 

Leo the Magnificat

Ann Matthews Martin, Author, Emily Arnold McCully, Illustrator Hyperion Books for Children $15.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-590-48498-5
A charmer like its feline hero, this book is based on the life of an actual cat who wandered into the yard of a Louisville, Ky., church one Sunday and stayed for 12 years. A pro at age-appropriate writing, Martin (the Baby-sitters Club series; Rachel Parker, Kindergarten Show-off) uses brief, snappy sentences in both descriptive prose and dialogue, also lacing her text with deftly positioned parenthetical asides. As she describes his adventures, readers will easily understand why Leo (who ""belonged to nobody, and he belonged to everybody"") earns the affections of virtually the entire congregation as well as local shopkeepers and homeless folk. The narrative draws to a sad but truthful close as the aged, ailing cat is given a shot ""that will help him die peacefully"" and is later buried in the church garden. Like the author, Caldecott Medalist McCully (Mirette on the High Wire) skillfully avoids the sentimental and cutesy. Her polished, softly focused art depicts the congenial fellow in believably endearing poses: sitting in a pew, singing along with the other churchgoers; curled up on his favorite bed, which is the sheep costume from the Christmas pageant. An ailur-ing choice for cat lovers of any age. Ages 5-8. (Oct.)
Reviewed on: 10/02/1996
Release date: 10/01/1996
Genre: Children's
Paperback - 32 pages - 978-0-439-13647-1
Paperback - 978-0-590-94219-5
Prebound-Sewn - 978-0-606-18573-8
Prebound-Sewn - 978-0-613-28550-6
Show other formats
FORMATS
Discover what to read next
TIP SHEET
MORE BOOKS YOU'D LIKE
X
X
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780590484985
www.publishersweekly.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-10
38071
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:HVPCFUQIXWFXRHQ26GJM32FNJDTYNTOC
<urn:uuid:789d51ef-afe8-453b-a9cd-d04ff1c04c8e>
2021-03-03T21:55:24Z
34.199.69.241
text/html
sha1:SKTHE7OK36ENPFGT4EG2FWRJUJ573EWK
<urn:uuid:439cc801-b145-4e98-92c0-71ea30763783>
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780590484985
response
<urn:uuid:8d5d9a4a-f220-46c5-b684-20be46235fb2>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-10
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for February/March 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-150.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/