Reviews

In winter, an old man enters Cat's Eye Hutong (alleyway or lane) with his bicycle, fitted
with a rack filled with candied hawberry skewers, a Chinese treat.
He hopes to sell all so that he can buy medicine but first puts down a box of fish scraps in
the snow. He calls for customers, but none appear. The charming, nave watercolorand
colored-pencil paintings begin to fill with feline images built into the architecture.
Then a small child wearing a white medical mask (sometimes worn to prevent the spread
of germs) buys a stick of hawberries, but as she walks off, the man notices a white tail
peeking from her coat. Other young, masked buyers appear; all have tails, and one's mask
has slipped, exposing whiskers. Finally, a human girl buys the last stick, and when the old
man asks her about the kids with tails, she informs him that only "Kitties have tails" but
points up to cats on the rooftops all eating the red hawberry sticks. Careful readers will
remember the fish left "as usual." This book publishes simultaneously with an edition in
Simplified Chinese, which features simplified characters and transliterated text in a small
font directly above the characters. Backmatter includes a glossary keyed to intermediatelevel
readers, three-to-a-page thumbnails of the illustrations with English text, and note
with cultural background (sadly missing in the English-only edition); further Chinese
learning materials are available on the publisher's website.
A heartwarming story with a bit of mystery, available in both English and Chinese.
(Picture book. 6-8) -- Kirkus Reviews "Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15th, 2016"