A free copy of this book was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Max the Brave is about a tiny kitten called Max who doesn't want to be a cute, adorable cat, but wants to be a brave cat who hunts mice. Except he doesn't know what a mouse looks like and his efforts to find one don't quite work out.
This is a lovely, funny story book about Max and I really enjoyed the humour in his quest to find out what a mouse actually looks like from some animals who direct him here and there all over the place, until he comes across a monster. The one thing I really loved about this book was the illustrations. I had a kindle version of this book so obviously there was no colour, but the detail and sly nods to clues in the stories were in the drawings which I thought was just lovely.
A funny story with some gorgeous illustrative work. 4.5 stars.

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own. Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy.

Great idea and concept for a book. A thoroughly enjoyable read. Highly recommended. .

I requested this book on Netgalley years ago. Years. I've read it several times at our preschool over the years. Kids love it because they know more than Max as he tries to learn what a mouse is so he can chase it. As an educator, I love it because it is a great way to talk about being brave! In my opinion, a good picture uses rich vocabulary. All the animals Max encounters have seen the mouse and they use a wide variety of words to explain the mouse's movement: scurry, dash, skitter and more.
Illustrations are easily my favorite part of picture books - and Vere's use of bold colors and then simple, black, shadow-style renderings for the characters is appealing. There is not a lot of detail in the artwork, and yet there is a great deal of movement on each page.

I received a dARC from the publisher via Netgalley.* Here is my honest review.
*expired. reviewed copy from school

I read this book to my son and honestly he didn't care for it much, His words were it's boring and I don't like the pictures much.

This is the story of Max, a very brave kitten, who is so so adorable! (^.^)


Max also happens to be a mouse-catcher. There's a small problem, however. Max does not know what a mouse looks like! :|
But Max will not let something this trivial deter him. He goes around asking everybody he runs into if they're a mouse!
Although this image is quite tiny, I found this particular illustration where he climbs a tree full of birds to inquire about mice especially cute! (Yes, birds make me swoon!)


Eventually he runs into someone and asks them if they've seen a mouse around and..


Oh, well!
Anyway, it has a funny twist towards the end! :D

This is below the reading level of my high school students, but my 9 year old enjoyed it.