Whittington and Dick Whittington and His Cat (linked to my review) came home with me from the library on the same day.  Thus, I was reading Whittington at the same time that I read Marcia Brown’s picture book about the same legend to my girls.  While the story is generally the same, the details don’t always mesh, as one should expect from different versions of a legend, so I’m not sure I’d recommend reading them simultaneously.  I think this contributed to my feeling that Alan Armstrong‘s Newbery honor winning book is a little disjointed, although the story in fact does bounce back and forth from the realistic present (well, realistic if animals could talk  ) and the legendary past.  I felt a little bit like I didn’t quite get the story–like it had a lot of potential, but because of my own sense that I was watching a tennis match while I was reading it, it didn’t quite reach the height that I expect from a book with a silver or gold seal on the cover.  That is, of course, not to say that I didn’t enjoy it–I just had a little bit of trouble keeping it all straight.   

The Dick Whittington legend is actually the secondary story in this novel–it’s a story-within-a-story.  Whittington, the cat after whom the book is titled, is a descendent of Dick Whittington’s legendary cat, and he comes to live in a barn with an assortment of other cast-off animals after his young owner is shipped off by his unsympathetic parents to a school for children with learning difficulties.  The owner of the barn and its inhabitants is an elderly man named Bernie who has a soft spot for rejects.  Armstrong does an excellent job of creating a warm, homey environment in the barn.  The animals all work together to help each other, even those that are sworn enemies.  This setting reminds me of the barn in Charlotte’s Web, which is just about the highest compliment I could pay a book.  Bernie and his wife are raising their grandchildren, Abby and Ben, after the death of their mother and the disappearance of their father.  Like Whittington’s young owner, Ben has some learning difficulties of his own.  Whittington and the other animals decide that they will help Ben learn to read.  Actually, it’s Abby who does the teaching, but the animals support him and cheer him on in every way possible.  And, every day after Ben’s reading lesson, Whittington tells just a little bit more of the Dick Whittington story, which is both exciting and lovely.  This story-telling is more than enough motivation for Ben to persevere. 

I noted a few quotations that I want to share here.  I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise–the prose really is thoughtful and full of insight. 

There is nothing softer or more delicate than a horse’s muzzle. Sometimes if Bernie was standing close by, they’d nuzzle him too.  “Go on!” he’d mutter as he pushed them off, but it made him smile.  His years fell away when he smiled. You could see the boy he’d been. (16)

“Fitzwarren’s motto [Dick Whittington's mentor and later, his business partner] was ‘give value,’ and he did.  If a customer ordered a pound, he got seventeen ounces; if she ordered a yard, she got three and one-third feet.  Any mistake he took to his own account.  Dick kept to those rules.  Although their prices were not the lowest, the business throve. (124)

“[Dick Whittington] is not remembered because he died rich.  He is remembered because he gave away everything.  And everything he had to give away he owed to his cat.”  (179)

What a legacy!  :-) 

I enjoyed this story and I think it would be a winner among children who enjoy animal stories or stories set in the past.