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When I started reading reviews about The Underneath by Kathi Appelt and the amazing Newbery buzz that it was getting, I had to read it.  And let’s face it.  The Underneath has Newbery potential written all over it.  I would be shocked if it doesn’t receive one.  It’s one of those rare books that comes along and makes you say, “Wow, that was different.”

The first line:  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.

Okay, full honestly here.  I wanted to stop right there.  Seriously?  I am not a cat person.  I didn’t know if I could handle an entire book about a cat.  But then again, the cover clues you in.  There was a dog too.  I much prefer dogs.  But reading about cats and dogs?  Seriously?  Could I handle it?

A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep inthe backwawters of the bayou.  She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate.  They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family.  Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them.  But they are safe in the Underneath . . . as long as they stay in the Underneath.

There is another story that takes place one thousand years before this one and both stories intersect for a tale about the power of love and hate, loss, betrayal, and redemption.  What surprised me, because I didn’t know it going in, was how mystical The Underneath is.  It’s also very dark.  If your children are prone to extreme empathy, you may want to read this book with them.  Appelt doesn’t spare the animal abuse.  I just cringed at how awful Gar-Face was.

As an example of both Appelt’s writing and Gar-Face’s character:

Here then is a hard-edged bitter boy become a man known as Gar Face.  For twenty-five years, while the old loblolly pine shed its branches and bark into the Little Sorrowful Creek and watched them drift toward the sea, Gar Face has roamed this hidden forest.  Here, underneath the canopy of the watchmaking willows and birches and ash.  Over the past quarter century, the years have softened the old pine.  Not so Gar face.

Do not cross his angry path.  Do not.

The Underneath is told very much as a show and tell type book.  “Here is this, here is that, look at that, beware this.”   It’s also told in alternating chapters and it does get a little confusing to go back and forth. And it takes a really long time for anything substantial to happen.

That said, The Underneath is stunning and beautiful.  It deserves all of the buzz it’s receiving.  But I can’t help but say that I am not totally falling heads over heels over it and running out to say, “Read this book!”  I just didn’t devour it, but I still really liked it. and recognize how brilliant it is.  And come Newbery award season, like I said earlier, I’d be surprised if The Underneath wasn’t recognized.  It truly does deserve it.

The book trailer:

Kathi Appelt website.

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