While cats may come in second to dogs in terms of popularity, they are beautiful, elegant, loving animals, and they make great companions. And, as they do with dogs, children’s authors love to write about them. Here are six cat-filled picture books that are delightful. Even if you don’t have a cat, you’ll love reading and sharing these clever books.
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Today is almost four years since Bentley died. He was perhaps the dog I’ve loved most in my life since my dog Billy, who captured my heart when I was in high school. Bentley came into my life years later when one of my daughters couldn’t keep him, so she left him with us. And that was a gift, because Bentley enriched our lives in many, many ways. He was both the most magnificent and the most difficult dog we’ve ever had. But at all times, he was wonderful, handsome, kind, and supremely intelligent. My students adored him, teachers loved him, and everyone was entranced by his silky fur and gentle nature. This is at least part of his story. We’ll never know about the first years of his life, but his last decade was incredible. I wrote this in three parts. One part I just wrote, four years after his passing. The other two parts were written a year before his death and the day after his death. He was on death’s door at the shelter because of his “advanced” age, but he lived with us for ten years–longer than many dogs have.
If combining a mass shooting with a romance seems an unlikely pairing, rest assured that Sandra Brown is quite capable of making this accomplishment work wonderfully well in her new romantic thriller, “Out of Nowhere.” She first introduces us to the shooter, who brags about being uncatchable and even brags about being impervious to the risk of becoming a suspect. And until the very clever ending, we don’t understand why that would be the case.
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My grandson, Abe, picked up “Bizard: The Bear Wizard” when he wanted something to read at my house. Actually, I had picked up a copy at ALA, the American Library Association conference, just the day before. He was entranced and literally didn’t put the book down until he had read the whole thing. Through dinner, through dessert, he kept reading. Then he begged to take it home with him. I said he had to help write the review first. Abe knows the rule: he doesn’t get the book until the review is done.
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The group of detectives named the K Team is named after Simon Garfunkel, the dog. As the “K” might indicate, Simon was a K-9 “officer” along with his handler, Corey Douglas. They are still partners, but both have retired from the Paterson police force and now work with the other two members of the K Team solving cold crimes for the Paterson police. In this mystery, they are solving a cold case that has special meaning for them because it involves the killing of two Paterson police officers. One had retired, and both were killed in what the K Team is speculating was a connected case.
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“Bad Day Breaking” is author John Galligan’s latest entry in his popular Bad Axe County series. While the title of the novel is “Bad Day Breaking,” the novel actually covers several really bad days for the local county head of law enforcement, Sheriff Heidi Kick. She is a native of the area, and that means that most everyone knows her troubled background. But now she’s married with children and loves her job as sheriff, even if the county board in charge of the sheriff’s department has saddled her with a deputy sheriff who is, at best, incompetent, and at worst involved in some extremely unsavory business. As the novel opens, that person is manhandling the “prophet,” a person leading what locals are calling a cult. The House of Shalah, as they call themselves, and the man leading them, whom they all call “father,” all live on land they purchased; the prophet and his wife in a motor home, the followers in a storage facility on the property. There is no running water or heat.
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The new novel by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton, “State of Terror,” is a fascinating read in so many ways and in so many directions that it’s difficult to decide exactly where to begin the review. Since the genre of the piece, however, is aptly labelled “mystery,” we can safely assume that we should begin with that description as the first order of business.
The mystery is complex and complicated, certainly not the typical whodunit, wherein a crime, usually a murder, is committed, and the rest of the novel describes the search for the perpetrator. In this case, the first crime is the bomb placed on a crowded bus in London. The resulting explosion kills every passenger. It’s an act of terror, pure and simple — well, actually not pure at all and definitely not simple. As the plot unfolds, two more crowded buses in major European cities explode, killing all the passengers. Except one. And that escapee is an important character in the novel. All of which leads us to an accounting of the main characters.
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Louise Penny, author of “The Madness of Crowds,” is a literary artist. This latest work, a worthy addition to her “Inspector Gamache” series, exhibits all the brilliance that characterizes her every mystery novel. It’s exceedingly thoughtful, potentially controversial, and incredibly reflective of the contemporary issues which most of us find so exasperating, exhausting — even explosive.
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To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from “Tips for Magicians,” a new middle grade book by Celesta Rimington. The title sounded cute—but I realized the book is much more than “cute.” It’s a powerful and touching story of a boy who loses his mother in an unexpected accident, and we see that the grief and the resulting damage to his family seems overwhelming. Harrison’s mother was a beautiful classical singer, and she performed all over the world. His father was her stage manager, and since her death he’s been working a lot. We don’t know if he needs to work or wants to be busy to assuage his grief, but he’s gone a lot. Since her death, Harrison’s father can’t stand to hear music in their home, and Harrison has been grieving not only the loss of his mother, but the loss of the music that both he and his mother loved and shared together.
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June, 2021: Coco is gone. Her gentle beautiful spirit left her battered body yesterday morning. My husband was with her. She had gone over 24 hours without eating, and it was clear that she was in distress. She didn’t wag her tail, she didn’t bark, she could barely make it outside to urinate. Her body trembled and shook, and she didn’t lift her head. And her eyes—her beautiful, soft, sweet brown eyes—were red-rimmed and sorrowful. Jack looked at her Sunday night and said, “it’s time.” I still gave her her diazoxide, the medicine which might have caused some of her distress, to stop her from having a seizure from low blood sugar, and just in case she’d make it through. Here’s the story of Coco’s all-too-short time with us.
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Throughout the history of humankind, The Wall has most often been a symbol of alienation and separation, of hostility and rage, of the stubborn and destructive refusal to recognize the oneness of our race. L.M. Elliot’s latest young adult historical novel, “Walls,” deftly deals with the story of one twentieth century wall whose function, whose purpose, was to ensure that those negative and cruel human characteristics would be clearly demonstrated: the Berlin Wall was erected in August of 1961 for the primary purpose of keeping the virtually imprisoned residents of East Berlin from escaping to freedom in the West — an escape attempted by thousands and achieved at great risk by only a lucky few.
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Like its subject, the hummingbird, “The Hummingbird’s Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings” is a little jewel of a book. Author Sy Montgomery is renowned for her books on animals. As an educator, I have valued her many quality nonfiction books on animals for children and used them in my classroom. This is one of her nonfiction books for adults, although children could certainly benefit from reading it. In fact, an earlier version of this book was a chapter in one of Montgomery’s books on birds.
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