Left Bank Books and Schlafly Public Library presents Kate Klise and Jonathan B. Losos to celebrate the release of beloved Missouri children's book author Klise's How Mr. Silver Stole the Show! Based on a true story that happened right here in St. Louis, How Mr. Silver Stole the Show is a heartwarming story certain to be a storytime favorite!
Klise & Washington University professor Losos, author of the recently published The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa, will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! If you are unable to make it to the event, leave a personalization note in your online order.
Order your book from Left Bank Books to support local independent businesses! You can pick up your book after October 10th, pick up your book at the event, or have your signed book shipped to you after the event.
About How Mr. Silver Stole the Show
Everyone loves an underdog--especially when he's a cat!
On a rainy morning in 1947, a small gray kitten wandered into the Hamilton Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, two days before the Greater St. Louis Cat Club Show.
A stray kitten. A fancy hotel. A serious contest for pedigreed cats. What could possibly go right?
Curl up with this heartwarming story based on a real-life stray cat who made international headlines just by showing up, being himself, and finding a little kindness. . .
About Cat's Meow
The past, present, and future of the world's most popular and beloved pet, from a leading evolutionary biologist and great cat lover.
"Engaging and wide-ranging ... The Cat's Meow is a readable and informed exploration of the wildcat that lurks within Fluffy." --The Washington Post
The domestic cat-- your cat--has, from its evolutionary origins in Africa, been transformed in comparatively little time into one of the most successful and diverse species on the planet. Jonathan Losos, writing as both a scientist and a cat lover, explores how researchers today are unraveling the secrets of the cat, past and present, using all the tools of modern technology, from GPS tracking (you'd be amazed where those backyard cats roam) and genomics (what is your so-called Siamese cat . . . really?) to forensic archaeology. In addition to solving the mysteries of your cat's past, it gives us a cat's-eye view of today's habitats, including meeting wild cousins around the world whose habits your sweet house cat sometimes eerily parallels.
Do lions and tigers meow? If not, why not? Why does my cat leave a dead mouse at my feet (or on my pillow)? Is a pet ocelot a bad idea? When and why did the cat make its real leap off the African plain? What's with all those cats in Egyptian hieroglyphics? In a genial voice, casually deciphering complex science and history with many examples from his own research and multi-cat household, Losos explores how selection, both natural and artificial, over the last several millennia has shaped the contemporary cat, with new breeds vastly different in anatomy and behavior from their ancestral stock. Yet the cat, ever a predator, still seems only one paw out of the wild, and readily reverts to its feral ways as it occupies new lands around the world.
Humans are transforming cats, and they in turn are transforming the world around them. This charming and intelligent book suggests what the future may hold for both Felis catus and Homo sapiens.
About the Authors
Kate Klise and illustrator M. Sarah Klise are sisters who began making books together as children in the bedroom they shared in Peoria, Illinois. Their home was always filled with paper, art supplies, and cats, most of whom arrived as strays and quickly became beloved members of the Klise family. Since then, Kate and M. Sarah Klise have created more than thirty books for young readers, many inspired by animals. Kate's books for Feiwel and Friends include Mystery on Magnolia Circle, Grounded, Homesick, and Stay: A Girl, a Dog, a Bucket List, also illustrated by M. Sarah Klise.
Jonathan B. Losos is an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and the founding director of the Living Earth Collaborative, a unique biodiversity center and partnership between Washington University, the Saint Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botanical Garden. He was previously a professor of biology at Harvard and a curator at the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He has won awards from the National Academy of Sciences, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the American Society of Naturalists.
Reviews
Kirkus Reviews (09/01/2023):
An extreme case of kitty charisma, based on a true story. With significant but logical embroidering, this tale recounts the arrival of a small alley cat at the elegant Hamilton Hotel, just as the 1947 Greater St. Louis Cat Club Show is getting underway. Though given a hostile reception by the stuck-up cat owners (if not their well-groomed pets), the tiny stray not only gets a warm greeting and plenty of snacks from the hotel staff, but comes back at the show's end to charm the judges into awarding a pair of blue ribbons and to win both a name and a home from the hotel's hostess, Marcella Duffy. As the author notes in an afterword, only the hotel staff would have included people of color at that time, and so it is that Duffy and all the human guests are white-presenting, while most of the bustling kitchen staff, led by a fictive chef and his daughter, are darker-skinned. Younger audiences may not notice the divide until it's pointed out, but they'll see it on a second run-through for sure, and the endpapers sandwiching this historical anecdote do offer a more racially diverse gallery of cat owners fondling their furry charges. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Purr-fect fare for cat lovers, with a bit of sensitivity training slipped in. (photo) (Informational picture book. 5-8) COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
