A cat may smile at a king

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	• Whittington Alan Armstrong Yearling, 2006 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A cat may smile at a king

"Whittington" exemplifies everything I love about the Newbery Awards. Every year the winners of the Newbery are announced during the American Library Association Mid-Winter Meeting. Sometimes the Award winner is undeserving. Sometimes the Honor Winners are exemplary. And sometimes there is one book that is so completely random and out of the blue that it baffles everyone who hears its name. This year, "Whittington" was that book (though "Show Way" probably got a few gasps for the category in which it won). It sort of came out of left field and while a perfectly nice book and a good tale of one boy's battle with dyslexia, I'm disinclined to say it was one of the best books of the year. A perfectly harmless barnyard tale. Just don't get overly excited about it.

All right my children, who here amongst you can tell me the tale of Dick Whittington? Anyone? Anybody? Well that's not surprising. Ole Dick just doesn't get the attention he once did. Even Fairy Tale Theater never got around to filming the Whittington fable. In this book, however, Dick is introduced to a whole new generation of children via the voice and stylings of a singular cat. On a rural farm, a worse-for-the-wear tom makes the acquaintance of a barnyard full of animals. A good ratter as ever there was, the cat has named himself Whittington. When questioned about his name he explains that he is a direct descendant of Dick Whittington's cat, and has given himself a moniker appropriately. Now on this farm are two children, Abby and Ben. Abby does well enough in school but Ben struggles with words and numbers. It is clear that he has a reading impediment and a temper to boot. As Ben, Abby, and the barn's inhabitants sit and listen to Whittington slowly tell the tale of his ancestor's master, Ben draws courage and resolve from the story and decides that if Dick could overcome countless hardships to win in the end, so too can he.

The book draws some nice parallels between Dick and his cat, and Ben and Whittington. Where Dick was led to fame and fortune through the advice of his pet, Ben is led towards learning how to read through Whittington's encouragement and tales. Along the way Armstrong chooses to sprinkle the book with small stories about the other animals' adventures on the farm. The grandfather of the children, Bernie, has a kind heart and anyone with a sick or injured animal will place that creature in Bernie's care. As a result, the farm is a mishmash of animals caring for one another's young and interacting (once Whittington brings the rats in line) in relative harmony. Armstrong has made a kind of E.B. White decision to allow the children to understand the speech of the animals around them. It seems fairly clear that the adults cannot talk to the barn critters, but the children listen to them for advice or stories constantly. It makes the book an alternative selection if you've a child who's a fan of "Charlotte's Web" and wants something similar.

I don't think I'm the only one who gets Alan Armstrong mixed up with Alan Ahlberg. Both write for the same age group and the illustrations in Whittington that are done by S.D. Schindler bear more than a passing resemblance to Ahlberg's dark side of felines, "The Improbable Cat". If you've a kid who loves them kitties and would like lots of books about them, definitely be a little twisted and recommend both books together. Now the illustrations in this book are quite nice. They're little pen-and-ink affairs with Schindler drawing some truly excellent cats. He never quite gets their eyes right but when it comes to kitties stretching, showing their tummies, or stalking off, no one captures the essence of the feline better. He also stays true to the text. When the book says that Bernie looked like Abraham Lincoln a little, the face of Bernie that Schindler chose to include does have a kind of craggy Old Abe quality to it.

The story slows down sometimes when getting into the nitty-gritty details of Dick's life in trading, but kids who are dedicated enough will skim over these if they're bored, or real them through thoroughly if they're not. I appreciated the Endnote that Armstrong chose to place in the back of the book. In that section Armstrong places Dick Whittington within a historical context and explains exactly which elements were added to the fable later and which ones were not. He even cites his resources for stories of Whittington, info on the lives of rats, fables, medieval plants, barnyard animals, medieval children, Marco Polo, sugar, and dyslexia. I'm a big fan of citing sources (done to brilliance in 2004's, "Al Capone Does My Shirts" by Gennifer Choldenko) and Armstrong made me very happy with this choice.

So it's a sweet little tale. And, I might add, appropriate for younger children who have to read a Newbery Award or Honor winner published in the last few years. But it's not extraordinary and doesn't break any new ground in particular. It's just a pleasant tale with some nice elements and a cheerful story. Sweet but not the kind of thing that will stick with children for very long.

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Whittington

Whittington, a Newbery Honor book, is the story of a cat who comes to live in a barnyard of down-and-out animals given a home by Bernie who with his wife cares for Abby and Ben, his orphaned grandchildren. The cat Whittington is the namesake of Dick Whittington, a London merchant and advocate for the poor during the mid 1300's. As Whittington tells the barnyard menagerie of his ancestor who was the companion of Dick Whittington we also find that Ben is struggling from the embarrassment and problems of dyslexia. Ben's struggles are interwoven with Whittington's storytelling. While this is a good story which imparts history and science through the words of the animals, the transition from real time to storytelling does not always flow well. The accounts of the merchant trade slows the story down at times and seems rather textbook-like. Until the very end, the characters lack the three-dimensionality that allows the reader to empathize with them. An enjoyable read nontheless.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3

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recommendations

2006 ALSC Notable Children's Books - Middle Readers
"Who can take a rainbow, wrap it in a sigh..."
Sunshine State Readers 2007-2008 grade 3-5
Excellent cat books I've read.

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