The Nutcracker Mice, by Kristin Kladstrup

The Nutcracker Mice, by Kristin Kladstrup (Candlewick, MG, Oct2017), is  truly delightful reimagining of the Nutcracker Ballet, performed by the mice who have their own ballet company beneath the stage of Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. The original ballet is about to have its first performance by the human dancers, and the Russian Mouse Ballet will be staging their own performance at the same time. The mouse ballet must succeed, or else the mouse company will be short of food (received from their audience) and they might have to close their curtains. But the plot of the Nutcracker is not a mouse friendly one, and more and more mice have chosen to watch the human dancers, with their elaborate costumes and scenery, instead of the bare-bones mouse performances.

Esmeralda is a rising mouse star...but can she successfully lead her company to a reworking of the Nutcracker that is both mouse-friendly plotwise, and that is also not a mere imitation of human dance but a reimagining of the art of ballet that celebrates all that is graceful about mice?  With the help of a human girl, who has shown she is a friend to mice, the answer is a resounding Yes!  

Here's what I especially liked:

--the human girl is the daughter of one of the theatres costume makers, and makes lovely (mouse-sized) dresses for her doll, which become mouse costumes  (I like descriptions of beautiful doll dresses made by talented kids) and the mice make miniature posters for their performance (I like miniatures).  

--I know the music of the Nutcracker by heart, and so I could play it in my head for the dancing bits, which made it extra nice for me

--I have mouse issues of my own, and it was a useful tip that mice are repulsed by peppermint oil.  I might well invest in some.

Here are some other good things:

--the prima donna ballerina mouse is mean to Esmeralda but instead of being humbled, comes all be herself to the realization that there are things Esmeralda can teach her about mouse ballet and is willing to learn from her.  And Esmeralda is willing to teach her with no hard feelings.

--Esmeralda is a pioneer of the unfettered tail approach to mouse ballet, which, though I'm not sure the author was deliberately trying to make the point or not, seems a very body positive message.

So all in all, a charming book I highly recommend to fans of people-like animals, ballet, and doll dresses!  I'm not intrinsically attracted to people-like animals, but these were lovely mice!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Infamous Ratsos, by Kara LaReau

The Infamous Ratsos, by Kara LaReaua (Candlewick August 2016) is a lovely early reader/first chapter book that is both funny in its words and pictures, and sweet in a valuable life lesson offering way.

Two young rats, Louie and Ralphie, want to be Tough, like their dad, Big Lou.  Their mama is no longer with them, and Big Lou is Tough, and encourages his boys to be too.  They walk to school (buses are for softies), they spend recess leaning against that wall, glaring and spitting (playing is for softies).  But then they decide the time has come to prove to the world how tough they are, by setting out to do bad things.  Each chapter tells of a new effort to be rotten, and how every time they try to be unkind, it backfires and they find they have done something good and made someone happy.

Their father finds out...but instead of being disappointed that his boys weren't tough, Big Lou shows his own soft side.  "Being tough all the time is so...so....tough," he says, and pulls them in for a hug.  And the Ratso family figures that life is tough enough without making it harder on folks, so you might as well do what you can to make things easier for them  (just on the off chance you're missing the point, that's the life lesson mentioned above, and I really do like it, but the Ratso family don't all become goody two shoes, so don't worry about it getting too much).

The illustrations by Matt Myers add the humor of the story, with lots of nice details for the observant child to appreciate it (the beaver teacher's dress is decorated with logs, the "hug someone" on their mugs has been changed to "slug someone" and "bug someone", etc.).  So the whole package is very nicely age appropriate and diverting for the 5 -7 year old emerging reader.

Which is basically what Kirkus said too "A nicely inventive little morality “tail” for newly independent readers" but Kara LaReau and Matt Myers manage to be amusing without forced puns (although thinking about it Harder and Deeper, Matt Myers dances on the edge at times--like the graffiti reading "I am a Bad Ger." But Myers is working within the story, and Kirkus is just being cute for no good reason.....)

(nb--I don't know anyone who is actually counting the dead mothers in this year's crop of children's books, but here's another one; there are almost enough of them to constitute an army of the undead! In this case, a dead and much missed Mama Ratso, who was the sweet softness in the Ratso home, is much more powerful than a live one, preaching at her family, would have been....but still, dead is dead for the purposes of counting).

disclaimer:  Kara is one of the masterminds of Providence's own Kidlit Drink night, which I have been enjoying very much (thank you Kara!) which is the reason why I have now read and posted about The Infamous Ratsos, but I think I would have said much the same sort of thing regardless of my favorable bias.

Also thanks to Kara's book launch, I find myself in a picture at Publishers Weekly (I am fourth from the left), which doesn't happen every day...

The Three Loves of Persimmon, by Cassandra Golds

I can now safely say that The Three Loves of Persimmon (Penguin Books Australia, 2010) is my favorite of Cassandra Golds' books, (although The Museum of Mary Child has a place in my heart as well).  The story of a lonely young woman (Persimmon), instructed via letters from her deceased, clairvoyant aunt to allow herself to look for love, and the story of a lonely young mouse (Epiphany), longing for some unimaginable, more beautiful life beyond the subterranean railroad platform that is her home, intersect beautifully to make a satisfying whole.   There is a happy ending for both, and I read it in a single sitting.

Really, that's all that needs to be said.  But just for the sake of a longer blog post, I will add that Persimmon has a flower shop (following her dream of flowers alienated her from her vegetable- loving family, leading to her loneliness), and it is flowers that draw young Epiphany up from below, leading to her important encounter (quite near the end of the book) with Persimmon.   I like flowers.  And I will add that a book plays an important role in Persimmon's happy ending, and I like books too.   And finally, like all of Cassandra Golds' books, the world is almost our own, but made just a more dreamlike and more magical; in this case, with light, rather than darkness---for instance, Persimmon's best friend is a talking ornamental cabbage named Rose (who is now my favorite fictional cabbage).

I was a tad worried that Persimmon, naïve and shy and vulnerable, was going to be need Saving (especially after the first two loves leave her in need of a third), but happily she finds her own strength and does not need that third love to make her believe that she is a person who matters.

A lovely book, and if you want a dreamlike, beautiful love story to escape winter with, this is an excellent choice.

Note:  I have wanted this book ever since it first came out in Australia, but the Book Depository didn't stock it, and Amazon only has it in Kindle form.  Years passed.  Then I found that there was way to get books with free shipping from Australia, via a website called Fishpond, and I am now slowly asking my loved ones for all the Australian books on my wishlist...this one was a Christmas present from my dear mother.

The Orphan and the Mouse, by Martha Freeman

The Orphan and the Mouse, by Martha Freeman (Holiday House, August 2014, 224 pages) is a lovely, magical story that should entrance any introspective eight to ten year old(ish) child who likes orphan fiction and small furry creatures (which would be me when I was that age).

And I would just like to start off by saying that the cover of this book makes me cross, because I liked the book lots, and think lots of others would like it to, but it looks like it is a book for six year olds or something, and really this is somewhat off-putting for both the nine or ten year olds mentioned above and the parents/gatekeepers who find books for them to read (especially in these days of hypercompetitive parenting, with so many people (seemingly) wanting their kids to read "up.").   On top of that, I think this cover would be almost impossible to sell to a boy, but the story is not in and of itself somehow boy unfriendly.  So please just ignore the cover art.

And now, the story:

In an rather upscale orphanage (the upscale-ness is important to the plot) in the late 1940s, a girl and a mouse met.  Caro, the girl, is ten, and has a badly burned hand from the fire that killed her mother.  Mary, the mouse, is no longer young (she has lots of mouse children).   But between these two unlikely friends a bond of empathy and good will is forged during an unhappy misadventure with the orphanage cat....and this bond ends up bringing them both to a much happier end than they would have otherwise (especially Caro.)

Because.....there are Dark Things happening within the walls and behind the doors of the model orphanage (not least of which is emotional manipulation of a really unkind sort--one's heart aches for Caro).  Those in power (both mouse and human) have let power and material comfort corrupt them,  and it is a good thing for Caro that Mary Mouse and her mouse ally Andrew are there to heroically (risking death by cat) help her put things to rights.  Mice and child expose secrets (the reader gets to see the schemes in action, so it's not really a mystery from the reader's point of view), and things are tense, and the happy ending is happy enough to be gratifying without being insultingly too good to be true.

Mice in this world are not mindless squeakers--they have listened to, and appreciated on an almost spiritual level, the story of Stuart Little.  They collect art (in the form of postage stamps).   Andrew Mouse can even read.  And Caro is not a mindless squeaker either--she is an utterly relatable (to me, at any event!) good child who deserves good things (who certainly doesn't deserve it when the movie starlet is disgusted by her scarred hand).  The combination is a winning one.

I think one of the things that made it work for me was all the stories--stories told, stories imagined, backstories--that swirl around in the book.   Not the sort of "now there will be a story" interruptions, but the much more subtle sense of richly textured and layered interior lives created by telling and thinking.   Characters have stories about themselves that are changeable, and they think about what stories there are to be told, stories that will make life more than the immediate now.   Each postage stamp picture is a window for the imagination...each character has a self they are shaping.   And it is this open-ness to story that makes the friendship between girl and mouse both possible and emotionally convincing, even though they can never speak each other's language.

Note:  as well as the cover issue, a possible problem with this book is this--although the sensitive, small-mammal-loving child is clearly the target audience, it starts with a pretty grim mouse death.  This may well put off the truly tender hearted, and you might have to promise such a child that no other mice die (except one who dies offstage who isn't the nicest mouse anyway and by the time you get to that mouse death the sensitive reader will be so engrossed in the story that it won't matter, but if deceit really bothers you, you can say (truthfully) "the cat doesn't kill any more mice").

Second note:  I decide this is one for my list of disabilities in kids' fantasy books, because it is mentioned that Caro's scarred right hand does pose difficulties for her with things like writing, although this is a very minor point in the grand scheme of the story.

Mouseheart, by Lisa Fiedler (with giveaway of great summer reads-- Mouseheart, The Search for WondLa, and Belly Up!)

Mouseheart, by Lisa Fiedler, generously illustrated by Vivienne To (Simon and Schuster, middle grade, in stores May 20, 2014) is the fast-paced story of a mouse of destiny set in the subterranean depths of New York city. I'm happy to be able to offer a giveaway along with my own thoughts--scroll down for details.

When I am about to read a book in which a mouse is the hero, I ask myself my "mouse questions" (which I am actually formulating right now for the first time--they have previously been an amorphous swirl, because that's how I think). If the hero of a book were to be a fish, "fish" could be substituted for "mouse," etc.

1. If all the mice and other animal characters were people, would the plot be appreciably different?  Would my emotional response be any different? 

2. And following from that, is there any "mousiness" to the main character?   If I were never told he or she was a mouse, would I suspect that there was something not-human going on?  Does the fact that the rodents wear clothes and fight with swords distract me?

Maybe these questions wouldn't actually work for fish, because, you know, water.  But the basic point of them is that if I am to read a book in which a mouse is a hero, I want there to be some point to the mousiness.  And so, as I read Mouseheart, I pondered these questions.

Here is the gist of the story:

Down below New York city is Atlantia, small, gated utopia of rats.   It is guarded by cats, whose queen has signed a treaty with the emperor of the rats.  Up above is a pet store, from which three young mouse siblings escape.  One of these, Hopper, our hero, falls into the New York subway system, where he is taken under the paw of a young, swashbuckling rat who turns out to be the utopia's prince.

Hopper wants to find both his siblings and a safe home, but he finds himself drawn deep into the world of those who want to bring down Atalantia.   He does not want to be drawn into revolution and rebellion--he wants to believe in the utopia.    Nor is Hopper enthusiastic when the rebel mice hail him as a chosen mouse of destiny, savior of the rebellion (that bit about him believing in the utopia makes being a hero of the  rebel cause tricky).  But destiny can be hard to avoid...especially once you realize that the utopia comes with a terrible, terrible price (that whole bit about the treaty between the cats and the rats?  It has a Dark Underside of a not unexpected, biologically-sound, sort).

So the fact that the main characters are rodents is absolutely essential for the plot to work, and to have powerful emotional heft when the Dark Underside is revealed.   And allowing the rodents and cats to be rather advanced, viz trappings of civilizations, lifted the above animal adventure into the territory of fantasy epic, that I thinks adds to its kid appeal.   Perhaps more could have been made of the physical qualities that distinguish rodents from people (like keen sense of smell, and the use of whiskers), but I felt I was at least getting a mouse-perspective on the New York subway system, which made up for that.   Though there was a sense that the characters were simply small people, it was not so much an issue that it broke my suspension of disbelief.

Mouseheart is one I'd recommend to readers seeking an animal-based entrée into the world of false utopias--it has engaging main characters, dark undercurrents, and a vivid setting.  That being said, I do have a rather strong reservation about making a blanket recommendation.   In the very first scene, the actions of a mouse and a rat end up causing a hostile cat's eye to be graphically impaled on a spike.  I think many readers, especially those who love cats, will put the book down right there.  I myself was worried that there would be more graphic violence, but this was the worst, and was much more horrible than the confrontations to come (also involving the dark side to rodent/cat relationships, but less specifically so).

I have another minor reservation, that's more something that didn't work for me personally--Hopper's sister ends up messing up their escape from the pet shop because she can't control the desire to bite its owner.  But she blames Hopper, and he just takes it.   This made her totally unsympathetic, and Hopper seem a bit wet.

In any event, Mouseheart has gotten excellent reviews from Publishers Weekly--  "For those who love an underdog and some romping good battles, Fiedler thoroughly entertains" and from Kirkus--"Riddled with surprises, the fast-paced, complex plot features a host of vivid, memorable rodent and feline characters.... Another stalwart mouse with a brave heart will win fans in this captivating underground adventure."  I agree that many young readers will enjoy this lots (just so long as they aren't too terribly fond of cats.....).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Fiedler is the author of several novels for children and young adults. She divides her time between Connecticut and the Rhode Island seashore, where she lives happily with her very patient husband, her brilliant and beloved daughter, and their two incredibly spoiled golden retrievers.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Vivienne To has illustrated several books, including The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins and the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective series by Octavia Spencer. As a child, she had two pet mice escape. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia, with her partner and her ginger cat. Visit her at VivienneTo.com.

Courtesy of the publisher, I'm happy to offer this great giveaway of Mouseheart plus The Search for WondLa and Belly Up!  Just leave a comment (perhaps sharing your own favorite mouse fantasy) between now and 8:30 am Monday morning and you'll be entered!

The Spies of Gerander--brave young mice ftw!

The Spies of Gerander, by Frances Watts, is the second book in The Song of the Winns (Running Press Kids, April 2013).  The first installment, The Secret of the Ginger Mice, came out last year, and introduced us to three young mice triplets--Alice, Alex, and Alistair, the only one to have ginger fur.    The Secret of the Ginger Mice tells of how these triplets, along with Tibby Rose, another young mouse with ginger fur, survive all manner of attempted kidnappings and perilous travails.  While so doing, they learn of the persecution of Gerander, once a free country, now a savagely oppressed territory....

And having introduced characters and setting, the second book, The Spies of Gerander, is free to really take off!  The four mice are now part of the Gerander freedom movement.  Alice and Alex set off as spies to the castle of the enemy queen, while Alistair and Tibby venture into Gerander in search of the triplets' imprisoned parents....and it is truly exciting, in the best dramatic style of kids thwarting the enemy! (The first book I found a tad slow, but I genuinely enjoyed the second).

These books are very upper elementary friendly--the adventures are exciting, the plot twists and mysteries interesting, and the young mice are sympathetic characters.  It's told lightly and briskly; serious matters are dealt with straightforwardly, but the truly dark happenings of this world, that the young mice are themselves only gradually become aware of, are off-page.  Here's what I appreciated--the mice kids were kids, and behaved as such.  They are smart and brave enough to make fine protagonists, but they were not preternaturally gifted!  Here's what I also appreciated--there were good, kind people who happened to be in the enemy army.  Yay for avoiding black and white dichotomies in fantasy for kids!

Of course, instead of "people" I should have said "mice." I think the mouse-ness of it all adds lots to its kid appeal, making the books warmer and fuzzier fantasy, as it were, than if the central characters were actual human kids.  These books are pretty much surefire winners with small mammal fans, and probably there are many mammal-indifferent readers who would enjoy the mouse adventures too...

That being said, there's no particular Reason within the world of the story why the characters should be mice--they are for all intents and purposes ordinary historical people with fur.  There's almost no attempt to world-build from a mouse point of view (one can easily forget that the protagonists have tales and whiskers), and there's little consideration of scale.  At one point, for instance, Alex carries two hard-boiled eggs into the room, and I was forced to stop reading and ponder the fact that your standard egg is about the size of your standard mouse....at another point, the mice are uprooting rose bushes...So my reading experience included a firm and vigorous suspension, even stomping and thwacking, of disbelief.

Short answer:  not ones I'd go out of my way to urge my grown-up friends to read for their own pleasure, but definitely books I'd give to an eight or nine year old who enjoys animal fantasy.  Especially because they are Nice books qua books, the sort that say Present, with that thick crinkle-edged paper that there is undoubtedly a technical term for....


Frances Watts is an Australian writer; the third book, The Secret of Zanzibar, is already out over in those parts.

disclaimer:  books received for review from the publisher

Secrets at Sea, by Richard Peck

Secrets at Sea, by Richard Peck (Penguin, 2011, middle grade, 256 pages)

Upstairs live the Cranstons--a nouveau riche American family with two unmarried daughters. As is the custom for 19th century American social climbers, Mrs. Cranston is determined to marry them off as well as she can. Downstairs live a family of mice, with a much longer lineage. Helena, the oldest sibling, and head of the family due to past tragedy, has done her best to bring up her two young sisters, dreamy Beatrice and skittish young Louise, and her heedless little brother, Lamont, making sure there is food on the table and their clothes are tidy (these mice wear clothes in the privacy of their homes). But she can't help but worry about the future of her little family.

When the Cranston's decide that the only way to marry off their older girl is to travel to Europe, Helena and her siblings join them, rather than stay in the empty house. And so a long sea voyage begins, filled with possibilities of romance (both human and mousian) and ending with Helena's happy realization that she can keep her family close, while letting them go their own way.

Here are the mouse sisters planning to attend a princess's reception on board the ship:

"I shall have to infest Camilla [the younger Cranston girl] and go to the reception on her," Louise decided.

"I don't mind going on Mrs. Cranston," Beatrice said, "as long as she doesn't wear her squirrels. I know my way around her."

And so, for once, Beatrice wasn't the problem. Evidently I was.

"Louise," I said. "I'll go with you on Camilla."

"Indeed you will not," she sniffed. "It will be hard enough to find a place for one of us to hide on her, let alone two. Besides, if Camilla should notice me somewhere on her person, she wouldn't be alarmed."

"Ha! Louise," I retorted. "she couldn't tell me from you at the lifeboat drill. 'Oh, Mouse!' she cried. She can't tell one mouse from-"

"She would certainly notice if there were two of us," Louise said. "She can count. Besides, Helena, Camilla is my human." (pp 140-141)

This feels very much like a Regency Romance (although it's set at the time of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee). There is much detail about clothes, and fine dining, and social status, and love is in the air. Little Adventure happens, but the detailed descriptions of encounters and small happenings of shipboard life fill the pages happily. Human-Mouse interactions add some tension, and some comic relief, and the snappy dialogue and endearing characters keep the pages turning nicely. Helena makes a fine and sympathetic narrator, and I cheered for her as she realized that she could be her own mouse, with her own future, and still not relinquish her family.

Definitely one with more girl appeal, what with the descriptions of clothes and all. I'd particularly recommend this one to older sisters, who so often are burdened in fiction with responsibilities, and given little reward at the end while the younger siblings get to be the Special ones.

This was my first Richard Peck book--even though I'm pretty sure it's a departure from his previous work (what with mice and all) I enjoyed it enough so that I'll be seeking him out again, just as soon as I clear the tbr piles away....

Secrets of Sea is a Cybils nominee in middle grade sci fi/fantasy, one of several mouse books we have on our list!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Cheshire Cheese Cat, by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright

The Cheshire Cheese Cat, by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, with drawings by Barry Moser (Peachtree Publishers, Oct 1, 2011), is an utterly lovely, warm and funny and tense story, highly recommended to all who love children's books, but in particular to fans of cheese and Charles Dickens.

It tells of Skilley, an alley cat with an embarrassing fondness for cheese, desperate to escape the mean streets of 19th-century London. In particular, he wants a home at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese--haunt of famous authors, home of delicious cheddar, and overrun by mice. So Skilley strikes a bargain with Pip, one of the resident mice--he will act the part of a fierce mouser, and in return, the mice will provide him with cheese....

But the path to cheese is not as easy as it might seem. For gathered at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese are an enemy tomcat, a hostile and unscrupulous barmaid, and an injured raven from the Tower of London, who must somehow be returned to his post before the British Empire falls! Observing the developing crisis is Dickens himself, desperate to find the first line for his new book....

I found it all very appealing. The personalities of the cast of characters come through most beautifully, some speaking in simple English, others exhibiting more erudition. The story is tense, and more intricate than it first appears--I found it hard to put the book down. It made me chuckle (especially the passages from Dickens' journal, and the scattered references to his books, though these will probably go right over the head of the young reader), and yet alongside the rollicking story there were thoughtful moments with real emotional resonance, believable and meaningful because the characters themselves so clearly are thinking, caring, fallible beings.

And, although it is not belabored at all, there is a message to be found here of the best kind--that one does not have to be bound by stereotypes and expectations.

"You eat cheese." The words emerged from Pinch's clenched jaws with a slow hiss.

So, he knows.

Skilly allowed himself an instant of surprise to savor how little he now cared. "Yes, I eat cheese. What's more, my truest friend in this friendless world is a mouse. And I would risk my life for him, and for that bird-" (p 211 of ARC).

And so, somewhat to my surprise, this has become one of my favorite books of 2011. That being said, I'm not sure it's for everyone--it's the sort of book that feels like it is being read aloud in one's head, somewhat portentously in places. And this emphasis on the dramatic (for instance, "The alarm turned to dread as his eyes met those of that pitiless malcontent, Pinch."), while it struck me as in keeping with the Victorian setting, might be a bit much for some.

Here's another review, at Fuse #8.

(review copy received from the publisher at BEA)

Clair de Lune, by Cassandra Golds

No, this isn't the werewolf Claire de Lune, by Christine Johnson, that's just been released. This Clair de Lune is by Cassandra Golds (2004, 2006 in the US, Random House, middle grade, 197 pages), who is the author of one of my favorite books last year (The Museum of Mary Child).

Clair de Lune is young girl living in an old apartment house that is home to a famous ballet school. Her mother was a ballet dancer, who died tragically young while dancing, and her stern, unloving grandmother is steering Clair de Lune toward becoming a ballerina too. Clair de Lune cannot speak, but her grandmother finds this rather pleasing than otherwise--without words, it will be harder, if not impossible, she thinks, for the grand-daughter to become ensnared by love, as happened to her mother.

In the same building lives a mouse who dreams of dancing. Bonaventure has set his heart on creating the first mouse ballet, setting up his own mouse size studio in the wainscoting. Clair de Lune becomes his friend and confidant, and he shows her that this strange old house contains other mysteries--there is a door, far down, that opens up onto a beautiful monastery set by the ocean. And there Clair de Lune meets a monk who has dedicated his live to listening...and for the first time, she thinks that it is possible that someday she might be heard.

So Clair de Lune confronts the reasons why she cannot speak, Bonaventure begins his mouse ballet classes, and all seems to be going well....but then the ballet company decides to honor her mother by performing the ballet in which her mother died. And Clair de Lune must play her mother's part...

Bonaventure is one of the most charming fictional mice of my acquaintance--I loved his mouse ballet endeavours to pieces! Rather than distracting from the central arc of Clair de Lune's journey to full personhood, it complemented that story with its concrete example of how to make a dream come true. Frankly, it was the mouse element that deterred me from reading this book when it first came out--I don't generally like my ballet stories peopled with animals. But, having read it, it would be a much poorer story with out Bonaventure and friends, so don't make the same assumption I did!

Clair de Lune herself is a child to whom my heart went out. The other girls in her class don't realize she cannot speak--they just think she's a snot. Her grandmother is so warped as to be cruel. I found her journey toward speech, and toward love, profoundly moving.

Clair de Lune is a magical fairy-tale of great charm. It requires the reader to accept the fantastical elements at face value, not so much "suspending disbelief" as simply "believing," because obviously if you think about it too much, a door to a sea side monastery in the basement can't be swallowed--it must be simply enjoyed. The dream-quality of the book worked for me beautifully, but I'm not sure it's everyone's cup of tea....

Here are some reviews, at Big A little a (we miss you, Kelly!), at Kidsreads, and at Laina Has too Much Spare Time, and here's an interview with Golds at Behind Ballet.