Margaret Hodges, illustrated by Aki Sogabe,
The Boy Who Drew Cats.
Holiday House, 2002.

The hallmark of Margaret Hodge's folklore adaptations is her faithfulness to the original sources. Here she adapts Lafcadio Hearn's legend of the boy who drew cats, a tale based on the early life of fifteenth-century Japanese artist Sesshu Toyo. It is said that his ink drawings were so vivid, they came to life. Such was the basis of Hearn's popular legend. In Hodges's hands, this tale about what it means to be an artist remains compelling.

The youngest son of a poor farmer is too weak and small to help with chores. But he is very clever, so his parents send him to the village temple to become a priest. At the temple, he learns quickly and easily, but he has one fault: he draws cats eveywhere. He cannot stop, in spite of warnings from his teacher. Eventually the exasperated teacher turns him out, offering the boy one piece of advice: “Avoid large places at night; keep to small.” Taking refuge in an empty temple (a goblin drove the priests away), the boy remembers his teacher's advice and sleeps in a small cabinet. In the night, he wakes to the sounds of a fearsome battle. In the morning, he discovers a dead rat - “a goblin bigger than a cow!” - and the mouths of the cats he painted in the abandoned temple are “red and wet with blood.” In one breathtaking moment, the youngest son discovers the power of his art, and the true nature of his being.

In true folklore tradition, this clever youngest son lacks a name. As a result, readers can identify with him, joining his quest to find his place in the world. At the tale's end Hodges identifies the child as the fifteenth-century artist, grounding the story in a specific time and place, but then she restores his status as every child: “Now everyone knows his name, but once he was just a boy who drew cats, just a child like you.”

Hodges offers an endnote on Hearn's life and his collection of Japanese tales. Aki Sogabe's haunting cut-paper-and-watercolor illustrations are stark and dramatic, fitting the spirit of the story. Together, Hodges and Sogabe create a memorable tribute to Hearn's tale and to the creative immagination of a child.

Bobbi Miller

Summer 2002