Review: Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, Lynne Jonell

I liked this book. Not one of the great works of children's lit, but fun and whimsical and a pretty good story. Also, charming artwork by Jonathan Bean—when you flip the pages, a rat tumbles out of a tree and down the page. Emmy is a good little girl in the clutches of a nasty nanny. She befriends a talking rat with special powers—his bite makes people shrink. There are actually a lot of rodents with special powers in this book, but it's not The Secret of Nimh. The rodents are winsome, but Emmy is the character you care about. This is a pleasant book. Even though Emmy's nanny (Miss Barmy) is fairly despicable, she isn't really frightening—Emmy and her friends always seem to have the upper hand, and it's hard to imagine the story ending unhappily. But the ending is still pretty satisfying and not entirely predictable.