MYSTERY OF FAT CAT (Yearling Books) [Paperback]

Frank Bonham (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Yearling (August 15, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440462266
• ISBN-13: 978-0440462262
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,370,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dogtown teens in 1968---a time capsule, March 3, 2005

By 

Molly Grue "Renaissance Woman" (SF Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: MYSTERY OF FAT CAT (Yearling Books) (Paperback)

When Buddy Williams, a lifeguard at the Dogtown Boys Club, is bitten by a rat while doing laps in the pool, the Health Department threatens to close the facility. Mr. Hannibal, the club director, manages to get a last minute reprieve by hiring a fumigation firm, but the job goes terribly awry and the building is destroyed. Mr. Hannibal will have to get another job, and the boys in the area will have nothing to do but get into trouble, unless Buddy Williams, Johnny Pastelito, Rich Smith and Cool Hawkins can save the Club. Years ago, a wealthy woman left her fortune to her cats, but stipulated that when her cats died, the remainder of her estate should go to the Dogtown Boys Club. One cat, Buzzer Atkins, is still alive. Is it really the same cat, or are a couple of greedy co-conspirators defrauding the Boys Club? Frank Bonham spent months talking to black and latino teenagers in and around Watts and Pasadena and captured the essence of young lives spent on the edge of trouble. His description of Ralphie, Buddy's younger brother, is an extremely accurate view of a child with Asperger's Syndrome or high functioning autism. (Those diagnoses were not well known in 1968, so Ralphie is described as "mentally retarded.") I only have two quibbles with the novel. First, although we know that the Boys Club is destroyed by an explosion during the fumigation, we don't know what goes wrong. Second, chapter 19 is called "The Strongbox"---but the protagonists don't find it until chapter 20, and we don't know that the metal object they find is a strongbox until chapter 21. An editor must have missed this. Otherwise, it's a fine novel that gives kids a look at urban life in 1968.