Guest Author - Michelle Anne Cope

Whittington (Unabridged)
Narrator: Joel Brooks
Audio Length: 4 hours: 49 minutes

Whittington is a tomcat looking for a new home. He finds a barn that is already the residence to a group of unwanted animals. He becomes a member of their misfit family, and as we would expect from any self-respecting tomcat, Whittington tells a story. His audience is made up of a duck, horses, dogs, roosters, chickens, goats, rats, and two children.

Whittington’s story is the legacy of his own name. He is a descendant of a cat who once belonged to a man named Dick Whittington. If the name sounds familiar, I can help you place it. Remember the musical Cats based on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? In this collection of poems, you will find one entitled “Gus: The Theatre Cat”. In the verse you will find the line: In the Pantomime season I never fell flat, and I once understudied Dick Whittington’s Cat. I did some further research and found that this was not just a random name in a poem; there really was a Dick Whittington. Alan Armstrong has taken a little of history and weaved it into an imaginary tale that plots out the life of this English nobleman.

During the story, Whittington pauses here and there so that the animals can make a truce with the rats, teach a dog a well deserved lesson, watch the duck fall in love, make room for two kittens, and teach one of the children to read.

I was fascinated that the children in this story never once questioned the fact that the animals could talk. It just seemed so natural. When animals talk, or take on the characteristics of humans, it’s referred to as anthropomorphism. One of my favorite pieces of literature that uses this attribute is Charlotte’s Web. I remember how Fern would sit for hours in the barn listening to Wilbur and Charlotte with occasional words of wisdom thrown in by Templeton. The story was so wonderfully written that I didn’t even dwell on the fact that it was fiction or that in the real world animals don’t talk. A copy of Whittington now sits on my shelf next to Charlotte’s Web and while the story line is completely different, it gave me that same incredible feeling and I became lost in the world that Alan Armstrong created.

I loved the narration of this story. Joel Brooks does a wonderful job of reading and even does different voices for each character. It was so much fun to listen because I really started to believe I was listening to a cat talk.

I highly recommend this book. As an adult, I enjoyed becoming a child again with no reality limits. I also loved the history and descriptions of the different landscapes and towns in Whittington’s story.

Let me know what you think in our forum discussion.

Have a great week!
Chel