Whittington by Alan Armstrong
Whittington
by Alan Armstrong
(Audio)
This was a strange book. It jumped around from one part of a story to another so quickly that I missed something huge the first time: Whittinton the cat siring kittens! Yikes!
The story follows Whittington, who is old and has lost his boy and just looking for a new family (but he's not a house cat). He is eventually welcomed into Bernie's barn, full of downtrodden animals who have almost all been saved from being eaten or turned into glue or what-not. Bernie's got too kind a heart and can't turn any bad luck case away, even though he doesn't know anything about horses or goats at first. So you have an interesting mix of animals, including rats that do awful things like kill baby chickens. Luckily, Whittington is a ratter.
The cat is named after a figure in history--around whom a legend has sprung up. So Whittington tells the barn the story of his namesake, Dick Whittington, and Dick's wonderful cat who was also a great ratter and managed to help him change his fortunes.
Also, there's the story of Bernie's two grandchildren who come to live with their grandparents after their parents' death. The younger one, Ben, is dyslexic (just like Whittington's boy was), so the whole barn takes up the task of trying to help Ben to read. But being taught by animals isn't as effective, as it turns out, as being taught by a reading teacher. Ben makes progress in his reading throughout the novel, but his reactions and frustrations are realistic.
The story jumps around so much, and it's not hard to follow. But I didn't like the abrupt cuts all that much. Mostly, I couldn't figure out who could understand what. At no time is it explained how Dick and his cat can talk, but it's a folk tale so that's easy enough to believe. But the kids can suddenly talk to the animals and vice-versa, but it doesn't seem like the adults can talk to animals or that the adults know that the kids can talk to the animals. But it's just a given in this story that they can all talk and write and read and communicate. It took some time to wrap my head around it. I'm still not sure I quite get it.
It was a nice story, but a bit heavy-handed/blunt at times. The pacing seemed off to me. And I wasn't so fond of the reader's rough Whittington voice sometimes (other times I loved it). It was a good book, but perhaps I would have liked it better when I was younger.