Poet Harjo's first children's book is a high drama tale of a cat with more than nine lives. The narrator, an adolescent Native American girl, has a cat named Woogie. Woogie is all soft fur and electric green eyes, and she confers a bit of good luck on all those who give her a stroking. She is also capable of her share of mischief and accidents and close calls, eight of which the narrator tells in the story, each caught in the direst moment by Lee in expressive, highly polished illustrations that project the burnished colors of late autumn. The incidents are both comical and slightly scary: Woogie falls asleep under the hood of the car by the warm engine and then is rudely awakened, or falls out of a tree and lands on her head rather than her feet, or gets chased by her cousin's dog. But eight lives are now spent and when Woogie goes missing, the girl is badly worried. Woogie does return, minus half an ear, so she must be a good luck cat indeed to have returned at all. Anyone who has loved a cat will find plenty to identify with here, and those who haven't had the pleasure will get a sense of what they are missing in terms of affection and missed heartbeats. (Picture book. 4-6)
