Morpurgo, Michael. Katerina the Cat: and Other Tales from the Farm. London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2024.
The very best stories live in the mind like memories of real events. All Morpurgo’s novels are like that. They linger in the mind so vividly that one has to later think, “Did that happen or was it a story?” Of course, it helps that Morpurgo’s style of writing sounds like someone talking aloud, recounting real events from the past.
Katerina the Cat includes three stories of children sent for a week-long visit to the English countryside. In the first, a little boy spots a boat in distress on the sea and so initiates a rescue. In the second, a little girl finds a long-lost treasure. And in the third, a young refugee from Ukraine befriends a cat and at last starts to feel a sense of home in her new country.
Widely-spaced lines of print, cheerful black-and-white illustrations by Guy Parker-Rees, and a wonderfully flowing style of writing all combine to make an ideal novel for readers seven to ten years old and an ideal novel as a read-aloud for listeners six to nine years old.
P.S.: Readers – and listeners – are never too young to start listening for a theme in a story. The book has a message that will be obvious to adults: sometimes, in life, you feel that you don’t belong; then something happens and you feel seen, accepted, and validated. That theme can lead to important discussions in a classroom and powerful pieces of writing from children. And showing students that books are more than entertainment and can also heal our hearts is a vital message to impart.
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