Catwings

Ursula K. Le Guin's Catwings is a very short animal adventure for 8 year olds about four kittens who are born with wings.

What happens

Mrs Jane Tabby cannot explain it. A neighbour makes a nasty joke about their father being a fly-by-night. She ignores him and gets on with washing four sets of silky wings, along with the chins and the paws and the tails.

She has bigger worries anyway. The alley is a terrible place and getting worse. Wheels going past all day. Rubbish. Hungry dogs. Hardly any sparrows left and rats that are not frightened of anybody.

Then an enormous dog corners little Harriet behind a bin, and Harriet flies straight up over its head and lands on a roof.

That's the moment her mother understands what the wings are for. So she gives them a good dinner and sends all four of them away. They all cry. They go anyway.

That's the first few pages, and it tells you exactly what sort of book this is. It's brisk, it's unsentimental, and it doesn't soften anything for your reader.

The countryside isn't a happy ending either. The birds are outraged about cats who can fly and say so at length ("Unjust!" says the finch). An owl who thinks slowly, but thinks for a very long time, decides something must be done about it. One of the kittens is badly hurt.

What makes it lovely is the four of them together. They swap memories of the alley in the evenings. They talk about Shoes and Hands, which is what they call people, and whether Hands can ever be safe. Their mother's advice keeps coming out of Thelma's mouth and she knows it.

Le Guin writes cats who are properly cats. Hungry, proud, washing their faces when they're nervous, saying purr out loud like it's a word.

Now the thing to flag. There is real danger in here for a small animal. A dog attacks, an owl attacks, and one kitten is left thin and ill for days with a wing that never works properly again. For a child who takes animal peril hard, that's a lot in a very small book. For a child who wants a story with actual stakes, the shortness is precisely why it works. Nothing drags and nothing is dressed up.

It reads out loud beautifully, and it's a gentle step up for a newer reader who wants a whole book rather than a chapter of one.

What to read next

If the part your reader loves is an animal who doesn't fit its own family, try The Tale of Despereaux. Despereaux is a mouse born far too small with ears like a donkey's, and his relatives have a great deal to say about that.