A review by ashleylm
The School for Cats by Esther Averill
3.0
Sweet, but innocuous, and short. It reminded me of the kind of semi-rambling story one might make up for one's kids on the spur of the moment, when stuck on a train with no book, say. I can imagine someone recommending it for a shy child who is bullied at school, say, and I can also imagine it not helping in the slightest. The illustrations are a kind of naive primitive style by the author and have more charm than the tale itself.
So not horrible, but I'm a bit surprised it became so beloved as to spawn several sequels (this is itself a follow-up to the first one, The Cat Club), let alone be reissued years later, alone the tone is very much in keeping with the clean, spare, charming, erudite style espoused by the New York Review Children's Collection curators.
Oh, and I've never seen a stained glass window in a church which opened. Never. So that struck a discordant tone. I can accept schools for cats, but not churches popping over their stained glass windows to let a little breeze in!
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
So not horrible, but I'm a bit surprised it became so beloved as to spawn several sequels (this is itself a follow-up to the first one, The Cat Club), let alone be reissued years later, alone the tone is very much in keeping with the clean, spare, charming, erudite style espoused by the New York Review Children's Collection curators.
Oh, and I've never seen a stained glass window in a church which opened. Never. So that struck a discordant tone. I can accept schools for cats, but not churches popping over their stained glass windows to let a little breeze in!
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).