BTT (#20) ~ recommendation

At Booking Through Thursday this week, Bookish Sarah asks:

If someone asked you for a book recommendation, what is the FIRST book you’d think to recommend (without extra thought)?

Having just yesterday bought (and read) Little Bo, this would be my recommendation, if anyone were looking for a great children's book.  Here's a synopsis:

Little Bo: The Story of Bonnie Boadicea ~ by Julie Andrews Edwards, illustrated by Henry Cole, 1999, children's, 10/10

After being separated from her brothers and sisters, a very small cat named Bo falls in with a sailor and becomes a ship's cat, having various adventures at sea.

What I liked

I was taken by both the writing and the illustrations, making this a "purrfect" book for me.  The hateful people who got rid of Bo and her siblings are just mean enough, without being too scary for a child.  The kitten has several close encounters in the first half of the book, ratcheting up the suspense.  Will she starve to death?  Will she find someone to feed her and love her?

And then, almost precisely dead center in the book, Bo meets Billy Bates on a cold rainy night.  This illustration reminds me of the day I got my first cat.  I was nine years old, playing in the rainy-day mud with a boy who lived next door, when a scrawny gray kitten (like this one) found us.  Mickey's mother wouldn't let him keep her, but my mother relented.  I named her Duchess, and the young sailor named this cat — wait for it — Bonnie, Bo for short.  Of course, I've gotta love a cat with my name!

Red Betsy, the fishing boat, whose captain doesn't like cats.  (You do see where the story went, don't you?)

And here's Bo riding off with Billy, who quit his job rather than give her up.  See her on his shoulder?  Aww, what a sweet guy!

How I rate it

Julie Andrews (yes, the singer-actor of "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins" fame) Edwards wrote a gripping story that made me keep turning the pages, all 96 pages of it.  Although I ran across this book online a year and a half ago (see my blog post), my library didn't have a copy.  When I saw it on sale yesterday, I bought it.  Because I couldn't put it down, I rate it 10 of 10, my highest rating.