THE BIG, BAD BROTHER
Copyright October 2008
[Part 2]
There was,
one would have to say, a definite cat theme all over the library. Mrs. Cloar had a wooden Siamese cat letter
sorter on her desk and a collection of wood stamps with cats in various
positions ready to press onto an ink pad and stamp sayings like, “It’s a
purr-fect day for reading.” The library
puppets, when not in use for puppet shows, posed by boats with fishing nets, by
maps, by restaurant tables, by microscopes—by any book theme being promoted—and
there was always a puppet cat on one of their laps. For the MADELINE
books, naturally, the puppets were in doll beds having a slumber party unheard
by the beloved Miss Clavel, and a puppet cat rested on top of one of their quilts.
There were several books about
cats, including the story of MINOU, a
cat who got lost in Paris and was adopted to rid Notre Dame Cathedral of
mice. There was a book about a traveling
cat, Little Bo in France, written by
Julie Andrews Edwards who had starred in the The Sound of Music. Whenever
anyone checked that out, Mrs. Cloar would tell them about Julie and sing a few
lines from The Sound of Music. Recently, Mrs. Cloar had ordered a book
called DEWEY, about a real cat who
lived in an Iowa library. Mrs. Cloar and
her husband had gone to graduate school in Iowa long ago when they were first
married, so any one checking out DEWEY
had to hear about the Iowa snow.
Then, of course, there was The Christmas Day Kitten, because Mrs.
Cloar was trying to collect all the books by the Yorkshire Veterinarian James
Herriot. People checking out the Herriot
books usually got to hear a song or poem from Mrs. Cloar’s childhood that went
“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things
wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.” Some nights the three little librarians could
hardly get their work done for interruptions of song.
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