Love, love, love this new middle-grade novel! ELVIS AND THE THE WORLD AS IT STANDS by Lisa Frenkel Riddiough with sweetly evocative illustrations by Olivia Chin Mueller stars Elvis, a kitten, who is adopted from a shelter in the San Francisco Bay area during a special Fourth of July adoption extravaganza. He’s very excited to start his new life, but there is one huge problem: the woman who adopted him didn’t take his sister, Etta, as well. The kittens can’t imagine life without each other. Elvis does everything in his power to let his adopter and the adoption counselor know that he is bonded with his sister and she must come with him. But no one can understand kitten speak. From the moment Elvis is carted out of the shelter his goal is to get back to Etta.
Elvis’s plight personally struck me right away. I adopted a puppy, Sofia (pictured above with the kindle copy of the book) who was bonded with her sister, Estrella. But the shelter didn’t ensure they were adopted out together as a bonded pair. I know some shelters strive to do this but others, who have mandatory intake, just can’t afford to. I was told by a friend who volunteered in that shelter that shy, scared little Sofia was doing very badly without her sister. So, I added a dog to my little cat family. Sofia was the first dog I’d had since childhood and she changed my life. But I often wonder what happened to her sister and if they might ever be reunited.
Throughout the novel Elvis struggles to find ways to escape his new house and get back to the shelter. But he also grows to love his new family, which consist of a multitude of endearing characters: Georgina, a little girl, Mo, Georgina’s hamster, Laverne, a fish, Clementine, a bratty but ultimately lovable older cat, and Bambi, Georgina’s friend’s excitable dog. Georgina wants to be an architect when she grows up and she, with the help of Mo and his very handy paws, loves building notable landmarks with her Legos. Her favorite is the original World Trade Center and its later Memorial Museum. The WTC meant a lot to her mother and father in the early years of their marriage, so her reconstruction of the towers is very important to her.
This year of course marks the 20th Anniversary of 9/11/2001, and there’s a lot of conversation between Georgina and her mother and father about its significance. This is another reason this book spoke to me: I was standing across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey waiting for the PATH train to take me into the World Trade Center on that morning. My office was a block and a half away. I saw everything that happened from the river. Everything I experienced later that day, that whole week, are etched in my memory forever. This book made me tear up in several places.
The novel is ultimately about finding home, creating family, and handling change. Elvis soon realizes that everyone is adjusting to something new: it becomes clear early on that Georgina’s mother and father have just separated and they’re all trying to adjust to a different living arrangement. Clementine also misses someone and is struggling to deal with loss. I won’t reveal the ending but it’s definitely not a sad one!
This is a beautiful story and I highly recommend it to everyone, kids and adults alike. You can find it in our Bookshop store here.
