written by Ashley Spires

Binky is your everyday-variety football-shaped cat who’s out to do good, save the world, and keep his humans safe. He also dreams of traveling deep into outer space (which, as he understands it, is the world outside his front door). His dreams start to come true when he finds his application to the Felines of the Universe Ready for Space Travel at the bottom of a bag of cat food.
 
The aliens Binky must protect the world from are known as bugs to human beings, but Binky can see the truth. He knows that he has an obligation to serve his humans and offer his services in return for food and cuddling.
 
Artist and author Ashley Spires started her career with children’s books, but this is her first graphic novel. It’s sweet and very funny (as usual in the eternal debate in whether dogs or cats are better, it will help if you like cats already—although that’s not absolutely essential), and it seems that Spires is launching Binky into an ongoing series with this book.
 
The content is entirely kid-friendly, of course, and geared toward much younger readers. Older children will enjoy Spires’s lovely cartoon drawings, done in hushed shades that are rendered, we are told, in “ink, watercolor, and cat fur.” Parents will find a lot to enjoy in the story, too, a good sign in case they are tasked with reading the book over and over again to their young ones.
 
Binky’s a typical cat in most other respects, and that makes him pretty lovable and fun to read about (presuming, of course, that you are one of those aforementioned cat people). Either way, this very funny, very charming book (the illustrations are great too) promises to launch a worthy feline into kids’ hearts—if not quite into outer space.

-- John Hogan

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