Mr. Putter Spins a Good Yarn With Tabby and Zeke

Mr. Putter, the charming elderly character created by the prolific author Cynthia Rylant and illustrator Arthur Howard, is a lucky man. He may have a few creaks in his old bones, but he has an agreeable cat named Tabby to keep him company and a kindly neighbor named Mrs. Teaberry to look after him and shower him with food. In Mr. Putter and Tabby Spin the Yarn, he decides he wants to give something back to his considerate neighbor.

This book for beginning readers is broken up into four sections: Good Neighbors, The Club, The Fun Starts and One Less Potato. As the book begins, we find Mr. Putter contemplating whether he is a good neighbor like Mrs. Teaberry. When she comes over to tell him about her new knitting club, Mr. Putter hits upon a marvelous idea. He will serve tea to the members of her club. He will prove that he is a good neighbor after all!

When he gets to her house, he's all set for a pleasant afternoon. He has the tea for brewing and some bridge mix to pour into a large bowl. But he also has a cat, and Tabby finds herself strangely affected by all these balls of string, as we see by her hilariously frazzled expression in the corresponding illustration. It reminds me very much of her reaction to the fish Mr. Putter buys in an earlier installment of the series.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Teaberry's dog Zeke, who is usually described as "good", has been shut up in the kitchen for meddling with the ostentatiously decorated hat of one of the knitting ladies. Thus Mr. Putter's job becomes more about keeping a rein on his two feisty, furry, four-legged friends than about serving tasty treats. Can the mild-mannered man in the dapper vest and fishing hat avert a disaster?

I like the title of this book because it refers not only to Tabby's obsession with the yarn but to the fact that she and Mr. Putter - along with Zeke - are responsible for a crackin' good "yarn," or story. The combination of two over-enthusiastic pets and several chatty ladies in silly hats leads to one of the most action-packed sequences in the series, becoming the sort of story that Mr. Putter and Mrs. Teaberry and anyone lucky enough to read this book are likely to recollect with laughter for years to come.