Book: The Boy Who Drew Cats adapted by Margaret Hodges

The Boy Who Drew Cats by Margaret Hodges

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I learned about this Japanese folktale from the book Wild Things by Clay Carmichael. This is a story about a Japanese boy who is the youngest boy in his large family. Because he isn’t physically built for farm work like the rest of his family, his parents decide to have him apprentice to the town’s priest so that he might become a priest one day.

However, the boy has an odd desire to draw cats all of the time. When he’s at the temple, he draws cats everywhere—enough to make the priest tell him that he would be better off as an artist—so he gets sent away. Before the boy leaves, the priest tells him to remember to not sleep in big spaces—to only sleep in small spaces. The boy doesn’t understand, but doesn’t ask the priest to clarify.

Rather than go home and shame his family, the boy decides to go to the temple in the next town. When he arrives, it appears as though no one is there. While waiting for someone to arrive so that he could ask to be apprenticed to one of them, he finds some ink and draws cats all over. When it gets late and the boy grows tired, he remembers the priest’s words and decides to sleep in a small cabinet.

During the night, the boy wakes to the awful sounds of screaming and fighting. Terrified, he stays still in his cabinet and doesn’t even peek through the crack until daytime. When finally does, he sees the dead and mutilated body of some sort of huge goblin. The boy wonders who could have killed this evil being until he looks around and sees that all of the mouths of the cats he had drawn are red with blood.

He then understood the priest’s advice…and was able to grow up to be a famous artist!

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House Rules by Jodi Picoult

House Rules by Jodi Picoult


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was okay; I liked it better than her previous book Handle with Care. I'm a bit disappointed that her novels seem to be becoming formulaic; a handful of them seem to share:

-main issue--something to do with a kid
-marital strife/divorce/affair
-parent falls in love with detective/lawyer/opposing party
-non-main issue kid has some sort of issue of his/her own that gets ignored
-turn of events at the end for a 'surprising' ending

Based on these observations, it might seem like I don't like her as an author, but that's not right; I do like her, but I think I may need to stick to her older books. Of hers, I have read:

-House Rules
-Handle with Care
-Change of Heart
-Nineteen Minutes
-The Tenth Circle
-My Sister's Keeper
-Keeping Faith
-The Pact


The first book of these that I read was My Sister's Keeper, which I picked up on a whim soon after it came out. My favorite one, however, was The Pact, followed by Change of Heart and The Tenth Circle (although that one had parts that irritated me).

I think it's kind of interesting how she takes a societal issue and makes a story around it; it gives a voice to the 'other side' I suppose.

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Blindness by Jose Saramago

Blindness by José Saramago


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
While driving in his car, a man suddenly goes blind. This blindness isn't the "normal" kind; rather, he "sees" white instead of darkness. As more and more cases like his pop up, the government decides that a quarantine in an old mental institution is the answer. However, the quarantine doesn't work...everyone (in the entire world?) loses their site and society falls apart.

This might have been a good book, but it is a grammatical nightmare. Saramago must have felt that neglecting to use any sort of structure in this book would provide the reader with the feeling of chaos--the same sort of feeling the characters are feeling. All I felt was frustration. None of the characters even had names.

If someone were to rewrite it using even some rules of grammar, this book would have been much more enjoyable.

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