Cosimo Cat

by Kenneth Oppel, Regolo Ricci (Illustrator)

Cosimo, a charcoal cat, leads Rowan on a wild cat chase through the city to a surprise ending.

Google Books

22 pages, Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

I was born in 1967 in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia but spent the bulk of my childhood in Victoria, B.C. and on the opposite coast, in Halifax, Nova Scotia...At around twelve I decided I wanted to be a writer (this came after deciding I wanted to be a scientist, and then an architect). I started out writing sci-fi epics (my Star Wars phase) then went on to swords and sorcery tales (my Dungeons and Dragons phase) and then, during the summer holiday when I was fourteen, started on a humorous story about a boy addicted to video games (written, of course, during my video game phase). It turned out to be quite a long story, really a short novel, and I rewrote it the next summer. We had a family friend who knew Roald Dahl - one of my favourite authors - and this friend offered to show Dahl my story. I was paralysed with excitement. I never heard back from Roald Dahl directly, but he read my story, and liked it enough to pass on to his own literary agent. I got a letter from them, saying they wanted to take me on, and try to sell my story. And they did.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surreal? Few pages, but they're wonderfully illustrated. A Picture-Book, but not likely to appeal to those under seven. No context, backstory, or explanation... we're thrown right into a young boy who has freedom of the city, a cat-detector, and plenty of energy. And an old carriage house with hundreds of cats... which is just as promptly dropped from the story.... maybe that and the cat-detector are in the boy's imagination... maybe almost all of it is... you tell me!

Kenneth Oppel has an imagination... witness this, one of his earliest, and Inkling. one of his most recent. I will continue to read more from him, and will check if this illustrator has done anything else.

[belles_bookishlife]

My nephew found out I’m trying to get my personal library to 1000 books so it’s actually a library. He said “aunty take my books out of the toy box and put them in there so they count!!” So that’s what I’m doing😂