View source for The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda, Satoshi Kitamura and Margaret Sayers Peden (translator)

{{infobox1
|title=The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly
|sort=Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly
|author=Luis Sepulveda, Satoshi Kitamura and Margaret Sayers Peden (translator)
|reviewer=John Lloyd
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It might be a little easy to pick apart from the adult point of view, but this read for the young, with a charming challenge to a cat to go against his nature, is highly moral and very entertaining.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=124
|publisher=Alma Books Ltd
|date=March 2016
|isbn=9781846884009
|cover=1846884004
|aznuk=1846884004
|aznus=1846884004
}}

In the world of this book, danger brings people together, but adversity brings them together even more firmly.  On the one hand we have Zorba, the big fat black cat, who was once swallowed by a pelican as a kitten, and now has been abandoned – well, temporarily, as his human child owner is away for a long time.  But we also have a seagull, busy fishing when the alarm rings out and therefore left alone to be swamped by an oil slick.  Trying to take her last flight, she crashlands on Zorba's balcony, and promptly delivers an egg – and with her dying breath procures the promise of the cat to look after the hatchling until Zorba can teach it to fly.  But surely a lesson in flight from a cat is beyond even the binds of adversity? 

This has a lot of the charm of the typical classic fable.  Zorba and the other cats he can call upon for help can all speak seagull, and the charming way the baby gull always calls him ''Mummy'' is spot on too for the young reader.  It's an unlikely situation based on real-life possibilities; the author, we are told, is a Greenpeace campaign veteran, so the rainbow-clad boats preventing oil slicks forming in the first place are just one sign of the awkward poise of the real world, where humans might be a risk and threat or may be friends to animals and birds. 

It isn't perfect, in my mind, however, in being the perfect classic fable.  This telling, for one, has the habit of presenting a (relatively) large piece of dialogue and only crediting it to whoever speaks it right at the end and not earlier.  Speech and order is at play too with someone who always finds their attempts at momentous dialogue gazumped and pre-empted by someone else, but it's a joke that didn't work for me.  The first half of the book is quite a pleasant scene-setting, but could have been covered more briefly, and the second half seems to ignore the unlikely aspects of the story and goes towards the mundane – I would have enjoyed a more playful, fantastical approach, with more in the way of hindrance to success. 

But that's to ignore the inherent charm of what we have here.  Zorba, the stereotypical big fat black cat – and the narrative never really shies away from calling him a big fat black cat each and every time it can – is a wonderful character, and so are the mother and daughter seagulls who never get to meet.  And I'll be charitable and point out that you have not one but two morals – even if they actually seem utterly contradictory.  On the one hand you have the strength of the cat in going against his nature, and helping a little foundling he would normally knock back for supper, and on the other you have the small bird seeking the fulfilment of her nature and destiny.  The wit with which these lessons are taught to the under-tens is the core of this book, and comes to the reader with a bravura amount of clarity, sugar and good taste.  It's not perfect, but it's worth a commendation. 

I must thank the publishers for my review copy. 

Seeing as the book mentions him, we should turn you from these pages to [[The Adventures of Shola by Bernardo Atxaga]] – a further instance of the power of the best international writing for the young. 

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[[Category:Luis Sepulveda]]
[[Category:Satoshi Kitamura]]
[[Category:Margaret Sayers Peden]]