Cat as Catalyst: Whittington by Alan Armstrong

Alan Armstrong's 2007 Newbery Honor Book Whittington seamlessly blends three distinct story lines tied together by the presence of a wise and wonderful cat.

The main strand of the novel is the story of the tomcat Whittington who talks his way into a home in the barn owned by Bernie, a quiet but benevolent gas station owner, who has taken in a motley crew of homeless animals and his orphaned grandchildren as well. The animals, horses, hens, roosters, and their matriarchal leader, a duck named the Lady, accept Whittingon initially for his rat-catching skills, but as winter snow sets in, they and the children, Abby and Ben, fall under the spell of his telling of the story of his ancestor, the wise cat who helped the legendary Dick Whittington find his fortune. This strand follows young Dick, as he steals away from his rural village and finds a home with a London mercer, earns a fortune as a foreign trader, marries the beautiful and wealthy Mary Green, and becomes the altruistic Lord Mayor of London, always leaning on the advice and assistance of his extraordinary cat and her kittens.

The third strand is the story of tomcat Whittington's encouragement of the dyslexic young Ben. Threatened with failure at school, Ben comes to the barn for reading lessons, motivated by the promise of another installment of the tomcat's story and the example of the self-reliant Dick Whittington. Ben does learn to read, and his success is joyfully celebrated by the barn's now close knit "family."

The lives of Bernie, Abby, and Ben, the folk hero Dick Whittington, and the varied talking animals in the barnyard are skillfully interwoven in the most natural way. It is not easy to blend anthropomorphic creatures and humans so that both seem as real and diverse as human characters in a realistic novel, but Alan Armstrong has somehow done so in this amazing book. Whittington should take its place with Charlotte's Web and the recent The Tale of Despereaux as a wonderful tale of the mystical bond between human and animal which joyfully exists in children's fantasy fiction.