A young boy shares a little house in Beijing with 23 cats.  His friend comes to visit, but the two of them can’t sit down, can’t study, and can’t even eat dinner together because of all the cats.  What to do?  The answer, which involves a very large dog, will surprise and delight you.

This wonderful little tale is for beginning Chinese students of all ages.  Its tiny vocabulary of just 101 words is taken from the HSK1 list of words used to teach beginning students of Chinese.  Each page of Simplified Chinese is faced by an opposite page of pinyin (phonetic spelling), so if a reader gets stuck on an unfamiliar word they can check it against the pinyin.  A complete glossary and English translation is in the back of the book, and a free audiobook is available on YouTube and can be downloaded from the Imagin8 Press website.

Twenty Three Cats is written by Jeff Pepper, best-selling author of the multi-volume Journey to the West series for beginning and intermediate Chinese readers, and many other books including innovative translations of the Chinese classics Dao De Jing, San Zi Jing, and The Art of War.  The book is illustrated by Pui Jo Ng, a talented Malaysian artist specializing in books for children and in art that’s informed by history and culture.