A largely amusing, if occasionally dark, series starter for cat lovers.
A feline star is born into a social media dynasty in Pattison’s kids’ chapter book.
Cats, using amazing translation technology, have taken control of KittyTube and can now share and monetize their own video content. In an homage to the golden age of Hollywood studios, Kittywood is run by five major kennels, which engineer lucrative sponsorship deals with cat-food brands. Angel, a white Persian kitten, must quickly learn to adapt to the ups and downs of internet stardom. The road to a viral breakout, however, isn’t an easy one. As the daughter of two KittyTube stars, she must master the tricky skills of posing, acting, and grooming, all while forging political alliances with rival felines—especially her nemesis, Jazz, a Siamese cat who’s consistently ranked Top Kitten week after week. In a Black Mirror–meets–LOLCats plot twist, Angel has to become Top Kitten in order to secure funds to help her estranged father, who’s stranded in France after his starring role in a film titled Puss and Boots fell through. Her mother, MamaGrace, is unable to work after a car accident left her partially blind and scarred—a possible nod to Cats’ Grizabella. Over the course of the book, cameras loom ominously over the kittens’ lives. Some video sequences can be downright sad, as when Angel looks into the camera and meows: “It was my most woebegone meow. It was a cry for my mama. It was a cry for someone to come and pick me up and pet me.” Mostly, however, Pattison’s characters delight, as when Angel compliments fellow kitten PittyPat, who adores water: “There’s an art to looking charming when your fur is all wet.” Ultimately, the underlying message is that one’s self-worth should never get tangled up in the number of views one gets. Standard’s bubbly, black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations appear throughout, lending even more charm to an already whimsical story. Standard’s enthusiasm for animals is clear; one only wishes there were more of her drawings here.
A largely amusing, if occasionally dark, series starter for cat lovers.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62944-142-9
Page Count: 122
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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