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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
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Summary
Summary
With his extraordinary ear for the heart's language, the author/artist captures the feeling of one cat yearning to find another -- and succeeding. The story is as simple as that. As grand as that. And the pictures, whose changing colors mark emotion as clearly as any words, move the action along at a rhythmic, almost musical clip.
Author Notes
Chris Raschka was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on March 6, 1959. He received a B.A. from St. Olaf College in 1981. Before becoming a full-time author, he was an art teacher in St. Croix, Virgin Islands and a freelance artist, cartoonist, and editorial illustrator. He is an author and illustrator of children's books including Yo! Yes?, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, and Mysterious Thelonious. Hello, Goodbye Window won the Caldecott Medal in 2006 and A Ball for Daisy won the Caldecott Medal in 2012.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3-In Yo! Yes? (Orchard, 1993), Raschka told a hip story of blossoming friendship in spare and sweet prose. Like pushes the visual and literary elements further; it is a love story, a tale of a lonely cat who notices the world in twos and yearns to be part of it...until a like-minded feline comes on the scene. Text and art blend effortlessly in their seeming simplicity. With a few bold strokes of oil pastels and watercolor, Raschka conveys here the sadness, there the rapture in the cat's face and posture. Likewise, he works his words for maximum affect. Children will delight in the sounds at the end, where he plays with the multiple meanings of the word "like" and shows the pair romping through "rows and rows of roses." Even the font can't sit still by this point. A fresh choice for a Valentine's storytime, perfect for pairing with Noah variants, and just right for snuggled sharing.-Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This pert and pithy picture book has strong visual echoes of Raschka's Yo! Yes? down to the bright yellow dust jacket. But if the thematic territory of loneliness and friendship is familiar, the development and spirit here are fresh. As a solo white cat watches the animal world pair off ("Two by two,/ he and she,/ curly and/ straight, fancy/ and plain/ ...go"), he droops in dejection, eyes closed, head and ears down, with only the departing animals' tails in his view ("Unlike the rest. Unlucky, alone"). But then he sets off to see what the wide world has to offer. Raschka's characteristically lean text is a marvel of lyrical vigor, charting the feline's travels with a playful and poetic assortment of rhymes, homonyms, alliteration and imageryfrom "rows and rows of roses" to "flowers and fliers" in a spread with butterflies whose wings seem to be composed of the petals of the blossoms they hover above. Raschka amplifies the hero's moods in his use of background color: dull brown and stark white when the cat is feeling forlorn, contrasted with the more resonant yellows, blues, oranges and greens of his journey and a climactic heartwarming blast of pink when he finally finds a soulmate. Raschka's newest offering is an eminently satisfying tale of love (or in this case, like) sought and found. Ages 2-5. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
A minimalist text coupled with splashy, expressively lined artwork conveys the lonely life of a cat who at last finds a mate with whom to romp through the roses. As usual, Raschka's story bounces along to its own distinct rhythm, and its union of two different colors of feline--white and brown--hearkens back to the friendship embarked upon by the two boys in [cf2]Yo! Yes?[cf1]. From HORN BOOK Fall 1999, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A vibrant and delightful picture book about a little white cat who sees all sorts of other animals in pairs, who are obviously happy to be so paired off. But the cat is alone and ``unlike the rest. Unlucky, alone.'' He finds himself in a rose garden where there are roses, the sea, flowers, birds and bees (``fliers''), trees, the sky, grass, and all manner of nature's beauty. He sees another cat and feels so happy as they run through the roses together (``Not alone now''). This is an upbeat book about the happiness a soul mate can bring'a little more emotional than Yo? Yes! but just as exuberant. The divine illustrations reflect the pleasure and joy of companionship, no matter where it's found. (Picture book. 4-8)
Booklist Review
Ages 3^-5. Combining some of the images and concepts of earlier books, this economical exploration of friendship features Raschka at his most amenable. The book starts with the simple, curving figure of a white cat at the top of the bright yellow cover, moving in the opposite direction from a brown cat down at the bottom. The words, "like likes like," are stacked between them, a harbinger of things to come. In contrast to this spare opening, the bestiary on both the title page and the verso is crowded with the competing forms of richly colored, dynamically patterned, and softly textured animals. The allusion to Noah's ark continues with the first line, "Two by two." Yet in these early oil-pastel-and-watercolor scenes, the white cat is shown further and further away from the pack until his back is toward the reader, his ears pointed downward, and the colorful palette replaced by empty white space--he is "unlucky, alone." Using swirls of colors to depict clouds, grass, and stones (not always successfully) in the six well-balanced spreads that follow, the plucky feline continues alone until he meets up with the brown cat. The spare yet expressive brush strokes that evoke the patterns of the natural world disappear in favor of an emphasis on the two bold felines, who quickly cross borders to embrace. This deceptively simple picture book can be read as a meditation on race, though it certainly doesn't have to be. What it is, at its essence, is a joyful, comforting celebration of the beginning of friendship. --Julie Cosaro
