Muddy: The Raccoon Who Stole Dishes

by Griffin Ondaatje, Linda Wolfsgruber (Illustrator)

Overview

A Spring 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection!

"A community of raccoons is happy catching their own food, but one dreams of something more gourmet." - Kirkus Reviews

Muddy the raccoon loves leftovers—and he likes to eat them on plates. “Our son’s a picky eater,” his parents say.

When Muddy gets caught, the oldest, wisest raccoon insists he make amends. But when all 27 raccoons enter the restaurant to return Muddy’s stolen plates, what happens next is not what anyone expects.

Mischievous Muddy will steal your heart!



Praise for The Camel in the Sun (Griffin Ondaatje’s and Linda Wolfsgruber)

"A tender story, eloquently rendered."— Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
"A lesson in empathy—for animals but also in general—delivered at a pace as stately as a camel’s." —Kirkus Reviews
"This will appeal to many ages, both as a peek into another culture and as an engaging story about a creature that finally gets the empathy it deserves."—Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735843370
Publisher:	NorthSouth Books
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Griffin Ondaatje was born in Kingston, Canada. He is the author of The Mosquito Brothers, and The Camel in the Sun, illustrated by Linda Wolfsgruber, which was selected for the Austria Children’s Book Prize and shortlisted for the Middle East Book Award. He also edited The Monkey King and Other Stories, a collection of South Asian stories, folktales and legends, and directed Complete Unknown, a documentary film about Bob Dylan. His books have been translated into German, Korean, Arabic, Italian and Swedish. He has three children and lives in Cambridge with his family.

Linda Wolfsgruber was born in South Tyrol, Italy. She is a world-renowned artist who has exhibited her work throughout Europe and in the United States and Japan. She has won many awards, including the Austrian Art Award (2016), the Children’s and Juvenile Book Award for Illustration (four times), and the Golden Apple of the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava. She is on the shortlist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award (2018). She lives in Vienna.

Editorial Reviews

Softly rendered watercolor illustrations, with sketchy lines and evocative details, nicely depict the story and its droll touches, such as the resourceful raccoons’ animated dialogue, their habit of fastidiously washing items 17 times, and Muddy’s dapper red bow tie. Animal fans in particular will likely enjoy the quirky premise and cute, independent-minded Muddy.

Booklist - Shelle Rosenfeld

06/21/2019

PreS-Gr 2-Muddy Whiskers is a young raccoon whose preference for human leftovers eaten on plates causes trouble for his parents and their neighbors. All the raccoons who live by Mud River once lived in the city but were banished for eating from garbage bins. Not wanting further trouble, they pledged to stop eating people's leftovers and now enjoy clams gathered from the river. But Muddy can't make that promise, and when a "fancy new restaurant" opens across the river, he steals one of its plates and piles it with whatever leftovers he can find. This becomes a habit, and Muddy discovers he can even take food from inside the establishment. When his parents and the other raccoons discover the pile of plates that Muddy has accumulated, they bring them back to the restaurant. But the parade of plate-carrying raccoons frightens away the restaurant's patrons, leaving lots of food-filled plates. The illustrations are executed in a soft blue-gray palette for nocturnal scenes and sand-colored gold for the expanse of shore and birch trees where the animals spend their days. The restaurant and its fleeing diners are depicted in bright blue. VERDICT While the illustrations are lovely, the story lacks tension. Raccoons that deprive a restaurant of its business and eat its food with impunity is a strange message to share with children.-Marianne Saccardi, Children's Literature Consultant, Cambridge, MA

School Library Journal

2019-01-15

A community of raccoons is happy catching their own food, but one dreams of something more gourmet.

"Muddy was ordinary…but he couldn't stand ordinary raccoon food." He and his family live by a river, but "he refused to eat frogs, slugs," and other wild-caught delicacies, preferring "garbage—any leftover food he could find—and he liked to eat it on plates." He and his community used to live in a city but were driven out into the wilderness by the humans they disturbed. Muddy refuses to give up, though, sneaking across the river to steal food from the new waterside restaurant and bring plates back to his home. The other raccoons, afraid of getting into trouble, wash the plates (as raccoons are wont to do) and take them back, scaring off the diners—and leaving the raccoons with the abandoned feast. Raccoons could be charming protagonists. Unfortunately these, randomly sporting bow ties and scarves, are crudely drawn and inconsistently anthropomorphized, failing to tap into the potential charm of these strange creatures. Despite a strong beginning, the storytelling lacks any bolstering structure, and as a read-aloud it falls flat, with clunky transitions and irrelevant, tongue-tangling details.

Raccoons, their appetites, and their washing habits should be a winning combination, but this story is unlikely to satisfy. (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews