Very Best of Friends - Hardcover

Wild, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0921103778 ISBN 13: 9780921103776

Publisher: Kids Can Press, 1990

Synopsis

A picture book for children

About this title

About the Author

JULIE VIVAS is illustrator of I Went Walking, Let's Go Visiting, the Mem Fox classics Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and Possum Magic, and several other picture book titles. She lives in Australia.

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-3-- A story about relationships, love and loss, survival and recovery. James and Jessie are a farm couple, childless and of indeterminate age. Jessie merely tolerates William, James' beloved cat. On the other hand, William and James spend their days together, "the very best of friends." "Then one Sunday morning James died suddenly." In her grief, Jessie quite literally shuts William out, spurning all his efforts to help. He grows "mean and lean, and he hated everything and everyone." (On the accompanying double-page spread he bares teeth and claws, and hisses, scruffy and ferocious.) William finally gets Jessie's attention when he scratches her. She opens the door, apologizes, and starts to let William take James' place (as she takes James' place for him). William concludes that Jessie is "beginning to love him a lot." Vivas doesn ' t prettify the plain people or the uncuddly animals, but her romantic palette washes the horses in violet and the trees in tender jade, underscoring the sentimental side of this down-home, down-under tale. Despite the happy ending, this is not a "cute cat" story, and some readers may find the undisguised depiction of grief and the rejection of the cat (a child-surrogate) disturbing. --Patricia Dooley, Univ . of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kids Can Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0921103778
• ISBN 13: 9780921103776
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Vivas Julie