The Cat

Author's Bio:

Jutta Richter is among the most celebrated of German children's authors. She has written more than twenty books, for which she has won several awards, including the German Youth Literature Award, the Herman Hesse Prize for her body of work, and the Pied Piper's Prize of Hamelyn. The Summer of the Pike, the first of her books to be translated into English, was published by Milkweed in 2006. She lives in a castle in Munsterland, Germany, and also in Lucca, Tuscany.

Quotes:

“In Richter's new book, The Cat - a spare, philosophical story about a girl who befriends a grubby white street cat - Brailovsky's economical and totally untrendy rendering feels just right. . . . Even the edition itself is pretty, hardbound and slender like a book of poems and illustrated with bold drawings in yellow, black and gray that capture the story's stark sentiments. This is one for the bookshelf, a book to be read and saved and rediscovered in adulthood, when it will be remembered as an early lesson in looking for the universe inside every small thing.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“Richter has an uncanny gift for illuminating the weight of small actions; it’s not too much to read the book as an allegory of good and evil in the postmodern world. Berner’s two-color drawings, the slender trim size and the eye-catching printer-board covers confer, appropriately, a smart downtown look.” —Publishers Weekly

“Untimely in the way of a Grimm fairy tale recast by Fran Kafka, The Cat is quite unlike any other work of fabulist fiction that I have read. Clearly, Jutta Richter is a distinctive writer.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“A household name in her native German.”—Publishers Weekly

“Jutta Richter possesses the enviable gift to capture difficult things, morals, and feelings in pictures that will touch the reader and resonate with him for a long time.” –The Catholic Children’s and Youth Book Prize (Germany)