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Summary
Summary
Dissatisfied with her life, Puff the cat leaves home and becomes a rich and glamorous model, but eventually returns having found out that it's better to be who you are.
Author Notes
Humorist Garrison Keillor was born Gary Edward Keillor in Anoka, Minnesota on August 7, 1942. He began using the pen name Garrison at the age of thirteen. He received a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1966 and paid for his tuition by working at the campus radio station.
In 1974, he wrote an essay for the New Yorker about the Grand Ole Opry, which led to his live radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. Stories from Prairie Home were collected and published, but his debut as a novelist was in 1985 with Lake Wobegon Days. His other novels include WLT: A Radio Romance, The Book of Guys, Wobegon Boy, Me by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente, and Good Poems, American Places.
He has also written the children's books Cat, You Better Come Home, The Old Man Who Loved Cheese, and The Sandy Bottom Orchestra. He won a Grammy Award for his recording of Lake Wobegon Days and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1994. Keillor received a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1999. In September 2007, Keillor was awarded the John Steinbeck Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What happens to an uppity cat when she gets a taste of the ``good life''? When Keillor does the spinning, the tale takes a slyly farcical turn, like the best of his Prairie Home Companion radio skits. Bouncy, syncopated verse (adapted from one of Keillor's folksongs) tells of Puff's rise and fall as ``the Number One TV cat-food queen'' at the same time that it wryly mocks the one-sided relationship between haughty feline and supplicating owner. Feeling underappreciated, Puff departs in a huff to seek her fortune, leaving the despondent narrator wailing, ``CAT, YOU BETTER COME HOME.'' Johnson and Fancher, who previously collaborated on Jon Scieszka's The Frog Prince, Continued, play up the details of Puff's transformation. She is all Hollywood feline femme-fatale, stretched out on a divan in a mink boa, or surrounded by her entourage (``A swimming instructor, and a butler named Bruce/ And a ballet coach, and a German masseuse''the swimming teacher is a be-goggled octopus, while the butler is a formally attired bloodhound bearing a bowl of goldfish atop a silver tray). The rich, honey-toned paintings accentuate the humor with slightly skewed perspectives; intermittent blocks of text are decorated with cartoonish sketches. Young readers may miss some of the references in the text and the art, but ailurophiles will rejoice. All ages. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
In a rather sophisticated rhymed story -- a good read-aloud -- based on one of Keillor's witty poems, a disgruntled cat leaves home, makes a killing doing cat-food commercials, and lives in luxury until her fortunes change. She returns home in a sorry state, and the narrator welcomes her joyfully. Johnson and Fancher use sly details and arresting perspectives in their rich paintings. From HORN BOOK 1995, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A characteristically wry morality tale in fur (or, more accurately, furs) from this country's best known storyteller, adapted from a track on his ``Song of the Cat'' recording (1991) and set to highly comical paintings by the illustrators of Jon Scieszka's Frog Prince, Continued (1991). Despite the narrator's rhymed threats and importunities, Puff the cat not only refuses to come inside, she strolls off into the night. Six months later she resurfaces, as Clarice, ``the Number One TV cat-food queen,'' an international celebrity with minks, mansions, and piles of money. After a fall as meteoric as her rise, she reappears at the door, flabby, dissipated, looking like ``something the cat dragged in!'' All is forgiven, as she vows to lay off the white rats in chocolate sauce and other rich food forever. Deep shadows, skewed perspectives, and wickedly funny details give the scenes a sophisticated look perfectly suited to Puff's fixed air of disdain and Keillor's palpitated eloquence. The final scene is a cat lover's dream (or nightmare): a streetful of cats, many apparently pregnant, representing all those who have ever strayed, wearily limping homeward. A must for all who read to their cats--a blithe and blissful must for all. (Picture book. 6-9)