A FEW SUMMERS AGO I spent a week on a lake in Maine. There was a big cat there named Magic, and one morning, he was sitting in a doorway, looking out. My wife said, “Magic is contemplating his next move.” I loved that line, and I thought it would be a good idea for a book.

When I returned home to California I needed a large cat to sketch. I found one sitting in his yard. According to the cat's owner's vet, he was the largest cat in Alameda County. He weighed thirty-four pounds.

So I drew this cat, and drew on memory of the lake in Maine (which is named Lake Mooselookmeguntic and where I have been going since I was young). I drew salmon and bears and moose and I wrote this short book: about Magic, a cat who sits in a doorway and imagines what would happen if he went inside (eating food, looking in the refrigerator) or outside (chasing loons, catching salmon, having a picnic with some bears on an island in the middle of the lake, coming home). I like the idea that sometimes imagining where you can go can be moving.

This is my first fiction book for children. It's small, though its subject is big.

REVIEWS

Kirkus 4.1.04
 STARRED REVIEW
"Magic is the ultimate cat."

School Library Journal 4.04
"In this charming adventure, Cooper takes readers into the mind of a sizable tabby cat. Sitting in a doorway, Magic has a big decision to make: ’Should he go in? Or out? Or should he stay right where he is."

Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books 4.04
"Magic himself is magnificently inert – an inspired overhead view reveals his bulk expanding on all sides as he settles firmly in the doorway – and utterly, authentically catlike in his detached mien. This would be a particularly fine book to share on a warm summer day when the audience can really relate to the joys of inactivity, but it’ll also be a satisfying winter readaloud to any kid warming his or her toes on a big, solid cat."

New York Times 6.27.04
“It’s just about the loveliness and mystery of a fat, happy cat. Elisha Cooper’s watercolors, like his sentences, are simple and quiet and essentially perfect.”

Published by:
Greenwillow (HarperCollins) 2004
ISBN 0060581654 $16