Gary Crew’s Cat on the Island is a shocking book, and shockingly effective. It tells the famous story of the Stephens Island light-house keeper who took his cat with him for company in his lonely job. The cat was pregnant, and within the two years between 1894 and 1896, it and its offspring totally obliterated the world’s only population of flightless wrens—tiny birds that had previously known no predators.
This is still the only instance in the world where a single species has been made extinct by another single species, a feat that even man has not (directly) achieved.
The story is told by a sad old man, son of the original light-house keeper, to his grandson.
‘Nothing comes back when it’s extinct’.
When I saw the tears in his eyes, I knew that extinct really does mean forever.
Gillian Warden’s striking illustrations depict the cat, aptly, as a bloodstained alien, reminiscent of something out of Roswell. Taken somewhere it did not belong, it naturally acted as any cat would in the presence of an obvious and defenceless prey. The removal of much of the island’s vegetation during the building of the light-house added to the tame little birds’ woes by leaving them nowhere to hide.
Cat on the Island is a Sophisticated Picture Book with an important message. Younger children may find the pictures alarming, but used with discretion, it could get this message across to a wide age range.
Reviewed by Cecily Fisher
Published by Angus and Robertson
Here is a list of picture books about Recycling and Conservation
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