Superficially attractive but ultimately misses the mark.
This quiet retelling of a popular legend will have limited appeal.
The plot is straightforward, and the cat narrator pleasant if not especially engaging. The qualities of compassion and generosity that are gently demonstrated and the theme of virtue rewarded are undeniably laudable. Unfortunately, readers and listeners will likely feel distanced not just by the time and place of the story (Japan several hundred years ago) but by the formal language, lengthy text and limited, low-key action. A poor monk adopts a stray cat. The monk also cares for the physical and spiritual needs of the people in the surrounding area to the best of his abilities and (very) limited resources. The cat’s habit of raising one paw in a beckoning motion eventually brings good fortune when a rich samurai who happens to be passing is saved from a falling tree during a fierce storm. Like the text, the pictures fail to generate much interest. Jaeggi’s lovely watercolors reflect the serene tone and evoke the exotic setting, and her use of panels echoes traditional Japanese artwork. Depictions of the cat in its characteristic pose seem awkward, but other pictures show flashes of sly feline charm and add some humor and movement. Overall, however, the illustrations have a static feel that weighs down the already slow story. Koko Nishizuka and Rosanne Litzinger's The Beckoning Cat (2009) tells the same story but with greater success.
Superficially attractive but ultimately misses the mark. (author’s note) (Picture book/folktale. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56145-589-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Charming.
An assortment of unusual characters form friendships and help each other become their best selves.
Mr. and Mrs. Tupper, who live at Number 3 Ramshorn Drive, are antiquarians. Their daughter, Jillian, loves and cares for a plant named Ivy, who has “three speckles on each leaf and three letters in her name.” Toasty, the grumpy goldfish, lives in an octagonal tank and wishes he were Jillian’s favorite; when Arthur the spider arrives inside an antique desk, he brings wisdom and insight. Ollie the violet plant, Louise the bee, and Sunny the canary each arrive with their own quirks and problems to solve. Each character has a distinct personality and perspective; sometimes they clash, but more often they learn to empathize, see each other’s points of view, and work to help one another. They also help the Tupper family with bills and a burglar. The Fan brothers’ soft-edged, old-fashioned, black-and-white illustrations depict Toasty and Arthur with tiny hats; Ivy and Ollie have facial expressions on their plant pots. The Tuppers have paper-white skin and dark hair. The story comes together like a recipe: Simple ingredients combine, transform, and rise into something wonderful. In its matter-of-fact wisdom, rich vocabulary (often defined within the text), hint of magic, and empathetic nonhuman characters who solve problems in creative ways, this delightful work is reminiscent of Ferris by Kate DiCamillo, Our Friend Hedgehog by Lauren Castillo, and Ivy Lost and Found by Cynthia Lord and Stephanie Graegin.
Charming. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781665942485
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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