Jonell’s Rat Books Take a Bite Out of Fall
By Shannon Maughan, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 9/18/2008
When readers first met Emmy Addison, star of Lynne Jonell’s warmly received first middle-grade novel, Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat (Holt, 2007), she appeared an ordinary 10-year-old having a rough go of it. Her calm and cozy life had been turned on its ear when her parents inherited a family fortune. The girl hardly saw her globe-trotting and suddenly uncaring parents, and was instead left in the care of a sinister nanny. She became virtually invisible to her teacher and classmates, and to cap it all off, she was bitten by the class pet, a rat.
But that fateful nibble, which enabled Emmy to understand everything the rat said, is where Emmy’s—and readers’—real adventures began, in a tale of action, science experiments, magic and suspense.
Now, Emmy, a likeable mixture of Nancy Drew and Dr. Dolittle, is set to embark on a new adventure in a sequel, Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls, due out October 14. The paperback edition of Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat was released earlier this month in hopes that it will generate some renewed buzz for the follow-up. “The first book has been really catching on with kids,” says Holt senior editor Reka Simonsen. “I think it’s just now poised to break out.”
Simonsen believes that young readers are gravitating to the Emmy books because they are “a nice blend of creative characters and fun wordplay. It’s a case of kids being smart, without being too coy, in a world where adults are the clueless ones. That’s always appealing.” Both books also have a playful design feature—an intricate black and white border on each page by illustrator Jonathan Bean that provides a bit of “animation” when readers flip the pages.
Support for Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat has been building, beginning with several starred journal reviews upon its release. The title also landed on some year-end holiday and best books lists, which provided an extra boost. Jonell, described as a “dynamo” by Holt publicity manager Jennifer Abbots, puts plenty of energy into promotion as well, blogging in the voice of book character Raston Rat and doing numerous school and library visits and workshops. To help introduce Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls, Jonell will make joint bookstore appearances with fellow Holt author Elise Broach (Masterpiece) in November, hitting stops in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and Texas.
Jonell has said in various interviews that she initially thought Emmy’s exploits would form a picture book, as that format has been her stock in trade (she has published seven of them to date). But the author kept discovering new elements of the story that she wanted to add. By the time she had all of it worked out she “had a book 120,000 words long. Then I had to cut it in half.”
At present there aren’t firm plans for more books about Emmy and her rodent pals. “We have discussed ideas to maybe go forward, but we didn’t want to position it as a series,” Simonsen said. In the meantime, Jonell has just turned in the final manuscript for a new fantasy novel, tentatively titled The Secret of Zoom, scheduled for next fall. “It’s got orphans, a secret tunnel and ‘mysterious bad things on the hill.’ ” Simonsen says. “It’s really fun.”
Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls by Lynne Jonell. Holt, $17.95 ISBN 978-0-8050-8151-0
