Like the Royal Hotel where Tom finds refuge and rises to eminence, this has a certain musty sweetness—it's cheering to find that the members of The Cat Club (founded 1944), "forever friends," are forever true to character. How Tom joins their charmed circle—after being alerted to the duties and demeanor proper to a Hotel Cat by his Lady, long-time resident Mrs. Wilkins—makes a tale in which small excitements and small satisfactions loom large: Tom's rescue of Edward, "The Runaway Guest" with the nose of a poet, and his grateful reception by Edward's alert brother Checkers and friendly little sister Jenny; the arrival of tramp cats Sinbad and the Duke ("Do you come in peace?" "We spit no spit") and upstairs, of cats-with-their-masters, victims of broken boilers in the Winter of the Big Freeze. It's Jenny and her brothers who suggest a Club meeting/Stardust Ball in the old grand ballroom of the Royal, and Tom who, with an okay from the President and an invitation composed by Checkers, makes the necessary arrangements. It will be "a night to remember"—especially for Tom who is unanimously elected an honorary member. Quite up to scratch—no one could reasonably find "fault with the services of the Hotel Cat.
Pub Date: Nov. 26, 1969
ISBN: 1590171594
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1969
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
To all who have followed the adventures in C.S. Lewis' marvelous land of Narnia, this is a treat as it goes back to "grandfather's day" and tells how first contacts with Narnia were made. In London there was Digory, a boy who lived with a wicked uncle, and Polly, the friend with whom he goes exploring. At first their adventures bring near disaster for mad Uncle Andrew uses magic powers inherited from his grandmother to send Polly off to the Woods Between the Worlds. There Digory follows her and the two children meet Jadis, a which who accompanies them back to reality. In turn Jadis brings with her a peck of trouble for everyone concerned—including Uncle Andrew—until a chance fall into a pit transfers them all to Narnia, the singing land of Aslan the Lion, whose intelligence and love vanquishes all evil. Couched in Lewis' silvered prose, this is rich reading.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1955
ISBN: 0064409430
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Plain but pleasingly cadenced, concrete as the list of commodities that makes up much of the text, yet radiating a sense of life's cyclic rhythms, this tells of an early New England farmer going off to Portsmouth market. He sells products the family has raised and grown, sells products they have made from what they raised and grew, then sells the containers (apple barrel, potato bag) the goods were in, and finally sells his ox cart, harness, and ox, before buying some humble household tools and walking home (with "coins still in his pocket") to start again. . . "stitching a new harness for the young ox in the barn." Without Cooney's illustrations—comely and decorous scenes in the manner of early American folk painting—this might seem almost too plain. But she makes a satisfying, full (and eye-filling) experience of the everyday round, as she follows the farmer and his family through the peaceful countryside and the changing seasons—reflecting their unselfconscious accord with nature in her own seamless accord with the text.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1979
ISBN: 978-0-670-53328-2
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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