Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág is the story of an old man who set out to find a cat for his wife. He finds a hill covered with cats and brings them all home. This is becasuse after he chooses one cat he thinks is the prettiest, he sees another one that’s also very pretty, and then another, and another. His wife says it's impossible to keep them all.When he asks the “hundreds of cats, Thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats” which one is the prettiest, they fight amongst themselves. The disappearance of all these cats is a bit ambiguous. However, one kitten remains. It survives because it believes it is “a very homely little cat”. This is a lesson in modesty? I don’t know, but it’s a fun story. The illustrations look to be pen and ink drawings, and they are charming.
I picked
up this book because Giuseppe Castellano mentioned it in an episode of The Illustration Department Podcast. Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág won a Newberry Honor Award
in 1929.
