Mouseheart by Lisa Fiedler is a juvenile adventure story featuring mice and rats.
Hopper's
life started in a Brooklyn pet store, and it looks like it's going to
end there. When Hopper and his siblings overhear that the pet store
owner is about to sell them as snake food, they know they must do
something drastic right away. The ensuing escape results in Hopper and
his siblings being split up. Hopper finds himself in the sewers, where
he meets up with a friendly, streetwise young rat named Zucker, who also
happens to be the prince of the underground rat kingdom of Atlantia.
This kingdom seems like a paradise to Hopper, especially since, as a
friend of the prince, he is given a lavish royal welcome. However, all
is not as it seems in the kingdom, and revolutionaries threaten to bring
it down from the outside. All Hopper wants to do is to be reunited with
his lost siblings -- but does he have a larger role to play?
This
animal fantasy was, for me, just an okay read. I thought it was a
little predictable, and Hopper's extreme naivete, though believable, was
irritating to me. I'll recommend this to kids who can't get enough of
this sort of story, but everyone else can probably pass on this one.
(Reviewed from an advance copy, courtesy of the publisher.)
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