YOUNG CAT, OLD CAT

A Caldecott Honor winner charts the full arc of a cat’s life—and its owner’s love—in one of the most visually inventive picture books in recent memory.

Tamaki turns adjectives into an effective narrative engine. Most pages are anchored by a short phrase—“queenly cat,” “dreaming cat,” “ancient cat”—and the accumulation of these brief, precise descriptors traces an entire relationship from hopeful adoption to heartbreak. The protagonist, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, tan-skinned person whom we follow from childhood into young adulthood, ages alongside the feline. The art, created on stretched fabric including thrifted bedsheets, combines acrylic ink with crewel embroidery to lovely effect. Color does heavy lifting throughout: lime green indicating mischief (the naughty cat raiding the holiday table), warm yellows for the slowing days of old age, inky midnight blue for grief. The dream sequences are a particular triumph; the sleeping cat transforms into a lion roaring across a savanna, a tutu-clad ballerina partnered with a mouse, a great wave-riding sea creature—each fantastical form still recognizable because of those expressive embroidered eyes and that distinctive gray-and-white fur. The final spreads, depicting a small figure waving into vast cloudy blue as a star-spangled cat leaps through the cosmos, earn their quiet devastation before Tamaki brings her tale to a joyous conclusion, with the owner deciding to adopt a new pet.

Extraordinary in craft and tender in feeling.