Becky's review
Gregor the Overlander (The Underland Chronicles: Book One)
by Suzanne Collins
I believe that rats are on top right now, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Splinter and Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH. Right? Voldemort obviously rules as the evilest of snakes. Hmmm. I'll keep a tally. :)
Ratatouille also goes in the Good Rats column.
More Bad Rats: in Lady and the Tramp; in Coraline...
More Bad Snakes: Kaa in The Jungle Book; Asmodeus in Redwall...
Any Good Snakes out there?
"Rats are dirty, rats are mean, rats are really not too clean." Who said that? David Sedaris? Gosh, I can't think of any good snakes. It's easier to make rats appealing; they can be anthropomorphized more easily than snakes. A snake can't really wear a cute doublet or boots anything. I guess a snake could wear a nice jaunty hat, though. (Like Lowly Worm... I guess he had an outfit-- with one shoe!)
Bad snakes: Nag and Nagaina (sp?) from Riki-Tiki-Tavi
Misunderstood snake: Sir Hiss from Disney's animated Robin Hood movie
Good rat: Eloise (R.I.P.) from this week's awesome LOST episode...
There's a book just reviewed in the NYT Book Review called The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin. How appropriate to our discussion!
Becky's review
Gregor the Overlander (The Underland Chronicles: Book One) by Suzanne Collins
Becky's review
rating:
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recommended for: 4th grade and up, fans of City of Ember
** spoiler alert **
This book was a lot like "The Golden Compass" for me, in that I couldn't seem to get through the first few chapters for many months, but once I broke through, I read it nonstop.
Riley at Genoa insisted that I read this when I said I liked how Ananka in "Kiki Strike" falls into another world, much like Alice in Wonderland. I was relieved to read that Suzanne Collins thought about Wonderland as well, and "how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who live in urban surroundings." Gregor becomes an urban Alice when he falls (with his baby sister, Boots) down a grate behind the dryer in his laundry room and finds himself in the Underland. Here, humans have adapted with very little light, living in various states of harmony and war with oversize bats, cockroaches, spiders, and (all together now) evil rats. [Someone should do a comparison study: in the anthropomorphizing of animals in literature, who is ahead in terms of representing evil: rats or snakes?]
...more
Riley at Genoa insisted that I read this when I said I liked how Ananka in "Kiki Strike" falls into another world, much like Alice in Wonderland. I was relieved to read that Suzanne Collins thought about Wonderland as well, and "how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who live in urban surroundings." Gregor becomes an urban Alice when he falls (with his baby sister, Boots) down a grate behind the dryer in his laundry room and finds himself in the Underland. Here, humans have adapted with very little light, living in various states of harmony and war with oversize bats, cockroaches, spiders, and (all together now) evil rats. [Someone should do a comparison study: in the anthropomorphizing of animals in literature, who is ahead in terms of representing evil: rats or snakes?]
...more
I believe that rats are on top right now, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Splinter and Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH. Right? Voldemort obviously rules as the evilest of snakes. Hmmm. I'll keep a tally. :)
Ratatouille also goes in the Good Rats column.
More Bad Rats: in Lady and the Tramp; in Coraline...
More Bad Snakes: Kaa in The Jungle Book; Asmodeus in Redwall...
Any Good Snakes out there?
"Rats are dirty, rats are mean, rats are really not too clean." Who said that? David Sedaris? Gosh, I can't think of any good snakes. It's easier to make rats appealing; they can be anthropomorphized more easily than snakes. A snake can't really wear a cute doublet or boots anything. I guess a snake could wear a nice jaunty hat, though. (Like Lowly Worm... I guess he had an outfit-- with one shoe!)
Bad snakes: Nag and Nagaina (sp?) from Riki-Tiki-Tavi
Misunderstood snake: Sir Hiss from Disney's animated Robin Hood movie
Good rat: Eloise (R.I.P.) from this week's awesome LOST episode...
There's a book just reviewed in the NYT Book Review called The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin. How appropriate to our discussion!

