The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

This original and compelling time-slip adventure by Newbery Honor author Catherine Gilbert Murdock is full of action, mystery, history, art, and friendship-and features one unforgettable cat.īoy has always been relegated to the outskirts of his small village. Bee, who has learned about Raphael and Michelangelo in school, never expected she’d get to meet them and see them paint their masterpieces. But then she meets a cat and discovers a mysterious cabinet in her neighbor’s attic-a cabinet that leads her to Renaissance Rome. When an elderly neighbor shows Bee a sketch that perfectly resembles her, Bee, freaked out, solidifies her resolve to keep to herself. Herbert barters with Federico to get a sketch signed by the famous painter Raphael, but his plans take a dangerous turn when he hurries back to his era, desperate to save a dying girl.īee never wanted to move to New Jersey.

Even stranger is the man named Herbert, apparently an art collector from the future, who emerges from the wardrobe the next night.

But he must admit that a kitten walking into a wardrobe and returning full-grown a moment later is quite odd. This novel will engross anyone who loved When You Reach Me and A Wrinkle in Time.įederico doesn’t mind being a political hostage of the Pope, especially now that he has a cat as a friend. Two unlikely friends-Federico, in sixteenth-century Rome, and Bee, in present-day New Jersey-are linked through an amiable cat, Leonardo Da Vinci’s mysterious wardrobe, and an eerily perfect sketch of Bee. She has recently been quoted heavily in Prohibition on PBS and gives the feminist view.Newbery Honor author Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Da Vinci’s Cat is a thrilling, time-slip fantasy about rewriting history to save the present. She now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband and children. The Dairy Queen series is being continued by a third book, Front and Center, which was released on October 19, 2009. Murdock's third book, Princess Ben, was released in 2008. She also wrote the sequel to Dairy Queen, The Off Season. Her first book was Dairy Queen (2006), a critically acclaimed novel for young adults.

She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania. Consequently, they all read a great deal. The family lived in the country with no neighbors and had a very old TV. Along with her only sister, novelist Elizabeth Gilbert, she grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father was a chemical engineer, her mother a nurse. Catherine Gilbert Murdock was born in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock