The Stray
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Adopting an extraterrestrial leads to hilariously mixed results!
When a family goes for a stroll one morning and encounters an adorable little creature with no collar or tag (who just happens to be sitting in the wreckage of an unidentified crash-landed object), they happily adopt the lovable stray. They name him Grub and set about training him, but that works surprisingly . . . poorly. Taking him for a walk is an unexpected adventure, too. As hard as they try to make Grub feel at home, it's just not working. Could he already have a family of his own? Maybe he isn't really a stray, after all--just lost. But how on earth will they be able to find his family when he seems to come from somewhere . . . out of this world?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A family encounters a stray on their walk; since he has neither a collar nor a tag, they take him home. What the narrator never mentions but readers can instantly see is that the stray is a pet-size alien whose spaceship has crashed to earth. Grub, as the family names him, seems comfy in his new home, taking a shine to the toaster and unleashing gravity-suspending powers: soon, the kids are flying around the living room, and a neighbor's wading pool is turned into a multistory waterslide. But Grub grows homesick, and while his adoptive family imagines their new life together (Dad pictures the alien hanging his head out his truck window, just like a dog), they do the right thing: one of their "FOUND" signs reaches the mother ship, and Grub is spirited away. Ruttan (I Am a Thief!) ends her solo debut on an abrupt note ("Maybe we'll see him again sometime!"), but her digitally enhanced charcoal and pastel drawings have heightened textures and an inner radiance that infuse the everyday settings with a lovely fairy tale quality. One can almost believe that extraterrestrial magic really can happen in the most ordinary of places. Ages 3 7.
