Cats of the Louvre

November 15, 2019
In the attic of the Louvre lives a small colony of cats, the smallest of which is Snowb�b�, a six-year-old the size of a kitten. To the dismay of the other cats, Snowb�b� roams the galleries of the museum, disappearing into paintings to avoid capture by the night watchman. The watchman has lost someone to the paintings before?he's sure his sister, Arrietta, entered a painting when they were young, vanishing from his life. As the stories of Snowb�b� and the watchman converge, the reader is brought into the painting with cat and girl, where every day is fun, the flowers stay in bloom, and death is just pretend. Almost more European in style than Japanese, this manga boasts an exquisitely detailed setting and characters drawn in a loose, angular style. This single hardcover volume is part of a series of graphic novels created in collaboration with the Louvre museum in Paris, Matsumoto (Tekkonkinkreet, 2007) is at the top of his game with this mix of anthropomorphic cats, art history, and magical realism.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)