STRING BALL

A naughty black cat embarks on a wild adventure.

When its young owner leaves for a bike ride with friends, the lonely kitten decides to play with the child’s homemade, hardened string ball. The kitten paws it, then finds itself engulfed by the huge ball. Soon the ball rolls off, escaping the confines of the house and taking the kitten with it. Monroe cleverly bisects the pages, offering images of the young cat within the ball alongside shots of the wider world outside. Over the course of the narrative, the ball is shaken, tossed, pecked, lifted in the air by a bird, dropped, and gnawed upon by squirrels. When the kitten finally relocates its owner, it manages to finagle itself into the child’s backpack and, ultimately, back home. Yet for the story to work, Monroe must, at the book’s start, shoehorn in an awkward section clarifying how to make a hardened “string ball,” alongside its rudimentary mechanics. Aside from these instructions, this tale is told entirely through its art. The red of the string, the ball, and the broken heart of the kitten remain the only points of color in a book that’s an exercise in minimalism and visual storytelling. The primary human character has skin the white of the page.

Featuring spare visuals yet extravagant in its storytelling, a satisfying tale for impatient kittens everywhere.