87. One Moon, Two Cats by Laura Godwin

One Moon, Two Cats by Laura Godwin. Illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. (US) - (Canada) - (Kindle)

Pages: 32
Ages: 2+
Finished: Mar. 20, 2012
First Published: Aug. 30, 2011
Publisher: Atheneum
Genre: children, picture book
Rating: 4/5


First sentence: "One moon."

Publisher's Summary: "Across a great distance, but under the light of the same moon, a city cat and a country cat pounce and play, crouch and leap in a rollicking nighttime adventure. When morning comes, they are both back in their respective homes and finally, turn in to sleep.."

Acquired: Received a review copy from Simon & Schuster Canada.

Reason for Reading:   I received this book unsolicited and don't have young children any more but have read this Canadian author before and personally enjoy a good picture book.

This is a bedtime story, showing the nighttime frolics of two cats while their respective child owners sleep.  It is also a variant on the city vs country lifestyles as one lives in the city and one in the country.  The paintings by Tanaka are beautiful, realistic and yet full of a dreamtime quality.  The cat's eyes have a sleepy, sly look to them.  Important to the story are the endpages which I didn't fully realize until the middle of the book.  The front endpages show us the setting of the story (though we don't realize it yet) in the moonlight and the back endpages show us the same scene as sun is dawning.  As we watch each cat frolic and play it is the centre page which brings it all together as the endpage scene is repeated and we see one cat on top of the bridge and the other under the bridge.  They live close to each other!  One in the town, the other in the nearby farm country.  A great delight as one slowly awakens to this realization.  Godwin's text is sparse and written for the very young.  Word choices are short and descriptive.  Sentences follow none/verb and noun/verb/object structure mostly.  What this amounts to is a deceptively simply, yet delightful picture book that will capture the heart of any cat lover.