Lots of Cats

After Margaret, the lonely witch at the center of Taylor’s debut, casts a spell to conjure a friend, she finds a dozen feline playmates at her door. The cats settle in, but they refuse to settle down: they play Twister, unwind a roll of toilet paper, hang from a lamp, and overturn paint cans. The mayhem plays out in Taylor’s vivid colored-pencil-and-watercolor pictures, which follow Margaret’s dwindling glee as she realizes that, though lots of cats means lots of fun, it also means lots of mouths to feed and poop to scoop. Unable to “find magic words to make the cats follow directions,” she—in a rather baffling scene—uses a vacuum cleaner to shoo the terrified animals out a window. Margaret enjoys her restored solitude only briefly before she concludes “it wasn’t… quite as nice as before,” and embarks on a broom ride to find the cats. Instead, they find her, offering a happy reunion to end this tale about the foibles of friendship and magic. Ages 4–8. [em](July) [/em]