Review: The Cat Who Walked Across France
While this story is fiction, there have been many reports over the years of animals traveling great distances back to their original homes. In addition to the picaresque aspect of this cat?s tale, the story explores the sometimes confounding, mysterious impulse of animals (and by extension, humans) to return to the place of their birth or childhood. Young children will understand this craving since their home is the center of the universe.
What Parents Should Know
While this story is fiction, there have been many reports
over the years of animals traveling great distances back to
their original homes. In addition to the picaresque aspect of
this cat?s tale, the story explores the sometimes confounding,
mysterious impulse of animals (and by extension, humans) to
return to the place of their birth or childhood. Young children
will understand this craving since their home is the center of
the universe.
Common Sense Media Review
The story's emotional range is wide. From the cat's
contentment in its home by the sea with the old woman, to his
loss of both woman and home, and then to his sometimes
harrowing experiences as he travels across France and finally
the intense pleasure of finding his home welcoming once again
(yes, Thomas Wolfe, some can go home again), the reader is by
the cat's side for it all. Reading stories is for children,
like adults, a way to experience life and feelings that might
not be available to us otherwise. This story has much to offer
in that regard.
With full-color paintings in beautifully bold Mediterranean hues, the contrast between the huge expanse of the country with the smallness of the cat emphasizes the power of a strong spirit in search of its proper place. For the determined cat there is a tremendous difference between home and not home, one worth risking everything for. After his long trip, readers will share his relief and satisfaction to be home again.
From the book:
?For many years the cat had lived in the stone house by
the edge of the sea.
He chased the wind that scuttled through the garden.
He watched the birds flitter from tree to tree.
At dusk he curled up in the bend of the old woman's
arm....
Then one day the old woman died.
Her belongings, along with the cat, were shipped north,
to the house where she was born....
...he would remember the tangy smell of lemons ripening
under a window
at the stone house by the edge of the sea. And he would
move on.
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