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Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-57131-676-9
Pages: 80
Publish Date: Dec, 2007
Genre: Young Readers
The Cat
Or, How I Lost Eternity
BY Jutta Richter
Every day an eight-year-old girl’s walk to school takes her past a talking alley cat. Christine stops and feels its warm head beneath her hand, and the cat’s insights invariably give her something to ponder.
One day her teacher asks her why she is always late for school. Frightened, she reveals the secret of the talking cat. Her punishment: she must write two hundred times, “There are no talking cats, and from now on I will arrive at school on time.” But the cat is real, no matter how many lines Christine writes. And she might just as well leave out the no—the headmaster won’t even notice, says the clever cat. That’s what the cat always says—that life is all about being clever. And always looking out for yourself, first and foremost! Christine isn’t so sure, and she is a little scared of the cat, too. There must be more to life than self-interest, surely? Pity, for instance—for the dog in mailman Buck’s kennel or for her classmate Mopsel, ignored and rejected by everybody. The cat is spiteful and pitiless. And that’s what Christine doesn’t want to be.
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:
Beyond the Station Lies the Sea
Two misfits embark on a journey to realize their dreams in this timeless tale
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The Summer of the Pike
The story of three friends, a castle, and the loss of innocence. Anna, Daniel, and Lucas seem to be living a dream. . .
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The Summer of the Pike
The story of three friends, a castle, and the loss of innocence. Anna, Daniel, and Lucas seem to be living a dream. . .
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“In Richter's new book, The Cat - a spare, philosophical story about a girl who befriends a grubby white street cat - Brailovsky's economical and totally untrendy rendering feels just right. . . . Even the edition itself is pretty, hardbound and slender like a book of poems and illustrated with bold drawings in yellow, black and gray that capture the story's stark sentiments. This is one for the bookshelf, a book to be read and saved and rediscovered in adulthood, when it will be remembered as an early lesson in looking for the universe inside every small thing.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer“Richter has an uncanny gift for illuminating the weight of small actions; it’s not too much to read the book as an allegory of good and evil in the postmodern world. Berner’s two-color drawings, the slender trim size and the eye-catching printer-board covers confer, appropriately, a smart downtown look.”
—Publishers Weekly“Untimely in the way of a Grimm fairy tale recast by Fran Kafka, The Cat is quite unlike any other work of fabulist fiction that I have read. Clearly, Jutta Richter is a distinctive writer.”
—Joyce Carol Oates“A household name in her native German.”
—Publishers Weekly“Jutta Richter possesses the enviable gift to capture difficult things, morals, and feelings in pictures that will touch the reader and resonate with him for a long time.”
–The Catholic Children’s and Youth Book Prize (Germany)
