Cat, Mouse and Moon
by Roxanne Powell
Houghton Mifflin, 1994
In Cat, Mouse and Moon, a story by Roxanne Powell, a housecat ventures into the night to play out his fantasy as a sleek hunter, under the watch of an omniscient moon.
Within his limited domain, he stealthily preys upon a little mouse, to an audience of small pond life on the periphery. In reading Powell's lyric text, Will was struck by the mood of its setting.
As he puts it, "The delight of the story is its sense of place." He fashioned his illustrations to establish the territory of the story, delineated by fence, pond, and tree against a backdrop of a luminescent sky that changes shades as night wears on. The limited use of color reflects the cautious stalking by the cat, broken only by the strong yellow moon and the dramatic red of the climactic pounce.
The restrained palette and steady groundlevel view amplify the small movements of the story and allow the cat's nocturnal personality to emerge. In a final scene, the veil of night is lifted as the cat returns to home and bed where he reverts to a sleepy housecat with dreams of future nighttime adventures.
