The Porcelain Cat - Hardcover

Michael Patrick Hearn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316353302 ISBN 13: 9780316353304

Publisher: Little Brown & Co., 1987

Synopsis

A sorcerer's apprentice has to complete several difficult tasks before dawn in order to obtain a missing ingredient for one of his master's spells.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-3 ``You scratch my back. . .'' is the way the world, and this tale, works: an old formula but a reliable one, in an enchanted, elegant new guise. In this version the magician gets his basilisk blood when the witch gets her shellfish from the undine, who gets her mushrooms from the centaur, when the magician's apprentice climbs a tree to get him some ripe fruit (this is the weakest link). The point that ``a bargain is a bargain'' is clearly but amusingly made, and the conclusion is a clever surprise (somewhat muted by a puzzling final image). The Dillons create a magical nightworld for the tale, all attenuated art nouveau curves; flat planes of muted color; and stylized, elongated forms. Strange moon-faces haunt the starry sky, and cats hide behind trees and float in cloud-shapes above. (Don't miss the Escher-like endpapers.) This first Hearn-Dillon collaboration is a ``smashing'' success; a book to read, and to pore over. Patricia Dooley, formerly at Drexel University, Phila.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

PreS-Gr. 3. Hearn's lively original fairy tale, first published in 1987, has been newly illustrated by the Dillons in lush, beautifully detailed paintings, gold-framed, that combine intense feeling with the formality of illuminated manuscripts. The cumulative tale winds up tight one way and then unravels in reverse. A sorcerer wants to bring his porcelain cat to life, so he orders his young apprentice, Nickon, to obtain a vial of basilisk blood from a witch, who promises the vial only if Nickon gets her shellfish from a maiden, who wants mushrooms guarded by a centaur, who . . . . Nickon gives all of them what they demand, finally returning to the sorcerer, who brings the cat to life. The ending, though a bit of a surprise, is a letdown, but the storytelling and the pictures capture the brave, desperate boy with the angry characters in a moonlit, tangled wood, and the child's yearning to be free. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co.
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0316353302
• ISBN 13: 9780316353304
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Leo And Diane Dillon