THE NO PLACE CAT

Tess, 12, finds emotional comfort in a stray cat she befriends after running away from her efficient, sensible father and stepmother to live with her slapdash, irresponsible mother. When Tess first meets her “enemies,” her soon-to-be stepmother and stepsiblings, she tells herself that these “are the aliens who have captured my father, and I shall not like them.” And Tess, a poor student who is messy and feels trapped by her tidy stepmother’s multitude of rules, dislikes living with them. But the final straw comes when Annie, Tess’s three-year-old stepsister, destroys an extra-credit social-studies assignment Tess has been diligently working on. Fed up and furious, Tess runs away, hoofing it to her mother’s home, which requires camping overnight at a state park. At the campgrounds, a stray cat unexpectedly adopts her, and follows her all the way to her mother’s small, cramped condo. Tess, who has been feeling lonely and unloved, develops a powerful connection to her feline friend, but her mother hates cats and her dad is allergic. How Tess solves these various difficulties is the meat of the story, but it’s a surprisingly bland dish. Tess’s mother is so indifferent to Tess’s needs that she borders on negligent, the result being that Tess’s rather flavorless self-sacrificing father and well-organized stepmother look good in contrast. This, in turn, causes the narrative to feel lopsided, making Tess’s final decision seem almost preordained. Nonetheless, readers, especially children of divorce, should relate to Tess and find her a sympathetic protagonist. (Fiction. 10-14)