Always, Clementine

by Carlie Sorosiak

Overview

“A heartwarming and hopeful story. . . . A reminder that there is a lot of goodness and friendship in the world.” —School Library Connection (starred review)

Clementine is different from other mice: she can calculate the speed of light and she dreams in Latin. The scientists say she’s a genius and put her through test after test. Clementine is proud of being a good lab mouse, but she’s lonely. Her only snatches of friendship occur during her late-night visits with a chimpanzee named Rosie. When a compassionate lab technician frees Clementine, the mouse discovers an outside world full of wonders: Brussels sprouts, games of speed chess, television fame, and a chance for a real home. But for Clementine, it’s not enough to be free when she knows that Rosie and the other mice are not. This tender, lively adventure story, narrated in letters from a mouse to a chimpanzee, shows us that goodness is something we have to define for ourselves—and that courage and wisdom aren’t proportionate to size.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536236095
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Carlie Sorosiak is the author of the novels I, Cosmo and Leonard (My Life as a Cat), as well as the picture books Everywhere with You, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth, and Books Aren’t for Eating, illustrated by Manu Montoya. She lives in Georgia with her husband and their American dingo.

Read an Excerpt

Openings
 
Letter 1
Dear Rosie,
   There once was a mouse. That’s me. Hello!
   As you can probably tell, I’m not sure how to begin. This is my first time writing a letter. And it’s not even writing! It’s more like thinking. I am thinking a letter.
   This would be so much easier if I could just see your face: your white chin whiskers, your amber eyes. Did you know that one hundred minutes have passed since we last spoke? You probably do.
   Let me start again. My brain is firing in many, many directions—and it’s hard to concentrate my thoughts. This often happens. I will focus them here. Inside a mailbox.
   Rosie, I’m stuck inside a mailbox!
   Sound it out with your fingers. Mail-box. It’s a place where people deposit their letters, their ideas, their wishes for one another. In this mailbox, every letter is addressed to the same person. The envelopes smell of paper and taste like—wait a second—oh, they do not taste good. (Pew! I’m spitting them out now.)
   Despite everything that’s just happened to me, Rosie, I am an optimist. A very difficult thing to be, sometimes, at three inches tall. But my tail is still curling at the boom-boom-boom of thunder outside. Oh! It’s so shaky! So loud! All I can do is tuck myself into the shadow of a letter, looking up to see—yes, that’s interesting, the stamp is exactly the size of my head.
   Are you afraid?
   Are you missing me, too?
   How long before I see you again?
   As I’m tucking, as I’m tail-curling, I’m trying to figure out a way back to you. We’ve never been apart for this long. I am your mouse. You are my chimpanzee. Will you be taller, seconds or minutes or days from now? Will you still let me climb onto your shoulder, up the black hair of your arm? I like that! I like how you laugh when I press my paws to your nose.
   Until then, I’ll write these letters. Think these letters. That way, when you lift me into the bare palm of your hand again, all my memories will be right there. And I can tell you everything.
   (If I’m not gone forever first.)
Always,
Clementine
 
Letter 2
Dear Rosie,
   It has been seventeen seconds since my last letter. How are you?
   Rain is hammering the mailbox! This mailbox is supposed to help protect me. Protect me from what, I do not know. But each rap and drop of rain prickles my fur. My tail stiffens.
   Thunder is the second-loudest noise I’ve ever heard.
   We’ll get to the first later. Right now, considering that I’m stuck (and not afraid!), I’d like to busy my brain. Shouldn’t we start at the beginning? I was planning on telling you this someday! My origins. My life before you. I don’t know yours, so I’d like you—at least—to know mine.
   I remember the day I was born. Maybe this is strange, to remember the exact moment you entered the world. But I do. It was warm, wood shavings were soft around me, and I thought to myself: Breathe.
   Then I thought: Prime numbers are asymptomatically distributed among positive integers, and light travels proportionally through the vacuum of space.
   More interesting ideas would come.
   Keep in mind, though, I didn’t have any fur yet. My eyes hadn’t opened. My ears—small and velvety pink—couldn’t hear a single noise. That’s why it took me twenty-five days (plus or minus seven seconds) to discover that I was the smartest mouse in history.
   “She could be the smartest mouse in history,” said one of the researchers. That was a clue. As was the fact that I understood human language. The other lab mice didn’t follow conversations the way I did. They didn’t sit dreamily at the edge of our cage, forepaws tucked under their chins, and just listen.
   Different. I wasn’t sure I was different. How can you really know? You can’t ask the other mice, When you’re drinking from that water bottle, are you solving equations at the same time? If you dream at night, is it in Latin? Do you have a thinking cap (a miniature pom-pom from a human’s sweater)?
   No.
   We cuddled in a pile. We played. Our fur grew in at the same time. I have a heart-shaped spot, just above my tail, and so did one of the other mice. A lab is a place for scientific tests, and we were all a big part of those tests; yet, in most ways, we seemed unalike. My cage-mates peered at me strangely as I threw myself into activities. Waiting around, waiting for the next part of the experiment, is uninteresting. So I saved all my food pellets in the corner of the cage, hiding them beneath the water bottle, then stuffed them in my mouth—all at once. I developed theories about how far my cheeks could balloon. And I noticed that the harder I thought, the more my fur smelled of rasp­berries. (Apparently this was a side effect of the experiment. Although the rest of the mice just smelled like mice.)
  Wait! What was that noise? That noise, right now? Is someone outside the mailbox? Is that a tree branch or a human or just the rain? I lift onto my hind toes, ears vibrating, whiskers whiskering.
   Hmm. It’s gone.
   Now, where was I?
   Oh! The maze.
   The maze changed everything.
   Lab mice are supposed to follow the jumble of trails. I did that—one time. But why go through the maze if you can simply . . . leave? Standing on my hind paws, I wobbled a bit, calculated the trajectory, then sprung over the wall, landing with a gentle thump on the table.
   “Did you see that?” a researcher said, grabbing me.
   “See what?” asked another.
   “This mouse. She hopped out of the maze like some sort of pogo stick! None of the others have done that.” He lifted me in his palm until he met my stare. My mind was wandering toward electromagnetic waves and the Pythagorean theorem and also brussels sprouts, which are delicious. “Her eyes look so human. Don’t they look human?”
   A human eye is half the size of my body. How odd would I look if my eyes were that large?
   And why didn’t the humans ever ask me questions? Why couldn’t we brainstorm the experiment together? The lab was studying how to increase intelligence in mammals by altering our DNA. I had so many ideas to help! Like, miniature lab coats for all of us mice. And brussels sprouts sandwiches every twenty-six minutes. And improved analytics for their statistical models.
   “Just run it another time,” the first researcher said.
   In half a second (so quick! ha! ha-ha-ha!), I was out again.
   That night, new questions arrived. Didn’t the maze bore the others? Why were they so intent on burrowing when our cage was solid and could not be burrowed through?
   I was missing something. Some important secret about the world.
   It was lonely, Rosie.
   I was lonely every day, until the night I met you.
Always,
Clementine

Editorial Reviews

Droll and delightful. . . Rollicking? Yes, plus great fun, while the broadside against lab testing on animals won’t be lost on even the most naïve of readers.
—The New York Times Book Review

Serious themes lightened by comedic touches; the strong emotional attachments will linger with readers.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Genius rodent Clementine finds her purpose with the help of friends and the game of chess in Sorosiak’s (I, Cosmo) heartfelt, adventure-filled tale. . . . Maintaining a strong emotional core through Clementine’s voice, Sorosiak explores themes—including animal cruelty, duty, empathy, and intelligence—with a deft, light touch.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

This heartwarming and hopeful story is told through letters written by Clementine to Rosie as she finds her purpose in the world. Sorosiak successfully allows the reader to get to know the characters through these letters while still telling a story full of adventures and bravery. . . . The serious themes in the book are dealt with carefully and thoughtfully, making this a good choice for group discussion particularly for older readers. . . a reminder that there is a lot of goodness and friendship in the world.
—School Library Connection (starred review)

The escape-from-the-lab premise is a favorite within the animal-fantasy genre, but Sorosiak keeps it fresh in her latest endeavor. . . this sweetspirited adventure will easily find fans.
—Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2022-06-22
Letters from a super-intelligent mouse to the beloved chimpanzee she leaves behind when she escapes a research lab.

Poignant, loving, and threaded through with the joy of discovery, the letters that Clementine mentally composes to her gentle simian friend tell a tale that takes suspenseful turns while affirming tolerance and self-expression. Thanks to tweaked DNA, she’s thinking about prime numbers the day she is born, helps other mice navigate mazes, and figures out how to escape her cage at night and sign with the lab’s sad, affectionate chimp, Rosie. When a guilt-ridden research assistant spirits her and another mouse subject out of the lab, leaving them in a nearby mailbox, she begins a series of reports to Rosie about the wonders of the outside world. Eleven-year-old Gus and his grandfather welcome the fugitives rather than turn them in for the large reward offered by the lab when the mousenapping is discovered. They create a storm of public protest against animal experimentation by televising a chess match in which Clementine beats five experienced human players simultaneously. Along with offering an optimistic, aspirational view of human nature as she winds the story to a joyous conclusion, Sorosiak tucks in a subplot around nonverbal Hamlet, the other mouse escapee, who constructs a model of Notre Dame out of wood chips, as food for further thought about different intelligences. The human cast seems to be mostly White.

Serious themes lightened by comedic touches; the strong emotional attachments will linger with readers. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews