Walter: The Story of a Rat

by Barbara Wersba, Donna Diamond (Illustrator)

Overview

This is the story of a writer and a reader. The writer is a person. The reader is a rat. They share an old house on Long Island, but have never met. How these two lonely creatures discover one another is the essence of this story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590789483
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	890L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Barbara Wersba is the author of thirty books for young people, including Tunes for a Small Harmonica: A Novel, a National Book Award nominee. A reviewer for the New York Times Book Review for many years, Wersba has also written for the stage and television. She lives in Sag Harbor, New York, where she runs a small publishing company called The Bookman Press.

Donna Diamond has illustrated numerous children's books as well as many book jackets. She lives in Riverdale, New York.

Editorial Reviews

"Those with a love of words will enjoy the way Wersba shows Walter sneaking up on a friendship with the elusive but observant author. Like Richard Kennedy's Come Again in the Spring (HarperCollins, 1976) or Randall Jarrell's The Bat-Poet (S & S, 1967), this book gives readers some writing to remember and a chance to view the world from a different perspective." —School Library Journal

* "A small but very nearly perfect gem." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Beautiful. . . . Moving and unpretentious. . . . Lovely." —Booklist

From the Publisher

A small but very nearly perfect gem depicts the growing friendship between a literarily-minded rat and an aging author of children's books. Walter himself is a rat of elder years, one who delights in the solitary habits and library of the woman-Miss Pomeroy-in whose house he dwells. His uncanny ability to read has inevitably kept him apart from other rats, but in Miss Pomeroy, he sees a kindred soul-until he discovers that she writes, not about rats, but about mice. Wersba has created in Walter (he names himself after Sir Walter Scott) a complex character, whose essential rattiness coexists with his love of words, one who both takes care to hide his droppings and simultaneously cannot fathom why humans revile his kind. He encounters literature with all the wonder of an innocent, reveling in words he can only partially understand. The correspondence that begins between Walter and Miss Pomeroy reveals two prickly individuals, both lonely, both willing to overlook the other's signal flaws in their acknowledgement of a common ground. Funny and poignant by turns, here's a sweetly quirky love story of letters. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews