THE RARE BIRD

A day in the life of a house cat…who thinks he’s a bird.

The book begins like so: “The Rare Bird flew through the forest, / flying so fast he knocked the leaves off the trees.” Actually, none of that is true. There is no bird, there is no forest, and there are no trees. But there is a house cat with a big imagination: The animal jumps from a curtain to a paper-lantern light shade as if they are tree branches before proceeding to cavort “under the splashing waterfall” (a running shower) and to leap “into the gurgling pond” (a toilet). On the cat goes, having a glorious time, and with no awareness that his antics might be irritating the house’s tan-skinned human residents. (“He sang his morning song to the delight of everyone in the forest.”) Loose pencil and watercolor illustrations, ranging from two-page spreads to vignettes, tell the real story—the words “he caught a worm” correspond with a thumbnail of the cat pawing a dog’s worm-shaped tail. Marvelously, Caldecott honoree Cooper doesn’t have to explain that the text is a feline fantasy; the art does the work exquisitely. The cat’s wild imagination even infiltrates his midday nap: Breathtaking wordless spreads find him dreaming that he’s a bird flying around outside with his feathered friends. As for the cat’s nighttime dream, that’s a whole different animal.

Pure imagination.