This Story Is Not About a Kitten
by Randall de Se`ve ; illus. by Carson Ellis
Primary     Random House Studio/Random    40 pp.     g
10/22     978-0-593-37453-5     $18.99
Library ed.  978-0-593-37454-2    $21.99
e-book ed.  978-0-593-37455-9    $10.99

This heart-tugging story centers on “a kitten, hungry and dirty, / scared and alone, / meowing sadly, / needing a home.” On a walk in the neighborhood with their dog, a child and adult (“the dog’s people”) spot the kitten under a car. The dog barks at the kitten; a woman jogging nearby calms the dog; adult twins carrying boxes to or from a moving truck donate an empty box for the kitten; a man drinking tea on his front porch offers it milk; and everyone carefully coaxes it into the box. The child gains a new pet, and the kitten ends up “now full-bellied and clean, / no longer alone, / purring happily. / Home.” De Se`ve ( Zola’s Elephant ) constructs the story cumulatively; as the tale unfolds, she regularly negates the notion that its beating heart is about one character alone—the kitten or the child or the neighbors. Ultimately, instead, it’s about “stopping / and listening / and…offering / and asking / and working together .” The final pages are immensely rewarding: Ellis ( In the Half Room , rev. 9/20), who paints a diverse and idiosyncratic community of caring and concerned neighbors—strangers no more—gathers everyone together in the kitten’s (and her people’s) home. Dialogue on the concluding spread reads: “I can’t believe you two lived next door this whole time and we never met.” That is precisely what the story is about.

From the September/October 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.