by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 06, 2010

Besides "Good Night, Moon," what other books were written by Margaret Wise Brown? According to Wikipedia, she also wrote "The Little Island" (under a pseudonym), for which she won a Caldecott Medal.  And she wrote one book that I can still remember reading as a child - "The Color Kittens." But this December I found another delightful story that Brown wrote more than 60 years ago. Its title? "A Pussycat's Christmas."

The book was written in 1949, and it's got some gorgeous old-fashioned illustrations by Helen Stone. On the book's title page, she draws a simple Christmas candle and a pine bough, with two Christmas ornaments crisscrossed in the background. But for many pictures, there are  fewer colors, since Stone just uses black strokes to color ink sketches of a cat. But she tenderly uses soft blue for its paw prints in the snow.

"The cold air made her hair stand straight up in the air..." Brown writes. "Could she smell Christmas trees? Of course she could." The text falls into a playful rhythm, like it's teasing the kitten. "And Tangerines? And Christmas Greens...?" And could she hear the crackle and slip of white tissue paper? And red tissue paper?"

"She certainly could."

The illustrations switch to the reds and oranges of Christmas - as the kitten pokes out from a tiny bag of tangerines. But turn the page, and the picture is dark and cool, showing the silhouettes of trees in a dark blue field. "Trees were chopped down / People shivered / And horses made funny noises, Brrrrrr." Brown lists out the sights and the smells of Christmas
(including "the dark smell of winter air before snow), and then adds and unexpected one - "Click." But turn the page, and colorful Christmas lights now appear through the kitten's window.

What I like is it's not really a story as much as it is a poem. It's told from the kitten's perspective, which allows the author to simply list out all the sights and sounds that it's seeing. The words are beautifully typeset, flowing across widely-spaced lines in between the illustrations. As the giddy Christmas moments fly by, the author sometimes rambles into a rhyme - which seems almost like a cheerful accident.

"How did little Pussycat know? Could she hear the snow?"

The kitten plays in the snow - she pounces and she rolls - and she listens to the wind, and smells the frozen scents of the earth. It's mysterious. It's quiet. She's hears a distant jingling. She sees Santa fly by in a sleigh. But since she's just a pussycat, then she goes back inside the house.

And listens as the family continues wrapping presents....

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.