Review by Julia Aitken

 The third book in Katherine Reynolds’s Dylan and Red Tabby trilogy is a rip-roaring yarn that takes readers from the eponymous circus performers’ home in the English countryside to the bright lights of London and Hollywood.

In Katherine’s first two books—Born To Dance and Safe For Life—we got to know Dylan de Polka, the tap-dancing horse, and his best friend, a worldly wise ginger cat called Red Tabby.

The award-winning Born to Dance told the tale of the two buddies’ escape from unscrupulous horse dealers with the giggle-inducing names Dangerous Dennis and Clumsy Golightly, and the new life they find at the Happy Days Circus.

In Safe For Life the two friends and their fellow circus performers are pitted against two ruthless scoundrels, Jago Reaver and his sidekick Frankie, who are plotting to steal Great Park, the animals’ much-loved home.

In both books, Dylan and Red Tabby and their friends survive thrilling adventures, learn something about themselves along the way and enjoy happy endings all round. Under The Rainbow continues the tradition and some.

The story opens with the Happy Days Circus gang enjoying their first viewing of the feature-length movie that’s been made of their adventures to date. Then they’re all off to London in a convoy of cars, vans and even a motorbike, to walk the red carpet at the movie’s premiere.

Katherine’s writing sparkles with vivid imagery: the glass gondolas hang from the London Eye like “huge crystal beads;” thunderclouds spit “jagged tongues of white fire across the sky.”

Her background in film and TV gives her an insight into the movie business and allows her to work in wonderful detail. One very funny scene involves Dylan and Red Tabby enduring a photo shoot (“Chin up a bit, darling…Show your fans you love them.”). And there’s a clever skewering of the Oscars, which Katherine calls the “Golden Flame Awards,” where “winners…wanted to thank their mothers, their aunties, their favourite cat…”

As if that wasn’t adventure enough, Dylan and Red Tabby are soon winging their way to Los Angeles for the American premiere of the movie, and this is where the book becomes nail-bitingly exciting. The climax involves a chase along a Hollywood freeway involving police cruisers, a pink-and-chrome trailer and even a helicopter.

Through it all, Katherine manages to subtly weave in lessons on the fleeting and shallow nature of fame, the importance of true friendship and love, and how forgiveness and understanding can restore trust.

Julia Aitken is a writer and editor in Toronto.