THE CAT'S WHISKERS

As instrumental as Harold's crayon, as clever as Steinberg's constructs, the cat's long wiry whiskers can assume any shape or form he wills, from catching and carrying home fish for the little girl who hooked him, to becoming a skipping rope, a staff of music, a whole flower garden. One day he makes a weather vane and the breeze turns, him toward a big city (also an extension of his whiskers) where a lurking stranger seizes him for the circus. Miserable and missing the little girl, he makes a key and makes his way by day and night (sleep-walking on his whiskers), up and down mountains (the whiskers become skis), across rivers and oceans (now oars), along railroad tracks and through the sky (now wings), until he floats down (now a parachute) to her waiting arms, never to go away again--she swinging on a swing, he keeping up on his whiskers. From one endpaper doodle to the other, The Cat's Whiskers is. . . quite a yarn, with spot-colored drawings that will rope kids in.