Children's Book Review: The Underneath

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small (S&S/Atheneum, $16.99, 9781416950585/1416950583, ages 8-12, May 2008)

From the moment this novel begins, readers will feel they are in the hands of a master storyteller. The rhythm of the telling unfolds like a primal drum beat, the pulsing of the heart. The setting is an ancient piney woods forest on the Sabine River that separates Texas from Louisiana. The story unfolds through an omniscient narrator, who takes the part of the creatures that inhabit the forest. Humans walk here, but the power lies among the trees themselves, with the Alligator King who has ruled the river for a thousand years, and the even older Grandmother Moccasin, the venomous half-serpent, half-human who sits curled up, trapped, in a jar buried under an old loblolly pine . . . and waits. The narrative begins with a cat: "There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. A small calico cat."

With that first line of her first novel, Appelt (Oh My Baby, Little One) translates the universal to the specific. And that opening sets up the dilemma of nearly every character who passes through these pages: that small calico, the twin kittens to which she gives birth, the bloodhound with whom the calico finds unlikely companionship and love, and, yes, even Grandmother Moccasin. The human villain, Gar Face, named for the scar his father left him in a drunken strike one night, was once a boy, and now an embittered man who seeks to kill the Alligator King and who beats his bloodhound, the hound that cares for the calico cat. (A stunning drawing by Small, an aerial view of Gar Face in his boat, the gargantuan gator lurking beneath, illustrates how impossible the man's dream.) Here is the story of characters who have loved deeply and, when betrayed, seek revenge. Grandmother Moccasin once loved so deeply she took a human form and, after her love betrayed her, resumed her serpent shape for all eternity. But that was not the end of her betrayal: she had a daughter, too, Night Song, whom she loved most of all, but who left Grandmother due to her love for a man. Readers will feel a sense of inevitability as all these lives in the forest, ancient yet present, begin to entwine: Gar Face and the Alligator King, Grandmother Moccasin and Night Song, the hound, the calico and her kittens. The primal drumbeat quickens, and the story toggles between the ancient tale of Grandmother Moccasin and the present-day plight of the calico kittens living below the rageful Gar Face's porch, the Underneath. Appelt makes clear that there can be no joy without sorrow, and her ending is triumphant. Readers will want to return to these piney woods on the Sabine River again and again.--Jennifer M. Brown