Inside Cat wanders its labyrinthine, multi-floor home, filled with windows of varying shapes and sizes. In this eclectic dwelling, the feline "finds a view wherever it goes." Only the cat, what it sees through the windows, and some brick walls are depicted in color, while everything else indoors is sketchily drawn in a monochromatic charcoal-blue hue. This emphasizes the colorful sights and sounds seen through the windows -- squirrels (which the cat thinks are "fluffy rats"), a helicopter ("roaring flies"), construction workers, children playing, a parade with giant floats ("WILD BEASTS!"), and more. As the animal walks through every inch of the home, exploring the views it affords, Wenzel (They All Saw a Cat, rev. 11/16; A Stone Sat Still, rev. 9/19) manages to keep the compositions interesting -- an impressive feat, given the parameters of the setting. The rhyming verse is immensely satisfying and, much like the cat, strides forward rhythmically, always with the refrain: "Inside Cat knows many windows / finds a view wherever it goes." Just when viewers are reminded that the cat's seen it all, "every view and every floor," it steps out the front door for the first time: "Oh." A busy, bustling world awaits. Viewers see the house itself is shaped like a cat, hinted at on the opening endpapers -- and the closing endpapers delight with another feline surprise. Just ask Inside Cat: discoveries are always around the bend for those curious enough to expand their horizons. Julie Danielson November/December 2021 p.87(c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In a companion to They All Saw a Cat (2016), Caldecott Honor Book creator Wenzel asks readers to contemplate how an indoor feline might perceive the outside world, based on window observations. "Inside Cat knows many windows, / finds a view wherever it goes. / Wanders. / Wonders. / Gazes. / Gapes. / Sees the world through many shapes." A scraggly feline wanders its house, up and down stairs, at all hours, offering impressions of everything. The mixed-media artwork features a stylized black creature padding through interior landscapes drawn in light blue pencil. Full color is reserved for exteriors (a yellow bird, a stoplight, earth-moving equipment, a helicopter), and outdoor scenes are often extrapolated to the interior, rendered in colored pencil. For example, an exterior view of a toy sailboat, captioned "boat for mice," also includes Cat's imaginings sketched to reveal a tiny dock and a mouse wearing an inner tube. Details of Cat's indoor activities are also included (peeking through blinds, drinking from the toilet, eating plants), as well as its mistaken assumptions (a sewer worker is presumed to be delivering a pizza to mice). The glass itself also affects perspective, whether it's dusty, streaky, bubbly, or freaky (stained glass). A tour de force in terms of perspective, imagination, and creativity, this story reveals new details with each viewing, especially the final all-exterior spread.

In They All Saw a Cat, Wenzel mulled the riddle of perception through the eyes of various creatures looking at a cat. Here, it's a cat that does the looking. The scribbly, wide-eyed feline's awareness of the world is drawn from all it sees out the windows of its cat-shaped city home. The views are painted in vivid colors, while domestic interiors appear in pale tints. Wenzel elaborates the windows' shapes, the vistas outside, and the cat's conclusions about them in loose verse lines with a repeating chorus: "INSIDE CAT knows many windows,/ finds a view wherever it goes.// Wanders./ Wonders./ Gazes./ Gapes./ Sees the world through many shapes." The cat, naturally, filters all it sees through its own perceptions: a helicopter is a "roaring fly," while a partial view of a fur coat--clad person is supplied, in the cat's mind, with a fluffy, squirrel-like tail. With so many windows to peer out of, the cat seems to know everything. Or does it? Wenzel's multimedia spreads are loose and open-ended, rich and suggestive; they'll leave readers wondering what's out there beyond their own windows--and beyond their own experiential selves. Ages 3--5. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Oct.)

A cat gazes in wonderment at the world outside. Wide-eyed, blue-collared, brown-and-black Inside Cat (who looks like a sinuous set of scribbles with pointy ears and large, googly eyes) peers from numerous windows in its large city dwelling. What sights there are to behold as Inside Cat leisurely, repeatedly "Wanders. Wonders" around, looking out of windows square, round, thin, wide, and otherwise diverse in shape, size, color, and/or spatial arrangement. From assorted vantage points, Inside Cat views fascinating people, objects, creatures, and activities. If Inside Cat has only a partial understanding of what it sees ("fluffy rats" are squirrels; "roaring flies" are helicopters), it fills in the scenes with imaginary details that, delightfully, appear in pale lines on the white interior walls surrounding the windows. Inside Cat explores the world via window on every floor of its house so regularly that it knows all there is to know about the world inside and out. But…don't be surprised when the final, full-color page leaves you breathless--as it does our protagonist; one wonders why this feline remained indoors so long. This delicious charmer, told in simple, rhythmically lilting verse as light-footed as a cat, develops vocabulary and reinforces basic concepts like shape and size, directional and spatial relationships. The wonderful, loose illustrations were created with mixed media, each employed expertly to delineate the varied perspectives presented all at one time. Excellent for stimulating creative-thinking, art, and writing activities. (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.