Customer Reviews

April's Kittens

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not many people know that all the Clare T. Newberry stories were "99%" true. My mother felt that just having and loving cats led to wonderful stories that were much more poignant for being real.

Reading the wonderful and deeply felt reviews on this site would have delighted my mom, and they certainly have touched me.

It is very sad that all the other books listed on this site are really in print, but Smithmark Publishers who issued them declared Chapter 11, so to get them you have to do a book search which Amazon also provides. But they are available!

This book was given to me in 1940 when I was seven years old. I adored it then, and I have loved it ever since. I'm so happy to see that it's back in print! The illustrations are wonderful, but the story is outstanding too, with emotional depth found in too few picture books. The child's love for the cat and kittens, and the need to make a hard choice in the way best for everyone, was something I never forgot.

Young April lives in a "one cat" apartment with her mother, father, and cat, Sheba. The apartmeent they live in is so small that April has to sleep in a crib for a baby(that would be neglect now...)! When Sheba has kittens,April, as any girl, wants to keep all three of the kittlers along with Sheba. her father want let her keep all of them, not even two of them. But she has to think of something. Does she give up the kittens and keep the beloved Sheba? Or does she keep the kitten she affectionatly names Brenda?

Well she kind of does both; she gives away the other two kittens away and keeps Sheba and Brenda. The family decides get a larger apartment( a two-cat apartment). When I read on the back that April finds a perfect solution I thought she would find a cever way to keep all four cats. Is it just me or is this a not-so-perfect solution. But at least the art is perfect.

Clare Newberry's drawings are very beautiful and seem to match the book's text perfectly.

... If you and your child love cats and gorgeous illustrations, you should hunt these books down. We have many of them. "Herbert the Lion" got us started and that's a delight too. THese books should not be allowed to go out of print

The kittens seem as though they'll literally jump off the pages! Further, I interpreted the parents' message to their daughter entirely differently than another reviewer. Instead, I felt as though the parents were teaching their daughter to accept their instruction and were teaching their daughter self-control. They were not dismissing their daughter's feelings as much as they were teaching her better ways to express her emotions. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

This is very first book that I checked out of the school library. The fact that I could remember it so vividly testifies to the fact that I really loved it. I recently purchased for my own daughter. It is a wonderful story.

The New Yorker review: "Mrs. Newberry is the paragon of cat portraitists. Here she has written the story of a little girl and her kittens to warm the heart of any child."

The New York Herald Tribune: "Even better than MITTENS, this picture-book is a prize...This family lives in a one-cat apartment; every city dweller knows what that means...what a heartbreaking thing for a little girl to let even one of them go?

The pictures are portraits of the sempiternal kitten, new with every batch yet old as Egypt."

The New York Times: "Mrs. Newberry, if possible, is even better and more beguiling...in April's Kittens."

This book is a very cute book for cat lovers. This book is a about this girl who lives in a small apartment with her mom, dad and her cat. One day her cat has kittens and she wants to keep them but her dad says no. Can the girl keep her cat and kittens?

This children's book about a little girl and her kittens living in a small apartment in a big city was a 1940 Caldecott Honor book (i.e., the runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustration in a book for children. Children love to have the story read to them of how this young child has to decide which of three kittens to keep.

I had this book as a child and just gifted it to my new niece. It is a precious book with lovely charcoal illustrations of the characters and the cats in the story. It was written in 1940 and still is a wonderful book today. I highly recommend it to any young reader.