Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-Bound Cat

On their 1914 expedition to Antarctica, Sir Earnest Shackleton and the crew of his ship, the Endurance, spent 10 months stranded in ice ""like an almond in toffee""; after shifting ice-floes cracked the ship's hull, the crew spent nearly a year camped on the frozen sea itself, waiting for rescue. This dramatic story has been told before--but perhaps never from the point of view of Mrs. Chippy, the Endurance's cat. It is impressive that Alexander (The Way to Xanadu) can spin such a slim conceit into 160 pages of cozy feline-centrism--including an introduction by ""Lord Mouser-Hunt, F.R.G.S.""--while providing only tantalizing, Disneyfied glimpses of the (unfailingly brave and friendly) two-legged explorers' travails. Despite her best efforts, the kitty-cat stuff (hating the huskies, loving the sardines) will soon tire all but the youngest, or least critical, cat-lovers: even at their most infantilized, Mrs. Chippy's human pets steal the show. 44 illustrations. (Oct.)