A Traveling Cat - Hardcover

Lyon's (A Sign) gracefully folksy prose is matched with Johnson's (The Cow Who Wouldn't Come Down) nostalgic depictions to somber effect in this touching tale of a stray cat who moves in and out of a small-town family's life. "Boulevard was a traveling cat. We named her after the road," begins the narrator, the girl who finds the cat at the drive-in movie. The mostly double-page pencil drawings are shaded to look dusty and a little faded, reinforcing the down-home, period setting. Johnson provides some deeply brooding illustrations. For example, when spring floods prompt the local animals, including Boulevard, to flee to "high ground somewhere in the hills," a drawing of a spindly bridge over swollen water reveals the grief-stricken narrator standing alone near a cluster of worried neighbors: "Only [the Macs' dog] came back." The girl has one of Boulevard's kittens to console her, and the work ends on a poignant, bravely upbeat tone: Mom ventures that Boulevard might have found another family, and "If she did, I'd like to tell them, 'Don't expect to keep her. She's a traveling cat.'" The projection of sympathy may console readers whose own pets have also turned out to be the traveling type. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

PreSchool-Grade 2-Not the typical cat story in which a stray appears, adopts a family, and contentment follows, this realistic vignette has moments of both tenderness and sadness. "Boulevard was a traveling cat. We named her after the road." When the feline follows Ruth from the concession stand at the drive-in movie, the family welcomes her into their home. In the fall, she has a litter of five kittens and stays through the winter. Come spring and flood time she retreats, like the other animals, and when she doesn't return they know she has taken to the road again. The colored-pencil illustrations are lifelike but not greeting-card cute. Their dappled texture and the earthiness of the palette create the right feeling for this unsentimental story. The time period is not identified, but visual clues of automobiles and clothing styles as well as the drive-in movie setting indicate the 1950s. The story reads like a personal remembrance, typical of Lyon. The message is subtle and the telling of a shared time remembered fondly is poignant.
Julie Cummins, New York Public Library
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.