Clarice the brave

Review by Booklist Review

Clarice the mouse lives aboard a sailing vessel with her brother, Charles Sebastian, avoiding humans and felines. After whispers of mutiny spread below deck, mutineers set the captain and his comrades adrift in a small launch, and a panicked Clarice is separated from her brother. She ends up on the tiny boat, along with the captain's fearsome cat, but as the situation worsens, the desperate animals come to a shaky understanding. Meanwhile, Charles Sebastian receives a crash course in survival on the larger vessel, finding an ally in a young girl. Can the separated siblings find a way to reunite? The rodents split storytelling duties, alternating between cozy details of their small vantage points on the terrifyingly vast sea and occasionally misunderstood human world. There is real peril and death on the water, but the delicate cat-mouse and mouse-girl relationships are a joy to watch unfold, and a recurring theme of the power of belief in oneself and others is a cheering antidote to the bleak circumstances. An absorbing adventure from an unexpected perspective.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Delicately balancing hope and despair, McMann (the Unwanteds Quests series) lovingly brings to life the tale of ship's mouse Clarice and her runt-of-the-litter brother, Charles Sebastian. Life aboard a ship at sea is all that cunning, pragmatic Clarice and intelligent yet impulsive Charles Sebastian have ever known. While they have plenty, dangers abound--including the "three horrid ship cats," one of whom devoured their sister; disease, which killed their other siblings; and unexpected waves, which took their mother, leaving them with only each other. A mutiny, however, sets the siblings on a bleak, wondrous journey of self-discovery, as they search for one another and find salvation in the most unlikely places. Leaning heavily on the theme of loss, the novel normalizes feelings of sadness and grief for younger readers, relayed in an assured tone and elegant prose. Caparo's full-page, fine-lined b&w illustrations emphasize the relationships from varying, carefully sketched angles. Told from the shifting viewpoints of each mouse, the narrative keenly focuses on the obstacles placed in their paths and the growth processes--both the positive and negative--each must follow to find their way to a new normal. Ages 8--up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Oct.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Mutiny on their shipboard home separates mouse siblings. Clarice and Charles Sebastian--the runt of the litter--have lived all their lives on the Carlotta. But after their mother is washed overboard, Clarice knows it's up to her to take care of Charles Sebastian, especially since her mother's last words were that she believed in her. During a mutiny, Clarice's crate is thrown aboard the launch along with the castoff human captain and crew, but Charles Sebastian is left aboard with the mutineers. Clarice is devastated to lose her brother and horrified to discover that Special Lady, the ship's cat who ate her sister, is in the launch as well. Dire need forces the cat and mouse to collaborate, as the launch runs out of food and water and people start dying. All the while, Clarice worries that Charles Sebastian won't survive by himself, and she vows to find him again. Adventures follow, the narration going back and forth between the siblings. The relationship between Clarice and Special Lady is very well drawn, as is Charles Sebastian's unusual friendship aboard the Carlotta with Benjelloun, a 12-year-old girl chained in the brig by the mutineers. However, Clarice's repetitious rumination on her worry for Charles Sebastian and her mother's final words eventually become threadbare prompts, blunting the theme's impact. Human characters read as White. Final illustrations not seen. A bit repetitious but a fine, unusual story altogether. (Adventure. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Mutiny. I'd heard that word before. Sailors whispered it on the mess deck, where my brother and I lived in the corner of a wooden crate thec olor of a November cornfield. They muttered it like an oath late at night after an extra dram of grog. They sent it, quiet, like a prayer, through the ripe silence between slaps of the whip or thuds to the ribs from a thick boot. I'd heard it, but I hadn't grasped what it meant. Or what it would mean for us. It was just a word. Our crate was filled with burlap sacks of coffee beans slowly going stale in the locked pantry off the galley. The padlock didn't affect us--­we could squeeze under the door easily enough. But it kept out the sailors and the cats. Only Heyu, the pasty-­skinned kitchen boy who wore the key on a chain around his neck, came and went several times a day, fetching things for the cook. Nevertheless, we two were safe most of the time, and we had food available. After watching everyone around us die, that's really all we wanted. My brother, Charles Sebastian, and I were the only ones left of our family. Our siblings had been taken by disease or eaten by Special Lady, who was one of three horrid ship cats. She spent most of her time in the galley near the cook, awaiting a lurch that might cause a scrap of food to fall into her gaping maw. She was the captain's pet: a dreadful, thick orange thing, always trying to sneak into the pantry behind the kitchen boy. She ate our sister Olivia. Olivia's death had come as a jolt, for she'd been the strongest and fastest of the litter. Her failure to outrun Special Lady weighed heavily on me. If she couldn't survive . . . how could I? Was it only a matter of time? The thought was paralyzing. "How have you made it this long, Mother?" I'd asked soon after, back when she was still with us. "Some of it was luck, little bean," Mother had admitted. Then she'd examined me carefully, as if able to see the clouds of worry that pressed behind my eyes. "And understanding that hiding can be a better choice than fleeing." After she'd said it, she'd glanced worriedly across the pantry at my brother. Charles Sebastian had an especially strong instinct to run, which led to him sometimes losing his head. The rest of us were constantly trying to teach him how to control his impulses. Was she concerned that he'd be next? "What if we fail?" I said, feeling faint. "What if we run when we should hide?" Her warm breath bathed my ear. "Clarice," she said, "when I was young, about to set off alone to see the world, I had a lot of doubts. Leaving my family was hard, but the call of adventure wouldn't stop just because I was scared. On the night I left to stow away on this ship, my father told me something that helped me worry less during the darkest times." "What was it?" I could hardly get the words out fast enough. Her sad whiskers, mourning Olivia, turned slightly upward as she remembered. "He said, 'It only takes one mouse to believe in you. And that one mouse is me.' " I felt a rush of warmth. "And what did you think of that?" "It made me feel strong, and confident in my decisions. I repeated those words whenever I doubted myself or felt alone in the world." She stared off into the dark pantry, reminiscing. "I can still hear my father's voice . . ." Then she looked at me. "And I want you to know that I believe in you as much as my father believed in me." My mother's sincerity in that moment had made my heart swell. I already knew that I made good decisions most of the time, but her words buoyed my confidence in a way I hadn't realized I needed. Moments later she'd called Charles Sebastian to go with her on a hunt for fresh water. Perhaps she'd wanted a quiet moment to encourage him in the same way. We'd never know the answer, though, for on that trip Mother was doused by a rogue wave and swept overboard. Gone in an instant. Charles Sebastian returned alone, shaken to the core. The pantry felt twice its size without her presence to fill it. My mother loved the sea, but I despised it. Her death gave me even more reason to hate it. Water is deceptive. It seems soft, but it isn't. A wave's unexpected slap is enough to break a poor mouse's neck. Charles Sebastian had seen it happen. After that, he refused to leave the pantry, and I returned to my doubts. If our own seafaring-­adventurer mother couldn't survive, what chance did we have? Without her we stayed in our crate, more scared than ever. We sat huddled together, slept curled together, and ate what we could find together. Only I ventured out for water in the dead of night, collecting drips for my brother in the curve of a broken wooden spoon that I gripped between my teeth. There was nothing else that could get us to leave our safe crate now. Nothing but that word. Excerpted from Clarice the Brave by Lisa McMann All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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