Wednesday, March 28, 2007

A Rat's Tale (book review)


A Rat's Tale, a fantasy by Tor Seidler. It's funny and dramatic, yet a bit dull at times, too.

Montague Mad-Rat and Isabel Moberly-Rat are very different. She's upper class and lives in the fanciest wharf a rat could want, Wharf 62. He's a peasant rat whose family is well known for MAKING THINGS WITH THEIR PAWS, which is considered less than lowly in the rat world. Yet by a twist of fate, the two meet by the gutters on a Sunday morning. She falls in, and he happens to rescue her.

When Montague accompanies an elderly rat couple to the Grand Rat Chat, a meeting of rats to speak of important issues, Isabel's father speaks out about how the rats were getting lazy. They lived in peace with the humans as long as the rats provided them with fifty thousand dollars a year. But no money, no mercy. The rats were running out of time. They hadn't collected a single cent and the poisoning had begun.

Montague donated his painted seashell murals to the program, and was humiliated in front of Isabel. The Moberly-Rats thought the art was worthless. All except Isabel. She found a way to turn Montague's shells into one hundred thousand dollars, enough to stop the poisoning for two whole years!

This story is about equal rights and prejudice. Everyone in the society, no matter how wealthy or poor they are, can make a difference.


I give this book seven out of ten stars!

The Spring Reading Thing reading challenge...one book down, twenty to go.

1 comment:

Stacy at Exceedingly Mundane said...

Wonderful review Annie! Very well written and very insightful. Sounds like a really good book, but man, I want to know how they make fifty thousand dollars a year, LOL!

Happy Reading!