Cat Takes Queen - by Ilona Bray & Stephen Soong (Hardcover)

About the Book

A stray, chess-playing cat coaches a girl out to win her first chess tournament in this clever debut.

Book Synopsis

Readers don't have to know chess to enjoy this tale of a chess-playing cat and the friends he brings together.

Morphy, a witty stray cat with an attitude, steers clear of humans--except for Edgar, his human chess-playing friend. Morphy may be a stray, but he's at a loss when Edgar falls ill and leaves home. Only by teaming up with Edgar's headstrong granddaughter, and a young street-chess player, can Morphy help bring Edgar home, elude a catnapper, and create a found family.

In the process, diagrams of chess moves will inspire chess players at all levels, but readers don't have to know chess to be uplifted by this story how humans (and stray cats) find their people and a love of the game.

About the Author

Ilona Bray and Stephen Soong are a husband-and-wife team who live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ilona Bray is a former immigration lawyer, and would rather play Scrabble than any other game--though she finds chess fascinating in its elusive brain-teasing. Stephen Soong, a self-described Chinese-American chess geek, taught himself the game. At Brown University, he was on a team of students that competed at the US Amateur Team Championships, where he managed to beat a computer. At one point his US Chess Federation rating placed him in the top 5 percent of all rated chess players nationwide. Cat Takes Queen is their middle grade fiction debut.