Mog and the Granny by Judith Kerr
Published 2005 · 32 pages · 8,800 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Children's Literature
How hard is Mog and the Granny to read?
Mog and the Granny scores 70 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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 young children, it uses everyday words suited to read-aloud. It sits near the simplest end, close to the child-level language of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret but plainer.
- Sentence structure: 80 out of 100
- Picture-book text relies on short, direct sentences that a small child can follow aloud. Nothing here approaches the grammatical demands of adult fiction like Beach Read.
- Abstraction: 80 out of 100
- The story centres on a cat and a family holiday, which is concrete and visual. It is as grounded as Asterix the Gaul's comic adventure.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- At about 8,800 words across a short picture book format, each page carries little new information, with illustrations doing much of the work. It is lighter than The Diary of a Young Girl.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Picture books tell their story plainly, with Kerr's illustrations showing the action. Like Asterix the Gaul, what you see is what happens.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- A warm holiday escapade about a family cat offers no evident symbolic layer. It stays well below even the minimal symbolism of Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Described as warm-hearted and funny, the book speaks sincerely to children. Its voice is as direct as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- A short children's escapade comes to a clear, comforting close in the manner of genre-expected endings like Beach Read.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- A linear picture-book story following one family holiday keeps its structure simple, far simpler than even the diary form of Anne Frank's book.
How Mog and the Granny is regarded
Mog and the Granny 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.