Metro Cat
Illustrator: Jack E. Davis
Golden Books 2001 (Random House)

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The Story Behind the Story

Would you like to live in a luxurious home and be waited on day and night? Or would you like to lead an adventurous life and learn to do things your own way? In Metro Cat, Sophie LeBeque gets a taste of both. See which you think she prefers.

Enjoying travel as I do, I wanted to take my family along on trips with me, so I became a group leader for EF Educational Tours. I've led two trips to the city of Paris, and I'd go back again in a second. Paris is one of my favorite cities!

On my first trip to Paris, I went with twenty students and adults. As we were rushing through the Metro, we spied something that caught our attention, something that inspired my story, Metro Cat. If you read the dedication, you will have a clue as to what that was.

Awards and Honors

Reviews

From Publishers Weekly: "With art and narrative serving up more than a soupcon of humor, this is a winning choice for a read-aloud."

From Booklist: "The nice message about simplicity is juxtaposed neatly against the paint-and-pencil cartoon renderings of Paris that convey the bustle and diversity of metropolitan life. Descriptive and narrative details echo throughout the text and are amplified in the art, making Sophie's tale an eminently satisfying one."

From The Associated Press: "Marsha Diane Arnold's imaginative story of independence is richly illustrated by Jack E. Davis' lively drawings in pencil and watercolor."

	This book is dedicated to the fancy cat I met in the Paris Metro and my two moms, Elsie Raymond and Helen Arnold.

From Benicia News: "The frisky mix of Davis's acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil illustrations and Arnold's playful text just might be the next read-aloud that kids will purr for, again and again."

From The Bulletin: "…listeners may think that the dancing Sophie is the cat's meow."