I picked up this book because I heard Giuseppe Castalano mention it in an episode of The Illustration Podcast. Millions of Cats by Wanda Ga’g won a Newberry Honor Award in 1929. It’s the story of an old man who set out to find a cat for his wife. He came across a hill covered with cats and brought them all home. He chose one cat he thought was the prettiest, but then saw another one he thought was also very pretty, and then he saw another and another. His wife cried that it was impossible to keep them all. When he asked the “hundreds of cats, Thousands of cats,Millions and billions and trillions of cats which one was the prettiest, they fought amongst themselves. The disappearance of all these cats is a little ambiguous, but one kitten is left. It survived because it believed it was “a very homely little cat “. So this is a lesson in modesty? I don’t know, but it’s a fun story. The illustrations appear to be pen and ink drawings and they are charming.
The works of Wanda Gag are at the Whitney Museum of American Art March - December 2024.