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Cat Tales

Smoke Cat

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coleccion RATON DE BIBLIOTECA, primera edicion 1997, 80 paginas con ilustraciones de Anne Sharp, tapa blanda, en buen estado

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

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20 people want to read

About the author

Linda Newbery

87 books54 followers
Linda Newbery's latest novel for adults is THE ONE TRUE THING. She has published widely for readers of all ages, and is a Costa Prize category winner with SET IN STONE, a young adult Victorian mystery. She has twice been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, with THE SHELL HOUSE and SISTERLAND.

With friends Adele Geras and Celia Rees, Linda hosts the literary blog WRITERS REVIEW, which features reviews, recommendations, interviews with authors and insights from booksellers.

Linda is an active campaigner on animal and environmental issues and has published a guide to compassionate living: THIS BOOK IS CRUELTY FREE - ANIMALS AND US.

She lives in rural Oxfordshire.

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for KhepiAri.
174 reviews8 followers
May 10, 2019
Simon has moved into a new hundred-years-old house, made of red bricks and ambushed with wild green. While his mother and father are busy settling down, Simon is busy climbing up the apple tree. He spots an elderly neighbour who talks to her flower, named like humans.

But as night comes Simon from his window finds out that his old neighbour is always calling out for Blue. A cat that roams around the fence but never heeds to anyone's call.

It's a sweet book, the language is an example of clarity but is vivacious enough for a child to imagine everything up while it listens to the story or reads it. It can be enacted as well.

Though I am far far away from my childhood, I still love reading books written for children. Smoke Cat is also a story that familiarises kids to the concept of care and love and death and teaches them that happy ending is not always about girl meets boy and they live together. Happy endings are when you help people reunite with their loved ones, happy ending is when you provide a place to to the one who never had a home, happy endings are when you help an aching heart outgrow it's pain.

Spoiler:

The act of planting a plant on dead pet's grave is not new to me. Over the years my mother, sister and me we have buried enough of our pet siblings and put a sapling on them. I loved how little Simon gave his best to find that one plant that would honour Blue. As Hiro Arikawa said, a cat needs proper mourning, or we never get over it. Hazel's mother never got over the fact that she died before Blue and Blue passed away pining for her and was angry in death because he never got his plant. That made my heart split apart. And Stephen Lambert's stringy illustrations added more pain to my already pulverised heart.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Wyktor Paul.
468 reviews3 followers
September 13, 2022
Neat little book about a boy who sees a ghostly neighbour and her ghostly cats.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews