Cat’s Cradle

By Kurt Vonnegut

Reviewd by Ellaine Ronquillo, BCCHS student

“A Free-Wheeling Vehicle, An Unforgettable Ride!” -- New York Times

This book by Kurt Vonnegut is such an odd yet very interesting book that wants you to keep on turning those pages. Vonnegut has put you in a futuristic place but has captured our modern world of today. I mean it gets you all mixed up at first, but in the end if you read it more than once you’ll understand it more and more. It’s crazy and just completely twisted in some chapters. The narrator and main character Jonah/John was quite an honest child and man of wisdom you might say. Cat’s Cradle is a satirical commentary on a “modern man and his madness.”

From the back of the book:
“An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers. Cat’s Cradle is one of this century’s most important works… and Vonnegut at his very best.”

It caught my attention when I saw it on the shelf and when I asked our librarian she said, “Oh, that’s a good one. It’s just so twisted and crazy, but an awesome book.” As she said this to me I was hooked, twisted and crazy were my favorite types of books aside from romance and mystery books. In my opinion Cat’s Cradle is just amazing in many ways unexplainable. I love it, it was one of the books I will always remember reading in high school.

I definitely recommend this to you if you’re bored or just completely into reading something so crazy and confusing that it challenges you to read it again and again. Quoting the end of the book, “If I were a younger man, I would write the history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mt. McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.” As the narrator quoted from The Book of Bokonon. Just reading that last paragraph or so was what got me saying, “We need more books like this in the future and make it a new trend one day in high school. I could say many things about the Cat’s Cradle and go on and on, but for now check it out at our library and see what you think.