It's Like This, Cat

First recent read: I can see why this book confused me as a child...a New
York apartment setting (do people live in apartments? why don't they have a house?)...an eighteen
year old boy who is homeless (where are the boy's parents?)...young teenagers who wander
around a big city (isn't that dangerous?)...a girl whose mother is a beatnik (what in the world is that?)
This world was totally outside of my experiences as a ten year old girl in small town Texas.


Second recent read: Dave and his dad fight all the time and Dave's mother gets sick. Dave brings home a cat who he appropriately names Cat. Cat helps Dave meet Tom and Mary and binds Dave and his parents into a real family.

I can remember reading this book when I was a young girl. I remember being confused about people who live in apartments (people do that?) and hearing a dad and his son argue all the time (a son is talking back to his dad and surviving?). I remember thinking Tom was an odd duck, a boy who was ignored by his family (does that really happen?) And the lingo the people speak, especially the young people, a dialect and vocabulary so different from my Texas lingo....This book took me right out of my little small-town world.