Summary:
Millions of Cats begins with a very old, lonely couple. The very old woman asks the very old man to find a cat to keep them company. He goes on a journey and finds a hill covered with "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions, and billions, and trillions of cats," which is the story's famous line. He can't decide which one is prettiest, so he brings them all home. The very old woman tells him that they cannot keep them all, and the cats must decide among themselves who is prettiest. Read the story to find out the surprising and poignant ending.
My Evaluation:
This is a book that my mother has often used in her teaching, and I have always felt it is an excellent story. While I was doing research on this book, I discovered that it is actually considered by many to be the first modern American picture book. It truly set a high standard. The language is easy for children to pick up with the repetitive line "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions, and billions, and trillions of cats." The pictures are beautifully crafted, and the story is a fun jaunt with a lesson at the end.
Reviews:
Bird, E. (2009). Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results. School Library Journal. Retrieved from http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2009/05/05/top-100-picture-books-poll-results-9/
Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results (#9)
#9: Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag (1928)
94 points (16 votes, #5, #2, #8, #7, #6, #3, #6, #5, #9, #2, #7, #3, #7, #3, #5, #5)
Because when I read it as an adult, I was transported directly back to Miss Rita Lewandowski’s kindergarten class and anything that can do that must be powerful. – Jim Averbeck
Not only was this a ground-breaking picture book, but it has one of the best refrains ever. – Faith Brautigam
I think I like it because the cats so improbably eat each other all up. I spent lots of time trying to figure out how they could do that. – Sherry Early
Who would have thought that a tale of cannibalistic felines would turn out to be one of the greatest storytime classics of all time?
With its 1928 publication date, Millions of Cats came close to becoming the oldest picture book on this list. It was narrowly beaten by The Tale of Peter Rabbit (cheekily published in 1902). However, according to 100 Best Books for Children, this title has the distinction of being the American picture book that has continuously been in print the longest. Take THAT you wascally wabbit!
The synopsis of this book’s plot from B&N reads, "An old couple is lonely – if only they had a pretty white cat! The old man finds a hill covered with cats and brings them home. His wife points out that they cannot possibly keep them all. The cats get in a fight over who gets to stay, and the couple is left with a scrawny little kitten. With love, the kitten becomes the most beautiful cat in the world."
Was Millions of Cats the impetus that brought about the Caldecott Medal? Possibly. As Minders of Make-Believe puts it, "when librarians awarded Millions of Cats a Newbery Honor, they chose to recognize the book’s distinction while apparently not feeling quite right about giving the literature prize to a picture book. It may well have been then that the idea for a companion award for illustration was born, although it would be another decade before the Caldecott Medal became a reality. . ." Remember, the first Newbery Award was given out in 1922. It wouldn’t be until 1938 that the Caldecott would come along as well.
Wanda Gag, of course, is one of those artists that rocked the bohemian scene. Ernestine Evans of Coward-McCann (coward?) attended one of Gag’s art shows and saw the potential there. Minders says, "When Evans contacted her about the possibility of their working together on a picture book, Gag in her diary at first belittled the project as something to be executed rapidly, for the money. She soon would decide otherwise and conclude that she had stumbled onto a major new pathway for her artistry. Many another graphic artist of her generation – including some inspired directly by Gag’s example – would come to the same conclusion." 100 Best Books for Children supplements this information with an additional note. Apparently even before Evans came along, Gag had been working on this book. But in 1922 and 1923 she was unable to locate a willing publisher. After Evans showed interest, "Gag returned to her 1923 manuscript and extensively rewrote it; in the process the refrain ‘Cats here, cats there, / Cats and kittens everywhere, / Hundreds of cats, / Thousands of cats, / Millions and billions and trillions of cats’ became more pronounced with each revision."
That kind of revision has meant that the picture book itself is hugely influential, even to this day. After all, it has been noted more than once that the 2009 Caldecott winner In the House of the Night appears to be a kind of ode to Gag’s style. Certainly the two books have their similarities. Just look at the cats!
Harayda, J. (2009). Wanda Gag's 'millions of cats' - an american classic for children. One-minute book reviews. Retrieved from
Millions of Cats. By Wanda Gág. Putnam, 32 pp., varied prices. Ages 6 and
under.
By Janice Harayda
Thirty years ago, an editor asked Maurice Sendak if he thought picture books were better in the past. Yes, he said, “there was Wanda Gág.” More recently, I asked the children’s author Jan Brett which artists had influenced her work, and she gave a similar answer: “Of course, there was Wanda Gág.”
Gág (rhymes with blog) was to picture books what Julia Child was to French cooking – the first American star in a field that has exploded in her wake. And just as Mastering the Art of French Cooking remains a standard-bearer for a generation, so does Gág’s Millions of Cats, first published in 1928.
Gág’s masterpiece is so unassuming by today’s measures that if you came across it on a library shelf, you might overlook it. Except for the cover, all of the illustrations are black-and-white. The book is relatively small, just over half the size of a typical book by Chris Van Allsburg, with a horizontal format. It has only two human characters — an old man and woman with no children – who might have stepped out of the story of Abraham and Sarah.
But Millions of Cats combines tenderness with powerful themes, including the human longing for companionship and the struggle to survive in the natural world, and it does so in a story 3- and 4-year-olds can understand. The old woman believes a cat would ease the couple’s loneliness, and her husband sets out to find one. But each cat he sees is so pretty, he goes home followed by what looks like a feline peace march. The horde inspires the refrain:
Cats here, cats there,
Cats and kittens everywhere,
Hundreds of cats,
Thousands of cats,
Millions and billions and trillions of cats.
The old man and woman can’t keep them all, so the cats compete for survival, except for a frightened and “very homely little cat” that others see as no threat and ignore. That is the cat that the couple come to see as the “the most beautiful cat in the world.”
Gág’s beautiful pen-and-ink drawing flow across gutters and move her story forward in waves instead of boxes that can make a book look flat or inert. Many of her details recall both folktales and her Bohemian ancestry – a kerchief, a tunic, a tidy fieldstone cottage encircled by flowers. And her humor comes not from visual gags but believable emotions, such as the old man’s astonishment on seeing the “millions of cats” for the first time. All of it makes for a book that a child can read again and again with delight. Millions of Cats was the first American picture book that had both popular and literary success, and it’s still one of the worthiest of its honors.
Best line: “Millions and billions and trillions of cats.”
Worst line: Some critics say it’s illogical that the text suggests that the cats “have eaten each other all up” at the end of their fight while the pictures offer no evidence that they have done this. I think that this view is too literal and the fight is a metaphor for the Darwinian struggle for survival. How “logical” was it for all those millions of cats to follow the old man home in the first place?
My Suggestions for Use in a Library Setting:
This book would be perfect for use on the 100th day of school. You could have the students come in and read the book aloud having them read the repetitive parts with you. Then, discuss the book with the students and write out 100; 1,000; 1,000,000; 1,000,000,000; 1,000,000,000,000 and have the students identify which is which.
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