A series set in Northern Ireland featuring a magical cat for #ReadingtheMeow2024

Mallika of Literary Potpourri invited us to read and discuss books with cats in them this week.

I recently came across Meta Mayne Reid (1905-1991), who wrote some twenty children's books as well as two novels for adults and one collection of poetry from 1936 through 1980.

Black Banner Players, third in the Bannermere series by Geoffrey Trease

Title: Black Banner Players (Bannermere #3)
Author: Geoffrey Trease
Illustrations: Richard Kennedy
Foreword: Jocelyn Payne, Introduction: Sally Dore
Publication: Girls Gone By, trade paperback, 2005 (originally published in 1952)
Genre: Juvenile series
Setting: England, 1950s

Description: Bill Melbury and his friend Tim go to a grammar school that is too old-fashioned to allow the nearby girls’ high school, attended by Bill’s sister Sue and her friend Penny Morchard, to participate in its drama productions.

Simon by Rosemary Sutcliff - a new-to-me and absorbing historical novel

Title: Simon 

Author: Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92)

Illustrator: Richard Kennedy 

Publication: Oxford University Press, hardcover, 1959 (originally published 1953) 

Genre: Juvenile Historical Fiction

Description: It had never seemed of much importance during their boyhood that Simon Carey was for Parliament and his friend Amias Hannaford a Royalist. But when the Civil War between the parties broke out, and two years later they were old enough to take part in it, they found themselves on different sides.