BORIS

With characteristic sensitivity, Rylant addresses one of her cats in a set of conversational free-verse poems—recalling the day she brought him and his sister home from the humane shelter, warning him about predatory eagles, congratulating him on bonding rather than battling with a new neighbor’s cat and on surviving a solitary jaunt into the surrounding woods. She uses these and other incidents to reflect on parallels in her own life: “we are like you, Boris. / We are outside cats / and proud of it / until the first big drop / of rain hits out noses. . . . ” Though subtler and more understated than Dave Crawley’s Cat Poems, (see above) neither the language nor the insights here should present challenges for readers, even younger or less practiced ones. (Poetry. 8-10)