Esther Averill wrote and illustrated a number of stories about a small black cat named Jenny Linsky. Jenny Linsky lives in New York City with her master, Captain Tinker, who is a kindly retired old sailor. Many of the stories revolve around the Cat Club, of which Jenny is a member. The stories about and involving Jenny Linsky and her Cat Club friends are:

• The Cat Club
• Jenny's First Party
• When Jenny Lost Her Scarf
• Jenny's Adopted Brothers
• How The Brothers Joined The Cat Club
• The School For Cats
• Jenny's Moonlight Adventure
• Captians Of The City Streets
• The Hotel Cat
• Jenny's Bedside Book
• Jenny's Birthday Book
• The Fire Cat
• Jenny Goes To Sea

I'm not quite certain of the proper sequence of these stories. I do know that The Cat Club came first. Its full title is The Cat Club, or The Life and Times of Jenny Linsky and it was first published in 1944. 1944! All of the stories were published as individual books, however, the first five stories in the list above were also published as a collection of stories under the title, Jenny And The Cat Club.

I discovered the Jenny Linsky books when I was in 6th grade. The fact that the books are geared more toward 2nd and 3th graders did not seem to keep them out of my Texas junior high library. With English being the second primary language spoken in Edinburg, our library contained many books for remedial English-speakers - large print, simple sentences, but usually with a slightly more mature subject matter. I don't know what the Jenny Linsky books were doing there.

The first Jenny Linsky book I read was Jenny's Adopted Brothers. I imagine that my eye was first drawn to the title because my name was in it. I read it because it was about cats, and I'd already read all the stories in our library about dinosaurs and horses. After reading Jenny's Adopted Brothers, however, I was hooked. I devoured the library's collection of Jenny Linsky books in short order. The stories are great and the illustrations are adorable.

Currently, I own:
a 1975 first paperback edition of Jenny And The Cat Club
a 1982 Bantam-Skylark paperback edition of The School For Cats
a 1972 hardback first edition of Captains Of The City Streets
a 1954 hardback first edition of Jenny's Birthday Book
a 1983 hardback edition of Fire Cat, which is the only one that is still being printed
a 1957 hardback first edition of Jenny Goes To Sea
a very nice 1952 hardback first edition of Jenny's Adopted Brothers
and a 1948 hardback first edition of Jenny's First Party

A fond, "Hi ho!" to my Cat Club friends, Ian and Acataphasia!