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A review by library_brandy
Sadie and Ratz by Sonya Hartnett
4.0
Why, yes, I've had the attention span of a gnat lately, and a Beginning Reader book is about my speed.
Picked this up because I love this author and wanted to see what she did with the younger format. Turns out, what she did is exactly what I should have expected--a realistic story that highlights something that's both common and dark; in this case, creating what is essentially a pair of imaginary friends (her hands) through which she can act out her frustrations and vent her childish anger. She has particular trouble dealing with her little brother and the attention he gets, so he takes the brunt of Sadie's and Ratz's rage.
It's not my favorite of her books (that's probably either The Ghost's Child or What the Birds See), it still has her usual sense of how things truly are for kids, not how we wish they would be. (I'm reminded of a line from My So-Called Life, about how "the yearbook isn't a book of what really happened; it's a book about what we wish had happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it would be a really depressing book." And that's a great way to sum up most of Hartnett's writing.)
Picked this up because I love this author and wanted to see what she did with the younger format. Turns out, what she did is exactly what I should have expected--a realistic story that highlights something that's both common and dark; in this case, creating what is essentially a pair of imaginary friends (her hands) through which she can act out her frustrations and vent her childish anger. She has particular trouble dealing with her little brother and the attention he gets, so he takes the brunt of Sadie's and Ratz's rage.
It's not my favorite of her books (that's probably either The Ghost's Child or What the Birds See), it still has her usual sense of how things truly are for kids, not how we wish they would be. (I'm reminded of a line from My So-Called Life, about how "the yearbook isn't a book of what really happened; it's a book about what we wish had happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it would be a really depressing book." And that's a great way to sum up most of Hartnett's writing.)