The Birthday Girl. (Orca Echoes). Jean Little. Illustrated by June Lawrason. Victoria, BC: Orca, 2004. 64 pp., pbk., $6.95. ISBN 1-55143-292-7. Subject Headings: Birthdays-Juvenile fiction. Cats-Juvenile fiction. Frustration-Juvenile fiction. Grades 2-3 / Ages 7-8. Review by Gillian Richardson. ***1/2 /4 Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.

excerpt:

...Nell smiled and drifted off to sleep.

Next morning, she thought of her missing cat before she recalled that it was her birthday. "Lady Jane," she called. "Here, puss."

The sunlight coming through her curtains lit up the covers. But no gray tabby gazed up at her with sleepy golden eyes.

"She must be downstairs," Nell told her two rag dolls. They sat in the old rocker and smiled at her. Those smiles made her remember what day it was. She shot out of bed. She did not take time to put on her robe and slippers. She ran headlong down the stairs to the farm kitchen.

"I'm eight!" she yelled.

The excitement of Nell's eighth birthday is tempered by her cat's mysterious disappearance. No one else seems concerned, but Nell's birthday candle wishes are to find Lady Jane and have another party next day as well. Though not quite brave enough for a midnight search of the barn, Nell worries about the cat as she does her chores. A dramatic rescue of three kittens follows. Nell persuades her mother to keep them all at a tea party on the porch with sunflowers as guests, and she announces her plans for each kitten, naming one after her mother.

     Master writer Jean Little has created another lively, likeable heroine in Nell. From the first of seven short chapters to the last, Nell dances through her long-awaited birthday, dashes at her chores, has trouble staying out from under Mother's and Aunt Ethel's feet, and puzzles constantly over her cat's fate. While the discovery of kittens is predictable - Aunt Ethel drops a strong hint about the cat's size in the third chapter - it gives Nell the perfect excuse for a second party to make her birthday complete. Non-stop action, plenty of character revealing dialogue, and a protagonist who persists until she solves her own problems will hold the reader's attention. Young readers will enjoy the authentic historical setting of a prairie farm in the early 1900s. The vocabulary is accessible and the type is large and clear in this appealing first chapter book.

Highly Recommended.

Gillian Richardson, who lives in BC, is a former teacher-librarian and a published writer of children's fiction and nonfiction.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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