Cat Dreams

( 2 )

Want to read this on your NOOK? Request as NOOK Book from the publisher

Thank you for requesting this book as a NOOK book from the publisher.

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Meet the Author

ADVERTISING

Overview

The award-winning CATWINGS team, Ursula Le Guin and S. D. Schindler create their first magical picture book!

Bestselling author Ursula K. Le Guin and acclaimed illustrator S. D. Schindler are together again with a sleepytime picture book for the youngest of cat-nappers. Climb into a cat's dreamland with irresistible paintings and a lyrical purring text.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Short, nearly telegraphic verse by Le Guin (who collaborated with Schindler on the Catwings series) conjures up the inner life of a tortoiseshell cat, whose time, when not hunting or planning naps, is devoted to dreaming: “Oh, how nice! It's raining mice!” Schindler offers a series of crisp-edged, meticulous paintings that portray the cat's most extravagant fantasies in penetrating yet serene detail. “Oh, happy day! All the dogs have run away!” says the dreaming cat, towing a kind of wooden Trojan Cat whose roaring face makes the neighborhood canines flee. A fountain of cream with an Italianate cat sculpture in the center attracts a dozen lapping cats and a catnip tree beguiles (“I'm going to stop/ and have a rest/ in a blue jay's nest”), while the text curves up and down on the pages, mimicking both the activity of the cat's imagination and its leaps, bounds and other movements. Le Guin, supplying only the suggestions of cat dreams, leaves the filling out of the magic visions to Schindler, whose splendid spreads compel close inspection. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

From The Critics

In Ursula Le Guin's newest picture book, young readers will plunge into the exciting world of a cat. This cat loves to run, leap, sleep, and catch mice. This cat also enjoys hanging out with like-minded friends, sipping cream, and munching kibbles together. But when cat decides to climb a tree and listen to a bird's song, it proves to be a disastrous move. As cat falls down, she realizes the tree is not the place to be! Soon cat leaps on her mistress's lap and rests, content to be patted and loved. The story concludes, "I'm singing my song inside my fur. Purr. Purr. Purr. Purr." Young readers will enjoy S.C. Schindler's wonderful paintings, which draw you into a cat's view of the world. Once again, Ursula Le Guin has written a lyrical and poetic text that will enchant young audiences. Cat Dreams is highly recommended for cat-lovers of all ages and their feline friends. Reviewer: Suzanna E. Henshon, Ph.D.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780545042161
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date: 9/1/2009
Pages: 32
Sales rank: 387,704
Age range: 3 - 5 Years
Product dimensions: 10.20 (w) x 8.10 (h) x 0.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin's first story was rejected by Amazing Stories -- back when she was 11 years old. Since then, Le Guin has become one of science fiction's most critically acclaimed authors, as well as a versatile writer of poetry, children's books, essays, and nonfiction.

Biography

Speculative fiction, magic realism, "slipstream" fiction -- all these terms could apply to the works of Ursula K. Le Guin. Unfortunately, none was in common use when she started writing in the early 1960s. As a young writer, Le Guin weathered seven years of rejections from editors who praised her novels' elegant prose but were puzzled by their content. At a time when the only literary fiction was realistic fiction, as Le Guin later told an interviewer for The Register-Guard in Portland, Oregon, "There just wasn't a pigeonhole for what I write."

At long last, two of her stories were accepted for publication, one at a literary journal and one at a science-fiction magazine. The literary journal paid her in copies of the journal; the science-fiction magazine paid $30. She told The Register-Guard, "I thought: 'Oooohhh! They'll call what I write science fiction, will they? And they'll pay me for it? Well, here we go!' "

Le Guin continued to write and publish stories, but her breakthrough success came with the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969. The novel, which tells of a human ambassador's encounters with the gender-changing inhabitants of a distant planet, was unusual for science fiction in that it owed more to anthropology and sociology than to the hard sciences of physics or biology. The book was lauded for its intellectual and psychological depth, as well as for its fascinating premise. "What got to me was the quality of the story-telling," wrote Frank Herbert, the author of Dune. "She's taken the mythology, psychology -- the entire creative surround -- and woven it into a jewel of a story."

Since then, Le Guin has published many novels, several volumes of short stories, and numerous poems, essays, translations, and children's books. She's won an arm's-length list of awards, including both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, and a National Book Award for The Farthest Shore. Over the years, she has created and sustained two fictional universes, populating each with dozens of characters and stories. The first universe, Ekumen, more or less fits into the science-fiction mode, with its aliens and interplanetary travel; the second, Earthsea, is a fantasy world, complete with wizards and dragons. As Margaret Atwood wrote in The New York Review of Books, "Either one would have been sufficient to establish Le Guin's reputation as a mistress of its genre; both together make one suspect that the writer has the benefit of arcane drugs or creative double-jointedness or ambidexterity."

More impressive still is the way Le Guin's books have garnered such tremendous crossover appeal. Unlike many writers of science fiction, she is regularly reviewed in mainstream publications, where her work has been praised by the likes of John Updike and Harold Bloom. But then, Le Guin has never fit comfortably into a single genre. As she said in a Science Fiction Weekly interview, "I know that I'm always called 'the sci-fi writer.' Everybody wants to stick me into that one box, while I really live in several boxes. It's probably hurt the sales of my realistic books like Searoad, because it tended to get stuck into science fiction, where browsing readers that didn't read science fiction would never see it."

Le Guin has also published a translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, a book that has influenced her life and writing since she was a teenager; she has translated fiction by Angelica Gorodischer and a volume of poems by Gabriela Mistral; and, perhaps most gratifyingly for her fans, she has returned to the imaginary realm of Earthsea. Tehanu, which appeared in 1990, was subtitled "The Last Book of Earthsea," but Le Guin found she had more to tell, and she continued with Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. "I thought after 'Tehanu' the story was finished, but I was wrong," she told Salon interviewer Faith L. Justice. "I've learned never to say 'never.' "

Good To Know

The "K" in Ursula K. Le Guin stands for Le Guin's maiden name, Kroeber. Her father was the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber; her mother, the writer Theodora Kroeber, is best known for the biography Ishi in Two Worlds.

1. Hometown:
  
  Portland, Oregon
1. Date of Birth:
  
  October 21, 1929
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Berkeley, California
1. Education:
  
  B.A., Radcliffe College; M.A., Columbia University, 1952
2. Website:
  
  http://www.ursulakleguin.com

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5

( 2 )

Rating Distribution

( 2 )
( 0 )
( 0 )
( 0 )
( 0 )

If you've bought this product, tell the world how you liked it.

Write a Review

sadieNV

Posted May 16, 2010

A lovely enjoyable book

This is a beautiful book. The illustrations are amazing and the writing is quite lyrical. Every cat I have ever been owned by is in this book in some form. This is a great bedtime book but it is also a beautiful coffee table book for a cat loving friend. I actually purchased it for my mother but my nephews enjoy it also.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted November 5, 2011

No text was provided for this review.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble

Cat Dreams

Pick Up in Store

Overview

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Related Subjects

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

From The Critics

Product Details

Meet the Author

Ursula K. Le Guin

Biography

Good To Know

Rating Distribution

A lovely enjoyable book