Jenny and the Cat Club (Originally Titled The Cat Club or the Life and Times of Jenny Linsky)

I read these stories as a child 49 years ago, and loved them. I am thrilled to find them here and will purchase them all for my grandsons to love, as I did, and still do.

My children (girl-4, boy 6)love Jenny Linsky. Her everyday adventures are so real and make it easy to relate to her. The illustrations are so simple and the characters so diverse. This is my daughter's favorite book (after Jenny's Surprise Birthday Party, which we have checked out of my son's school library 4 times this year). My son (a dino, shark, nature kid) hated for me to put it down between chapters; it is so fascinating and the language and setting are so unlike many books written today. I am so glad we uncovered this wonderful, old treasure. I would encourage all parents to read a Jenny Linsky story to their children.

Over a period of days, I read my 7 and 4 year old the stories in this lovely book. We all just loved them - the stories are such a refreshing change from more modern stories. They are old-fashioned, but still relevant and engaging to children. Jenny Linksy is charming, but has her faults. She admirably faces challenges and is willing to admit when she's wrong. My kids kept asking questions about the stories and making comments about Jenny and her friends for days after each reading. They totally looked forward to the next story. Echoing a prior reviewer's comment - Please publish the rest of the stories!

There's a time most of us probably don't remember when we make the conceptual leap from looking at a bunch of letters on a page to reading. Jenny did this for me.My grandmother sent me the first Jenny Linsky books before I was old enough to start school. My parents read them to me--at first. For the rest of his life my Dad said that he, too, adored Jenny Linsky because all he had to do was put me in his lap, open the book, and turn the pages. I did all the rest.Years ago, before internet use was common, I asked a woman who owned a children's bookstore if she carried the Jenny Linksy books. She condecendingly told me that she never heard of them. No wonder that store went out of business.Later, when I went online and tried to find the books, all I could find were rare collectors copies.I'm thrilled to see these reprinted. I owe Jenny for a lifetime of happy reading.

...I can speak with authority on this one. Esther Averill's Jenny stories were some of the first books I can remember checking out of the neighborhood library; what a joy to find them back in print! I, too, had only vague recollections of "a cat that danced the hornpipe," but seeing the jolly yellow cover of the new edition opened my memory like Proust's madeleine. I hadn't realized that these odd and charming little stories were set in the Greenwich Village I grew up to roam so happily in my college years, though, or I'd have kept more of an eye out for the Cat Club. I'm eager to get my hands on a copy and share it with my future kids.