The School for Cats
by Esther Averill

A few years ago, a friend recommended the Jenny’s Cat Club books for my cat-obsessed daughter.  I expected to find another cute, fluffy kitty book.  I was mistaken and delighted to be mistaken.  This was no series of stories featuring cats with twee names and sparkle powers; this was a retro series of wonderful stories that just happened to have a cat as a main character.  Esther Averill wrote and illustrated the books from the 1940s-1970s, and they are treasured tales of a sensitive cat adventurer named Jenny Linsky, who always sports a charming red scarf knitted by her sea captain owner.  Every one of the Jenny books has found a home on our bookshelves, so it’s hard to choose just one for review.  Since many kids have just gone off to school for the first time and might still be feeling uneasy, it seems especially appropriate to feature The School for Cats.

Jenny’s master, Captain Tinker, decides to send Jenny to the countryside to attend the School for Cats while he is out to sea.  The school’s two main learning objectives for its pupils are manners and cooperation.  Jenny is very nervous and very homesick.  Her first encounter at the school is a traumatic one.  Pickles, a much larger cat, is either “spirited” or a bully, and he nearly runs Jenny down while driving his cat-sized fire engine.  Jenny first hides in the chimney, refusing to come down, and she later gets double-spooked by Pickles and runs away.

Waiting at the train station while sneaking back to New York City, Jenny sees two cats in their travel baskets headed for the same School for Cats.   She is intrigued by them, so she lingers and listens to them talk about the fun they will have at school, and how they hope to see their old friends there.  She observes the teacher’s kind interactions with the train conductor and the handsome cats, Florio and Tiger James, when she comes to pick them up.  Jenny starts to have second thoughts about going home.  When she considers how disappointed Captain Tinker will be to hear that she’s run away and hasn’t learned at school, she decides that she must return to the School for Cats.  She is a sensitive and virtuous cat, you see.

It’s easy to see where the story is heading.  Jenny returns after another short adventure in the woods (the first time she’s ever seen a forest), she makes new friends, and she is very successful in school — final marks of 100% for Manners and 98% for Cooperation.   This, of course, makes The School for Cats a perfect read for kids struggling with the adjustment of a new school or new classmates.  It takes a little time for Jenny to feel comfortable, and it is definitely not easy at first, but by the end of the book, she’s so glad she stayed.

Esther Averill’s storytelling has a timeless appeal and is perfectly current in theme.  There are only a few instances of dated phrases kids today won’t use, but they make sense in context and just add to the classic charm of the story.  Jenny meets many colorful characters with realistic personality traits, and she is not a simplistic character, herself.  Every scene in the story has just the right amounts of complexity and action for the early elementary audience.  The illustrations are so very perfect and so very mid-century in three colors (black, red, yellow) — I would love to have them framed!  The book itself is bound in a very lovely way with a red fabric spine and quality paper, thanks to the publication by The New York Review Children’s Collection.  It makes a perfect gift for any young child.

It should also be noted that the Jenny’s Cat Club series is a wonderful read aloud for families with younger children, and the longer books are ideal for those advanced young readers who are capable of reading chapter books but aren’t mature enough for the content featured in many of them.

Other titles in the series include:

Jenny and the Cat Club
The Hotel Cat
Jenny’s Birthday Book
Jenny’s Moonlight Adventure
Jenny Goes to Sea
Captains of the City Streets