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Let's Compare! Cat Nap by Brian Lies & A Gallery of Cats by Ruth Brown

  • Writer: Cana Clark
    Cana Clark
  • Jun 30
  • 4 min read

Cat Nap was THE picture book of 2025, at least for me. It seemed like this book was everywhere. Publishers Weekly did a Q&A with Brian Lies and a piece on the tour. They kind of had to... Lies toured the country in a CAT CAR. The book that inspired such a vehicle takes place in an art museum and features a curious kitten jumping through different art exhibits. In Loren Long's The Yellow Bus fashion, the book even includes behind-the-scenes backmatter showing how Lies created the unique art pieces that served as the illustrations of the book. And yet, no Caldecott? No ALA awards? I was baffled. Still, the coverage this received made it stand out.


Imagine my surprise when a friend brought me a copy of A Gallery of Cats by Ruth Brown, ANOTHER art museum and cat-themed picture book. Cat Nap released in Sept 2025, while A Gallery of Cats released in Oct 2025. Fall 2025 was peak cat/art museum book season, I guess. I didn't hear about A Gallery of Cats, especially compared to Cat Nap, but I think this can be attributed to Lies' team's aggressive marketing and publicity campaign. (Impressive!)



So, what's the difference between these two cat/art museum picture books? A lot!


Both books take place in an art museum and feature cats. Our main character in Cat Nap is feline — Kitten leads us through the exhibits chasing an elusive mouse. In A Gallery of Cats, our main character is a human boy named Tom who tours the exhibits.


In both books, art literally comes alive. In Cat Nap, the exhibits respond to Kitten as he leaps through them with gusto. Kitten turns into different types of art, which is HANDMADE by Brian Lies. What!


Cat Nap has a fairly basic plot. Our main character, Kitten, chases a mouse through art exhibits until he gets lost and a monk helps him. What really gets him home though, is the sound of dinner landing in his food bowl.


Kitten leaps through several exhibits, with Kitten himself becoming a part of the art. With the turn of a page, Kitten is carved in limestone, formed into a ceramic vessel, or made of ink, paint, and stained glass. As the backmatter reveals, all of this art was created by hand by Brian Lies. WOW!


Something I really appreciated about this backmatter was Lies' last three sentences, which are addressed to the reader:


"You can make pretty much anything if you want to, if you teach yourself how. If people before us could do it, why not me? Why not you?"



In A Gallery, the art comes out of the exhibits to trail after our main character Tom. (Almost the exact opposite of Catnap). The cats from the paintings literally wear the art as their fur. They're drawn in the styles of the artists whose pieces they leap out of, which is a real delight. It's a great way to introduce classic artists to young readers.


The text of the book is actually the art labels. These labels describe the cats instead of the art, with poetic descriptions of the cats and reflecting the described art style. For example, this label for the cat based on Jackson Pollock:


"JACKSON

(American Wirehair)

Adventurous and curious...

but messy —

often scattering the contents

of his food bowl and litter tray

all over the floor."



A fun detail is that the cat who represents Jackson Pollock slowly loses his spots, speckles, and splotches as the book progresses. I'm still not sure what it means... maybe that Jackson really did walk out of the painting because cats don't care about the rules of reality. Or perhaps it is a reference to the ephemeral nature of art.


At the end of the book, when Tom leaves the museum, Jackson stays behind. We can infer that Tom now has a new appreciation for art and the different styles in which it can be made. Tom, and the reader, has learned that art comes alive... literally. Haha.


Now the big question is WHY did these two very similar books come out at the same time? I could give you the Publishing™ Answer, which is that certain themes, illustration styles, subjects, and plots go in an out of fashion in the book world. (Cats are an evergreen subject). But my opinion is that Brian Lies and Ruth Brown are both artists who admire art. The cats are simply a subject... and a medium!


Both books would make fabulous readalouds for an art study in any elementary classroom. I would also recommend educators consider a comparative study of these two books side by side. What does each book try to communicate about art? How does each creator portray art? What methods do they use, and how do they differ? Why do you think they both chose cats as subjects?





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Book Info






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