Not A Cat A Memoir

Winner 2023 Children's Book Council Award - Kindergarten to 2nd grade A funny, expansive, affirming story with a powerful message of self-determination for young kids: No one can label us if we do not allow ourselves to be labeled. Our identities are ours to choose and to live. Between his opening greeting and the bookend closing page on which he stalks away after taking no questions, Gato wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Although he has four legs, two ears, and a long, long tail, the word “cat” does not define him. His identity is his alone to describe and determine. With the help of Danica Novgorodoff’s laugh-out-loud illustrations, he takes us on a tour of his adventures, accomplishments, and daily activities that makes mincemeat of our first impressions. He wears a sweater and a leash, so is he a dog? He runs in pastures, so is he a horse? He likes flowers, so is he a bee? He swims, so is he a duck? He has flown in airplanes and ridden in subways, so is he a person? Maybe he’s all those things, but what he truly is, he wants us to know, is Gato. To underline the story’s message of empowerment and self-identity, the back cover and backmatter include photos of the real Gato (Winter Miller’s cat) doing everything he claims and more. Signs on walls, headlines in newspapers, New Yorker cartoon homages, and sight gags on every page reward repeated readings and will make this book the first one that parents reach for at bedtime.

A compelling memoir of a gay Catholic woman struggling to find balance between being a daughter and a mother raising her son with a loving partner in the face of discrimination. From the time she was born, Michelle Theall knew she was different. Coming of age in the Texas Bible Belt, a place where it was unacceptable to be gay, Theall found herself at odds with her strict Roman Catholic parents, bullied by her classmates, abandoned by her evangelical best friend whose mother spoke in tongues, and kicked out of Christian organizations that claimed to embrace her—all before she’d ever held a girl’s hand. Shame and her longing for her mother’s acceptance led her to deny her feelings and eventually run away to a remote stretch of mountains in Colorado. There, she made her home on an elk migration path facing the Continental Divide, speaking to God every day, but rarely seeing another human being. At forty-three years of age and seemingly settled in her decision to live life openly as a gay woman, Theall and her partner attempt to have their son baptized into the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in the liberal town of Boulder, Colorado. Her quest to have her son accepted into the Church leads to a battle with Sacred Heart and with her mother that leaves her questioning everything she thought she knew about the bonds of family and faith. And she realizes that in order to be a good mother, she may have to be a bad daughter. Teaching the Cat to Sit examines the modern roles of motherhood and religion and demonstrates that our infinite capacity to love has the power to shape us all.

From "a genuine American Dostoevsky" (The Washington Post): a dazzling, funny, bittersweet exploration of the mysteries of relationship, both human and animal. When his favorite cat Biscuit goes missing, Peter Trachtenberg sets out to find her. The journey takes him 700 miles and many years into his past-- into the history of his relationships with cats and the history of his relationship with his wife F., who may herself be on the verge of disappearing. What ensues is a work that recalls travel narratives from The Incredible Journey to W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. Trachtenberg ponders the mysteries of feline intelligence (why do cats score worse on some tests than pigeons?), the origins of their domestication, their terrible treatment during the Middle Ages. He also looks at the riddle of why any of us loves whom we love and all the unforeseen places to which that devotion leads us.

An extraordinary "practical resource for beginners" looking to write their own memoir—​now new and revised (Kirkus Reviews)! The greatest story you could write is one you've experienced yourself. Knowing where to start is the hardest part, but it just got a little easier with this essential guidebook for anyone wanting to write a memoir. Did you know that the #1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book—about themselves? It's not that every person has lived such a unique or dramatic life, but we inherently understand that writing a memoir—whether it's a book, blog, or just a letter to a child—is the single greatest path to self-examination. Through the use of disarmingly frank, but wildly fun tactics that offer you simple and effective guidelines that work, you can stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind writer's block. Previously self-published under the title, Writing What You Know: Raelia, this book has found an enthusiastic audience that now writes with intent.

What do our pets do when they're not with us? Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton used GPS, cat cameras, psychics, and the web to track the adventures of their beloved cat Tibia.

For fans of Mo Willem's Elephant and Piggie and Pigeon series, this clever and hilarious story stars Cat, who starts out perfectly content and relaxed, and Duck, who infuriates him by meowing like a cat instead of quacking like Cat thinks he should. Written completely in dialogue, this minimalist text is fun to read aloud and easy enough for newly independent readers to enjoy on their own. Humorous and deceptively simple artwork highlights the characters' personalities, showing Duck's quirkiness and good humor and Cat's rising frustration as Duck impersonates a variety of animals, refusing to concede that he is, indeed, a duck. Duck's silliness will appeal to children who enjoy pretend play, and older siblings will relate to Cat's annoyance as Duck refuses to leave his side. Ideal for multiple readings, here is a concise, funny story by award-winning author Sharon G. Flake with playful details in the artwork and humor that never fades.

From the New York Times bestselling author and former beauty editor Cat Marnell, a “vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic” (The New York Times) memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs. At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a “doctor shopper” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell “treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no. Combining “all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer’s true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions, and identity” (Harper’s Bazaar), How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.

'Last year I lost my cat Gattino. He was very young, at seven months barely an adolescent. He is probably dead but I don't know for certain.'