Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving

A curmudgeonly woman discovers the true meaning of Thanksgiving while caring for a friendly feline in Boatwright’s debut illustrated children’s book.

Estranged from her adult daughter and on barely amicable terms with her employees, Mrs. Potts is a grim workaholic who reacts with fright when she encounters unhoused people sleeping on the street in San Francisco.When she sees a stray tuxedo cat making a racket on a nearby roof, however, her rigid resistance to change wavers, and she takes the animal in. Once indoors, the cat quickly wins her over. Now that she has a companion, Mrs. Potts reflects on her relative solitude and impulsively cooks up a Thanksgiving feast. Meanwhile, her daughter, whom Potts has shunned because of her musician husband, gets back in contact to invite her to New York City.There are no Christmas Carol–style ghosts in this story, but stabs of conscience do materialize in Mrs. Potts’ dreams, in which she finds herself without a place to live and unrecognized by her daughter. Moved for the first time to share things with others, she brings plates to houseless neighbors and then to her employee Clara Thigg, whose sick child, Abby, evokes Charles Dickens’ Tiny Tim. Waldron’s grayscale watercolor illustrations of the story’s people and things feature loose, energetic pen-and-ink lines and enliven the story admirably. The text’s manageable length makes for a quick read-aloud. Crotchety Mrs. Potts is an unusual protagonist in a book for young children, but her presence may encourage adults to think about how kids witness cruelty or apathy regarding human suffering. Potts’ Scrooge-like behavior toward others is updated for a more modern era (“she gave to the poor through United Way”), although Boatwright’s tale remains somewhat didactic. Still, its focus on class disparities, houselessness, and conscience makes it multidimensional.

A rebooted, briskly paced holiday parable that focuses on generosity and community connection.