A witch who is no longer young, mean, or feisty, lives quietly and not very happily with her cat companion, Toraji. When she brings home some shijimi clams for dinner one night and prepares to cook them, she notices them peacefully asleep and snoring. Although she and Toraji are hungry, she just cannot disturb them. Soup that night is without clams. Each night thereafter, she ends up letting them sleep. At first, Toraji is impatient with her, but soon he cannot kill them either. One night, the clams awake and begin to cry. The witch promises to take them back home, but there is no money for train tickets. How they raise the money, return the clams, and live happily ever after makes an unexpected end to this quietly charming, delightful tale. The visual story is told with gentle, delicate black line drawings. Naturalistic, the pictures depict our spare heroine with flaring hair and wire-rimmed glasses, along with the many expressions of her rather chubby cat. Contextual details of kitchen and bedroom supply just enough for a realistic setting. The clams, drawn as faces with open "mouths," take on a personality all their own. 32 pages. Hardcover.

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