Little Night Cat

K-Gr 2—This gentle story with a European setting highlights the bonds of parents, children, and pets. Tony lives with his mother and sleeps with a menagerie of stuffed animals. When the local animal shelter needs prizes for their fund-raiser, he happily donates all his toys. But when bedtime comes, he finds himself wide awake and very alone. Attuned to her boy, Tony's mom offers him her own childhood stuffed cat, Paul, and surprises him by adopting Valentine, one of the shelter's cats with whom Tony has built a relationship. The title is derived from a little tune that Tony sings to Valentine; the music and words are presented at the end of the book. Danowski has a gift for rendering the details of domestic life—a toy dinosaur tucked into a bonsai planter, patio plants heavy with cherry tomatoes. Characters are similarly realistic, but with the static effect of having been drawn from photographs. Despite this, Valentine looks soft enough to stroke and Tony's eyes shine with real love and appreciation. The author's stated focus is to use images to preserve human memory, and this tale and its illustrations adeptly help readers make text-to-self connections.