The Panda, the Cat and the Dreadful Teddy: A Parody - Paul Magrs

Author-Illustrator: Paul Magrs

Genre: Sequential Art.

Rating: 2 stars.

Most of you would have heard of Charlie Mackesy’s beautiful book, “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”. This is a parody version of the same.

The three titular characters are the ones interacting in this book. Panda is the fun fellow. Cat is supposed to be nice but is a little self-centred, as are most cats. Teddy considers himself the bee’s knees and is not a good friend to the other two. They are all “friends”, just not the nice sorts.

The friends in Charles Mackesy’s book teach each other kindness, support, the value of being there and being in the moment. Here, you get almost the opposite: think only about yourself, be rude to others, and get the maximum from your friends.

If you hold the books side by side, you will realise how much this one has been “inspired” from the original. The cover design is the same (though this book is smaller.) The original had a boy and three animals. This one knocks off the human and has three separate animals. The illustrations attempt to be similar, but Mackesy’s artwork is much better. Even the font style is very similar to Mackesy’s handwriting, but again, I preferred the Mackesy version. On a few pages, the font in the book resembles scribbles.

I know this is supposed to be a parody version, so the low star rating is not because of the extent of similarity between the two books; a parody is supposed to be like that. The poor rating is because a parody is supposed to be funny and I didn’t find this funny at all. I barely cracked a smile, forget about laughing.

Note: This is strictly not for kids as there are too many cuss words.

Some examples of the kind of humour in the book: (TBH, these are the only three lines I actually found a tad funny. The rest were atrocious.)

👉 "If you don't blow your own trumpet, no other fucker will."

👉 "Art is for everyone, unless you are completely shit at it."

👉 "Sometimes it feels like your friends are a long way away, and that can be a relief, frankly."

If this works for you, do try. It wasn’t my cup of tea and the book felt more annoying than amusing. I’d rather reread the Charlie Mackesy book.