Black Cat (Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Books)

Myers does an excellent job with this book as both the author and illustrator. His pictures are made from actual photographs shot from Harlem with "black cat" collaged into them. They bleed out over every page showing the freestyle life of a roaming cat. Myers as an author creates his text using

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the repetitive and questioning "black cat, black cat, we want to know, where's your home, where do you go?" (n.p.) to show how "black cat" continually wanders around the streets of Harlem. Where ever the cat roams, there seems to be a wall or some kind of barrier, and no matter how free the cat's spirit is, it cannot escape. This seems somewhat metaphoric to how hard it is to get out of the inner city.As if the walls are built to keep the people's spirits in, never to escape and explore the life outside the city. The poetry and pictures combine to give the assumption that someone is following this cat as he walks the streets as people might do. Finally, in the end we learn this cat really doesn't have a specific home and this gives the feeling that the cat's adventures are unending.

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