The Christmas Rat

by Avi

Overview

A boy, a rat, and an exterminator —
three players in a game of survival.
Christmas vacation is supposed to be a blast. Or so Eric thinks. But with all his friends either sick in bed or out of town, Eric's getting more bored by the hour.
Then he meets Anje Gabrail, exterminator.
Anje's got all the normal stuff an exterminator needs — roach powders and smoke bombs — but he also carries some extra equipment: a crossbow and metal-tipped arrows that can penetrate concrete walls and will annihilate any creature with which they come in contact. Anje's number one target? Rats.
To Eric, this guy is creepy but fascinating. So, with nothing better to do, he joins Anje on a mission to destroy the rat living in the basement of his apartment building.
But as Christmas Day draws nearer and the temperature outside keeps dropping, things in the basement go from weird to deadly. And Eric learns how valuable life truly is.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689838439
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	10/01/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	500L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Avi is the author of more than seventy books for children and young adults, including the 2003 Newbery medal winner Crispin: The Cross of Lead. He has won two Newbery Honors and many other awards for his fiction. He lives with his family in Denver, Colorado. Visit him at Avi-Writer.com.

Date of Birth:

December 23, 1937

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

University of Wisconsin; M.A. in Library Science from Columbia University, 1964

Website:

http://www.avi-writer.com

Editorial Reviews

Eric Andrick's Christmas visitor is anything but a warm and fuzzy bringer of holiday joys, in this suspenseful but heavy-handed allegory by a gifted writer. Four days before Christmas, Eric is home alone in the Eden Apartments, terribly bored, and waiting for the exterminator. Enter Anjela Gabrail, white-haired, black-clad, wearing a winged-skull logo, an exterminator who loves to kill and especially loves to kill rats. He enlists Eric in a strange and solemn compact, to kill rats or pay the (unspecified) penalty. In the next few days, as the outdoors cold deepens to mirror the chill of the Eden basement—described as a place that is "like going down into the land of the dead"—Eric and the mysterious Anje move from allies to opponents in a steadily more menacing game whose eventual stated purpose is the life or death of a common street rat. Although the nature of Anje's hold on Eric is never made clear, Eric's steadily growing fear is almost palpable, and readers will be relieved when he wins the deadly game with nothing worse than a bleeding scratch to remind him that killing is not a thing to do out of boredom. The allegory is hammered in, but the building of tension is very skillfully done, and readers who enjoy horror and suspense will enjoy the descriptions of the ambiguous Anje and his deadly serious game. (Fiction. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews

What’s the big deal about a rat?” Complacent and mundane will not be words associated with Eric Andrick after his vacation week adventure. Nor will one think of angels as always benevolent. In the frigid days before the holiday, 12-year-old Eric is left at home while his parents are at work and his friends are unavailable. Boredom turns into spine-tingling intrigue and wonder as Eric initially helps and then thwarts Anjela Gabrail, the rat exterminator supposedly sent by the building superintendent. Jeff Woodman captures the indifference of the teenage boy in a pre-holiday holding pattern, then subtly infuses confidence and determination into his portrayal as the drama unfolds. Woodman and Avi both let the mystery hang in the air. Listen and ponder! A.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

APR/MAY 01 - AudioFile