his face melted into a loopy smile whenever he heard her name--catherine!--or even a word that sound like catherine: aspirin for example, or bathroom.

Ok, I'm not exactly sure who this book is aimed at. I mean, the inside cover says its for ages 4-8 but the storyline doesn't seem very relevant. I guess love is supposed to be universal and the characters are animals but like...what? It reads like a romantic drama. I imagine Kate Winslet or Gwenyth Paltrow playing the part of Catherine, the beautiful dance instructor/painter and some Leo DiCaprio or James McAvoy type playing Pierre the fisherman. Come to think of it, I guess love is really easy to talk about for little kids because they don't understand it yet. So maybe they could relate. I thought the story was beautiful and had a good message. Pierre is literally sick with love over Catherine, but then realizes that it wasn't the love that was making him sick so much as his keeping it all bottled up. Once he tells her, even though she does not reciprocate (she loves another), his life opens up. And, of course, in the end, unlike most of the movies the actors I chose to play them have been in, there is a happy ending for all. The book is kind of on the lengthy side, there's a paragraph on every page and nothing really repeats but the illustrations (Petra Mathers) are cool. All the grays and deep colors reminded of Maine (it turns out the author lives in Cape Cod). The only thing that bothered me is that when Pierre first confessed his love, Catherine rejected him because she loved someone else and that someone else was...Pierre. Like, I guess she didn't recognize him without his rubber overalls or something...or she didn't recognize him in the dark (they met at night)...or something. That part just didn't make sense. But other than that, I enjoyed the story. I think it sort of brought up something that most adults forget: we shouldn't be afraid of love.