I Was a Rat

by Philip Pullman

I have a confession. I am terrible at figuring out what is going to happen in a book. Unless the foreshadowing is so obvious that an illiterate child (or SBVISP) could predict the ending, I’ll probably miss it. Sometimes this is bad. But most of the time I am pleasantly shocked at each and every plot twist. It may not be that I’m stupid; I like to think that I suspend my analytic side so that I can just enjoy the book. (Harry Potter is a notable exception to this.)

That being said, I absolutely loved reading Pullman’s I Was a Rat! I’m willing to bet that most third-graders could figure out the secret to the story. I actually had to look at an illustration to really understand what happened at the end. It was a fantastic twist. If you have a hard time detecting the obvious, you’ll love this book too. Even if you’re brilliant, it’s a really amusing book and I heartily recommend it to readers old and young.