By Carl Little

SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

MARLOWE THE GREAT DETECTIVE, by Katharine Whild. Deerbrook Editions, Cumberland, 36 pages, hardback, $16.95.

Felines are a favorite subject for children’s book authors. There’s even a Cat Writers’ Association, a “professional organization of published writers and artists who specialize in feline matters,” according to its Web site. On the evidence of her first picture book, Katharine Whild, from Cumberland would be a shoo-in for membership in the CWA.

Whild’s Marlowe is the Guy Noir of the cat world ? indeed, he’s named after Dashiell Hammett’s famous private eye. When the orange-hued, white-pawed detective says, “I was relaxing on my porch, when this dame walks by” near the beginning of the story, you can imagine Garrison Keillor doing the voice-over.

The dame is Franny, a gray cat with black stripes, who lowers her voice to share her concern with detective Marlowe: “It’s the mice ? they’re gone, vanished, nowhere to be found.” After some serious stretching, the scruffy gumshoe begins his brief but engaging ? and successful ? investigation, which includes a spooky prowl through the woods.

Whild, who earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Otis Art Institute in L.A. in 1983, used pastels and graphite to create the winning illustrations. They display the whimsy and charm of an earlier cat book illustrator with Maine connections, Peggy Bacon.

Simple narrative, engaging pictures: the requisite elements of a read-a-loud. Small children will be won over, as will those adults reading to them. You might say Marlowe the Great Detective has whiskers.

By Dale McGarrigle

Of the NEWS Staff

PAJAMA DAY, written by Lynn Plourde, illustrated by Thor Wickstrom, Dutton Children’s Books, New York, 2005, hardcover, 40 pages, $16.99.

The latest entry in the delightful “School Days” series by Winthrop author Plourde and illustrator Wickstrom is a salute to creativity.

Following “School Picture Day” and “Teacher Appreciation Day,” “Pajama Day” tells the story about how Mrs. Shepherd’s class is having a special day in which every student wears his or her pajamas to school.

Everyone, that is, except the forgetful Drew A. Blank. But Drew isn’t one to sit back. Instead, he finds creative ways to substitute for all the items that he neglected to bring with him. Eventually, Drew even saves the day.

Wickstrom’s expressive, colorful illustrations perfectly complement Plourde’s prose in an enjoyable story for children of all ages.

By Sharon Kiley Mack

Of the News Staff

THE COWS ARE OUT! TWO DECADES ON A MAINE DAIRY FARM, by Trudy Chambers Price, published by Islandport Press, Yarmouth, 220 pages, 2004. Four-CD audio set $25. Call (207) 688-6290 or visit www.islandportpress.com.

Chambers Price pulls no punches in her autobiographical account of her life on a Maine farm. From everyday chores to the life and death issues that farmers face continually, Price tells it like it is, including the advice she and her husband, Ron Price, got from their banker when they wanted to purchase a farm in Knox.

“Mr. Osgood leaned forward over his desk and looked directly at me, then at Ron. ‘You both have a college education and could get good paying jobs. You don’t want to go down on the farm and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the rest of your lives,'” Price recalled.

But the couple did and they bought a 150-acre dairy farm and began raising a family.

Each chapter in “The Cows are Out!” is a separate story of life on Craneland Farm over the 23 years. She writes about the simple pleasures of farm life, the never-ending work and the financial uncertainty in chapters titled “Ruts,” “A Pig Deal,” “Dreams and Sadness,” and “Stuck in a snow bank,” among others.

“If forced to explain in simple terms how all-consuming and demanding running a farm is, I might compare it to care for a newborn baby ? one that never grows up and must be watched round-the-clock, 365 days a year,” Price writes.

“The days are long, the nights are short and the work is never done.”

But as hard as farming is, it has its moments of beauty and splendor, which Price lovingly included, as in this excerpt that describes picking rocks from a field:

What a special place to just be, I thought. I belong here on The Hill, in this wonderfully isolated space, with the breeze blowing the clutter from my head, the sun warming my shoulders, renewing my spirit, and expanding my dreams until they seemed real. With every rock I touched, I felt a bond to this small parcel of earth, a bond so strong it seemed as though I had worked this land before in another time, another life.

This is a story of fears and forgiveness, hard work and hard playing, reward and disappointment, that stays true to the values and realities of dairy farming in Maine.

It doesn’t have a happy ending ? Price left the farm for good in 1989. “It didn’t take long for me to realize that my dream of owning the farm free and clear would never become a reality. Security never came ? only exhaustion. And the boys never took over the farm,” she wrote.