Kaspar: Prince of Cats by Michael Morpugo, illustrated by Michael Foreman

This is just a captivating book in which Foreman's beautiful watercolours illustrate a text by Morpugo which is never sentimental or forced, simply a really good story that informs by entertaining and is a lovely size in the hand.  As with many of Morpugo's stories, he speaks a story that contains terror and horror but deftly pitches it to a child's understanding.

Johnny Trott is a 13 year old bellboy at the Savoy Hotel in London, an orphan who is in his own words the lowest of the low  of the staff at one of the most elegant and opulent hotels in London, fetching and carrying for guests and staff alike.  One day he is there to ferry in the luggage of the stunningly elegant Countess Kandinsky, Russian opera singer, and in a basket is Price Kaspar Kandinsky, an equally aristocratic black cat yowling loudly.  So begins an extraordinary friendship between boy and cat that takes them across the ocean on the doomed Titanic