by Lore Segal
illustrated by
Paul O. Zelinsky
A New York Times Best Illustrated Book,
and a wonderfully written story!
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“Mrs. Lovewright was a chilly person.
When it got night outside, she closed her door and made
herself a fire; then she took off her shoes and put her feet up on
the stool and that's when Mrs Lovewright knew that there was something
and she didn't have it...”
Mrs. Lovewright wanted coziness. She needed a cat,
a cute cat that would sit on her lap and purr. She would name it
Purrly. What happened when Dylan the delivery boy brought
her a kitten, and the kitten just wouldn't go along?
You'll recognize truth-to-nature
and larger truths, too, in the ensuing struggle between
an all-too-human Mrs. Lovewright and her willful pet. “Is it possible,”
asked The New York Times, “for a story so brief, so successful,
so persuasive and endearing as this one to be without its mythic resonances?
Surely
not!” |
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• The New York Daily News said, “Zelinsky's illustrations are masterpieces of
comic emotion.”
• The Washington Post called the book “unique and wonderfully
idiosyncratic.”
• Maurice Sendak called Mrs. Lovewright “the essence of an original picture book.”
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The Story of Mrs. Lovewright is out of print.
But several versions of its cheerful endpaper, with the cat Purrless sitting on, jumping over, and hiding behind an endless repetition of Mrs. Lovewright's tall armchair, is available on the website Spoonflower.
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