DONALDSON, Julia. The Highway Rat. illus. by Axel Scheffler. 32p. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. Apr. 2013. RTE $16.99. ISBN 978-0-545-47758-1.
PreS-Gr 2–Inspired by Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman,” Donaldson tells the tale of a swashbuckling rat with mask and cape who stops hapless travelers and takes their food at sword point. While he prefers chocolates, puddings, and cakes, he steals clover from a rabbit, nuts from a squirrel, and even hay from his own horse. “The creatures who traveled the highway/grew thinner and thinner and thinner,/While the Highway Rat grew horribly fat/from eating up everyone’s dinner.” A brave duck in a red kerchief lures the thief to a distant cave, supposedly full of biscuits and buns. While he follows the echoes of his own voice deeper and deeper into the dark, the duck jumps on Rat’s horse and takes the stolen food back to her hungry friends. Eventually he emerges on the other side of the hill, becomes a reformed rodent, and finds work sweeping the floor at a cake shop. Scheffler’s rich, dark palette creates a brooding atmosphere just right for the Highway Rat’s dastardly deeds, and his cartoon-style characters are a wonderful tongue-in-cheek contrast. Humorous details abound, including Gruffalo cookies in the cake shop from this British duo’s The Gruffalo (Puffin, 2006). This well-paced, rollicking tale is a guaranteed storytime treat.–Mary Jean Smith, formerly at Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN

UK Children’s Laureate Julia Donaldson fights library closures and cuts.

the eve of a six-week library tour, sent an open letter to the newly appointed Culture Secretary Maria Miller, urging her to save Britain’s libraries.

The Gruffalo author, who embarked on her tour of England, Wales, and Scotland on September 10, says she’s promoting the value of libraries at a time when so many of them are under threat of closure. Donaldson also plans to visit libraries in Northern Ireland in March 2013.

“Libraries are very close to my heart; not only do they provide a wonderful opportunity for adults and children to browse, borrow and engage with books, but they are also great community centers,” Donaldson says. “This tour is my way of celebrating libraries, to highlight all that they do and offer—from lively baby and toddler rhyme-times and book club discussions to calm spaces for study and contemplation—and to protest against the cuts and closures, which are threatening so many of them.”

Donaldson’s letter to Miller criticizes her predecessor Jeremy Hunt and Libraries Minister Ed Vaizey for not acting on violations to the 1964 Libraries Act, which states that “every authority must provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ library service. Donaldson says she hopes her tour will draw attention to the “erosion of the library service which is happening in so many local authorities, and to the current government’s utter refusal to intervene or to provide any leadership.”

A spokesperson with the UK’s Department for Culture Media and Sport told the BBC that Miller would be happy to meet with Donaldson, but added that libraries are funded and run by local authorities rather than the central government—and that it was up to local authorities to decide the best way to provide library services to their communities.

Donaldson cites a recent survey by Public Libraries News, which shows that since April 2012 nearly 250 UK libraries are either under threat of closure or have been closed. Another survey by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals estimates that during this fiscal year 2,159 library positions out of a total of 20,924 will be cut—which is on top of huge cuts made in previous years. Library cuts have varied from region to region, with some places suffering budget cuts of up to 35 percent and “cuts in book stocks of up to 90 percent,” Donaldson’s letter reads.

Donaldson asserts that Vaizey denied any problems with library services in the UK. “This may be because he is happy with the idea (now a reality in some areas) of libraries being run entirely by volunteers,” Donaldson says, adding that she hopes this is only a short-term measure. “This summer, while visiting France, I had an engagement in a village library whose users were thrilled because at last they were getting a professional librarian. Yet we are going in the opposite direction.”

Donaldson’s letter goes on to day that she’s particularly concerned about the impact of library closures on children’s reading. “Today many towns have no bookshops,” she writes. “If they also have no library, where are children to find books?”

Donaldson’s tour will include bringing some of her stories to life through acting and singing. She will also visit local independent bookshops, as well as celebrate community relations among libraries, bookshops, and schools.

Donaldson joins other high-profile British authors, such as previous Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne, Philip Pullman, and Alan Gibbons, who have spent years championing school and public libraries in the UK.