Mog and the Baby by Judith Kerr
Published 1980 · 32 pages · 8,800 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Children's Literature
How hard is Mog and the Baby to read?
Mog and the Baby scores 90 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 80 out of 100
- A 32-page picture book for small children, it uses simple everyday words, in the register of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret but younger still. Read-aloud text keeps the vocabulary at the lowest level.
- Sentence structure: 80 out of 100
- Sentences in a picture book of this length are short and declarative. They sit below the diary syntax of Anne Frank's work and demand nothing of a listener.
- Abstraction: 80 out of 100
- The story concerns a cat, a neighbour's baby and a household, all concrete and visual. It is as plain as Asterix the Gaul in its adventure.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Few words per page and illustrations that carry the action keep the load very light. Nothing here needs sustained attention.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Pictures and brief text show Mog's displeasure openly, much as Asterix tells its story through clear visual action. Little needs inferring.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- This is a domestic comedy about a pet and a baby, with no evident allegorical layer. Meaning stays on the literal surface.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- The humour comes from the gap between Mog's feelings and the adults' obliviousness. That gap stays gentle and sincere, nearer Judy Blume's open voice than any satire.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- Children's picture books in a long-running series close their domestic episodes cleanly. Nothing in the evidence points to ambiguity.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- A short linear story over 32 pages, structured like the Diary of a Young Girl's plain sequence but far simpler.
How Mog and the Baby is regarded
Mog and the Baby holds a literary regard score of 31 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.