Three Little Kittens

On the heels of his Caldecott win for The Lion & the Mouse, Pinkney offers another masterful visual interpretation of a classic narrative, albeit one with less gravitas. Wearing mittens newly knitted by their mother, the adorable and feisty kittens frolic outdoors with three birds (one sporting a woolen hat, one a striped scarf, one a shawl). Readers will delight in spotting dropped mittens among fallen leaves before the kittens announce their losses to their mother. Rendered in graphite, color pencil, and watercolor, Pinkney's sparkling-eyed young cats—in bows, bells, and lace—are almost impossibly (and perhaps overly) cuddly and precious, exuding boundless energy and capricious emotions. The author's tweaks of this rhyme lighten its tone slightly: the mother cat calls her kittens "careless" for losing their mittens and "silly" when they dirty them eating pie—never "naughty." Pinkney adds a sly final flourish: playing outside, one kitten has already dropped the knit cap that her mother has just given her. A cozy domestic drama set within a rich, autumnal wonderland that begs exploring. Ages 35. (Sept.)

Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.

PreS--The well-known nursery rhyme gets the Pinkney touch in this sumptuous edition. The cherubic felines on the front cover invite readers to follow their mishaps from acquiring the mittens, to losing them, to finding them, to getting them all dirty, to washing them, and--judging from the exuberance of the final spread--losing them again. Pinkney's energetic kittens need every inch of each spread to tell their story. Their mother, who has been represented in past versions as rather fearsome when the kittens confess their carelessness, is gentler here, although clearly long-suffering. Still, she has a sighing patience that children will find comforting. The ability of the youngsters to turn their carelessness into play (finding the lost mittens becomes a counting game, and they seem to have as much fun washing the pie-covered mittens as they did getting them dirty in the first place) is a hidden charm to the rhyme that is developed here; details such as a red cardinal reflected in a stray bubble escaping the washing tub has more "cheer" than "chore" in it. The palette of autumn colors is warm, despite the evidence of mittens and scarves, and the use of white space for the background makes the illustrations sparkle. This is another superb entry in the artist's catalog of classics for a new generation.--Kara Schaff Dean, Walpole Public Library, MA