Boris

Cynthia Rylant is one of my favorites -- that rare author who can write as well for 3-5 year olds as for young adults. Her books stand up to countless rereading, so I always recommend them to parents with young children. Boris is not like anything I've read of hers before. This YA collection of free verse muses on her cat on whose outsized personality she reflects in a very touching, compelling way. I had a lump in my throat by page 4 and thought I would be in trouble, but she doesn't go there. I laughed knowingly throughout the book and reread several poems a few times. Ms. Rylant and Boris are very lucky to have found each other, and I'm glad she shared even just a small piece.

Curriculum: this book would make a good mentor text for show more the free-verse writing style. I believe it would be a meaningful book for students, as Ms. Rylant writes about something deeply personal for her, and students may feel a similar connection with a pet or a person, an event, or an object that would be a meaningful topic for free verse writing.

Rylant, C. (2005). Boris. San Diego: Harcourt. show less

I very much like the works of this author. Once again, she wove a wonderful experience of an adopted cat named Boris who was adopted with his sister when the author saw Boris in the window of a local animal shelter.

I liked the way the author talked of Boris, his quirks, his funny traits, and the love she had for him and his sister.

Told in a lyrical, beautiful poetic form, if you, like me love animals then this is a book for you.
4.5 stars

A tribute to the author's cat, Boris, written in poems. Boris' owner finds him and his sister at the animal shelter and adopts them. Boris is a proud cat, a hunter, tolerant of his owners to a point, and he loves his kitty video. He surprisingly befriends the next-door cat, a six-month old. He disappears for 10 days and shows up, somewhat battered and bruised, but alive and triumphant. The narrator is an adult; not sure much of the adult life of condos, home-buying, hippiedom and martinis will relate to young readers, but it seems the perfect book for cat lovers.

A poignant collection of observations about a mysteriously intriguing cat named Boris. Atmospheric without being maudlin, sympathetic without the requisite death, this was a pleasure to read and will strike a chord with most cat lovers.
Recommended October 2005

With characteristic sensitivity, Rylant addresses one of her cats in a set of conversational free-verse poems-recalling the day she brought him and his sister home from the humane shelter, warning him about predatory eagles, congratulating him on bonding rather than battling with a new neighbor's cat and on surviving a solitary jaunt into the surrounding woods. She uses these and other incidents to reflect on parallels in her own life: "we are like you, Boris. / We are outside cats / and proud of it / until the first big drop / of rain hits out noses. . . . " Though subtler and more understated than Dave Crawley's Cat Poems, (see above) neither the language nor the insights here should present challenges for readers, even younger or show more less practiced ones. (Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005) show less

A cat captured and cherished through pellucid free verse.

Great author, written in the style of a poem, with challenging ideas and vocabulary.