My daughter recently brought this book home as her school book for the week and as she liked it so much we read it two to three times a day, I must say I was rather glad when it went back to school.

The book is written and illustrated by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen, Nick Butterworth formed his own consultancy for graphic design with three other people one of which was Mick Inkpen, in 1980 Nick decided to concentrate on illustrating and his first book was published the same year. Nick is responsible for Percy the Park keeper and Mick is well know for the Kipper books. The book is approx 10 inches square which is about the size of book that I like to read with my daughter so that we don't have to play tug o war with the book while I try to read and she tries to se the pictures. The book has a RRP of £5.99 and there is a second book with this character called Jasper and the Beanstalk.

The front cover of the book shows a black and white cat who you find out to be Jasper he is sat on the floor playing with wind up mice with a large smile on his face, the title of the book is written in balloon style writing in red, yellow, green, blue and purple and stands out really against the white background of the cover.
The names of the author and illustrator are written across the bottom of the cover and I will say from previous experience I wanted to read this book when I saw Nick Butterworths name as we know his books are great. On the back cover there are some quotes of what people have said about the book and a smaller picture of Jasper this time he is sat playing with a Jack in Box which did mislead my daughter the first time we read the book.

The book begins with jasper the cat walking to the toy shop with his birthday money in his hand which is one gold coin, my daughter made me laugh the first time we read this as she said "he can't get much for one penny" seems she is learning about the world young! When Jasper reaches the shop he is met by shelves of toys and one by one he plays with each toy and then discards them this is where my daughter thought that he was going to buy a Jack in the box due to the picture on the back of the book. Finally Jasper reaches the very last thing on the shelf which was a little soft toy pussy cat that looked just like him and this is what he bought.

The pictures in the book are brillant, they are bold and are in blocks of colour without too much detail, the toys are colourful in contrast to the black and white cat which all stands out really well on the white background of every page. The most detail that is really in the pictures is some detailing on the toy balls such as stars and stripes but even these are done in large areas, I think the pictures are great for young children. My daughter loved it when we came to the shelves of the toy shop and we sat and tried to work out what each toy was and guessed what he was going to buy. My daughter did however point out that a ride on car would not cost the same as a bouncy ball which I was quite impressed with as it shows she is beginning to understand a little about money.

We both enjoyed this book although like I say by the end of the week I was very ready for the book to go back to school, by the time we reached the end of the week my daughter could recite the book word for word as there are not too many words to a page and the words are quite repetitive so this helped with her reading too. I would recommend this book and so would my daughter infact i would recommend any Nick Butterworth book as everyone we have read gets 5 stars from us.