There's a cat up a tree. What could be more familiar? Yet with her astonishing gifts of imagination and language, Anne Isaacs discovers in this seemingly ordinary event a world of cosmic reach and a story reverberating in distinct voices. Creating a rich texture of personalities and possibilities, her story unfolds one poem at a time, ultimately sweeping the reader into a pageant of feline concern. Insightful, playful, versatile, the poems here freshly conceive the read-aloud experience. Effortlessly changing mood and voice, evoking everyday wishes and secret longings, they cast a rich storytelling spell from which no one - young or old, cat-over or not - will emerge unmoved. Stephen Mackey's lush, colour-drenched paintings, tinged with humour, wit, and romance, achieve a charmed balance between the familiar and the fanciful. Beautifully partnering the text, they present a pliant, responsive world over which the remarkable verses may preside.
