and playfully engaging illustrations. Like all of Khalsa’s work, it bursts with a zany sense of humour that is controlled by her primitive style of illustration. Khalsa always paid tribute in her books to imaginative works that inspired her and her art here is reminiscent of Clement Hurd’s in Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon.

Green Cat is a lot of fun. Khalsa’s ability to bring alive the sense of movement in the illustrations, the extra twist she gives to the traditional folktale ending, and those delicate green pawprints that fill the end papers make this a book that is indeed worthy of its predecessors.