Cats Sleep Anywhere

The late Eleanor Farjeon (1882-1965) wrote many favorite stories, plays and poems for children during her lifetime. She was the recipient of such distinguished honors as the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Regina Medal.

Anne Mortimer's beautiful cat paintings have appeared in A Pussycat's Christmas, by Margaret Wise Brown. They also grace her own line of greeting cards and stationery. Ms. Mortimer lives in Somerset, England.

Kindergarten-Grade 3-A fetching cast of felines sleeps in the assorted locations named in Farjeon's simple poem. "Fitted in a cardboard box/In the cupboard/With your frocks-/Anywhere!/They don't care!" Each page features a cat or kitten curled or sprawled in the named location: in the drawer or shoe or atop the piano or window ledge. Mortimer's realistic watercolors capture homey details and humorous nuances, as they did in her illustrations for Margaret Wise Brown's Pussycat's Christmas (HarperCollins, 1994). The artist's attractive paging employs an echoing scheme that offers a small visual guessing game. Each left-hand view is a more formal framed scene facing a smaller more open piece on the white page. The smaller segment borrows an object or echoes a pattern from the first. Viewers see a bit of a sneaker next to the framed chest where the cat is draped in an open drawer; the sneaker against a white backdrop holds the companion cat. The easy rhythm of the spare text and the attractive paintings will appeal to cat lovers of all ages, and the pleasant small book might also invite further reading of Eleanor Farjeon.
Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.