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Kaethe

Kaethe

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I Was a Rat! - Philip Pullman I would be curious to see how a young reader reacts to this, because there's a lot here that I expect to appeal primarily to an adult audience. One night, a boy knocks on the door of a cobbler and his wife, a laundress. "I was a rat" he tells them, only three weeks old, and then, suddenly, he was a boy, dressed as a page to nobility. And now he is lost and alone and tired and hungry. Being kind folks, they take him in, and do their best to find out where he comes from, and to whom he belongs. They check with the police, and the orphanage and the school, but no one has reported the boy missing.Meanwhile, The Daily Scourge newspaper is full of the wedding of the Prince and his new bride, the dress, the redecorating of the castle, the romantic story of how they met at a ball.The boy, now called Roger is investigated by the Royal Philosopher, and then lost to the streets. He has a number of Dickensian adventures while the kindly couple search for him, and is finally captured as a monster living in the sewers. The press is baying for the extermination of the dreadful monster, the scientists who have examined him have concluded that despite his appearance of a boy he must be something else, and the courts are intervening.Pullman must have had tremendous fun writing this, satirizing the newspapers, their obsession with royalty, and weddings, and monsters, mocking carnival side shows, fairy tales, and scientists. I was tremendously entertained. It would make an excellent read-aloud, having something in it to amuse every age of reader.Library copy.