Socks (1973) is not a Beverly Cleary book I ever discovered as a child, but I love it! It’s a simple story told from the perspective of a cat named Socks, beginning with his first day of true consciousness: the day he would be sold by the boy and girl who had taken care of him for his first weeks of life. From that first adventure being dropped in to the mailbox until the end of his story, Socks is a happy cat. It does just happen that he occassionally is misunderstood, and that is where the humor can be found!

I loved how Beverly Cleary was able to make the cat’s emotions so realistic. It is told in omniscient narrator (no “I” narrator being the cat), so we also get a glimpse of what the children and the adults are thinking as time passes. But much of the book focuses on how Socks interprets the events around him. He is a truly loveable cat.

I must admit that I am not a pet person at all, but this book still brought cats into a warm place in my heart as I considered how the cat interpreted the events around him and how he eventually won over those who did not like him. It’s a book for the cat-lover and the non-cat person as well! It is definitely a fun middle-grade book for the early reader that has aged well in the past 40+ years.