Twenty-five years on
from his first published adventure, Slinky Malinki is one of the great cats of
children’s literature. The Slinky Malinki™ stories make up five of the 20
bestselling titles in the Hairy Maclary and Friends™ series, which has been
translated into several languages and has sold more than nine million copies
worldwide.
Prototypes of this famous feline character have prowled through Dame Lynley
Dodd’s art and picture books for decades, stalking and lurking in her sketches
and illustrations throughout the sixties and seventies. During the eighties, he
poked his whiskery face into The Apple Tree; in Hairy Maclary,
Scattercat he was chased into a drum full of weeds; and he delivered his
first line in Wake Up, Bear (“w . . . w . . . rr . . . OWWWWW!”).
However
it was in 1990, with the debut of his self-titled book Slinky Malinki,
that this cheeky and thieving black cat really stole our hearts. The story of
his moonlit stealing spree and fall into deep disgrace was an instant
bestseller in his home country of New Zealand, and his popularity swiftly
spread throughout the rest of the world with simultaneous publications in
Australia, the UK and the USA.
Slinky’s enormous popularity is perhaps partly due to the fact that he is such
a familiar and recognisable character – over the last 25 years Lynley Dodd has
received a multitude of letters from readers describing similarly ‘Slinky’ black
cat antics and sharing photos of Slinky Malinki lookalikes.
On the eve of his 25th birthday, Slinky shows absolutely no sign of becoming
better behaved. But for all that he’s a bothersome rascal and a pothersome
pain, he knows just how to smooch his way back into everyone’s good graces. We
can’t help but forgive him and look forward to his next adventure.
And one thing is for certain – wherever Slinky creeps, trouble is never far
away . . .
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