Title: I Was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers
Author: Philip Pullman
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 190
Rating 3.5/5
This book was always going to struggle to a certain extent because Pullman is one of my favourite authors and here he’s writing a fairy tale, which isn’t necessarily my favourite genre. That said, he did a decent enough job, and I think he got the balance right between having a moral and avoiding forcing it down the reader’s throat.
The result is a story that can be read in multiple ways, and I guess that’d make it a good one to pick up if you need a bedtime book for kids that can also make adults think. That’s what Pullman does best, really, and so it’s no surprise that he pulls it off once again here. I’m not convinced I’d recommend this over some of his others, though. It’s good, but it’s not that good, but then it is also deliberately written in a different style to the stuff of Pullman’s that I love the most.
