The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie by Chris Van Allsburg (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie by Chris Van Allsburg Deborah Stevenson Van Allsburg, Chris The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie; written and illus. by Chris Van Allsburg. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014 32p ISBN 978-0-547-31582-9 $18.99 M 7–9 yrs Poor Sweetie Pie: the hamster finally leaves the petshop for a series of indifferent owners, and even his escape in a plastic hamster ball just leads him to another problem placement. Finally he’s made a class pet, but his weekend caretaker lets him escape into the wintry outdoors; though the class is sure Sweetie Pie died in the snow, he actually hibernated, and he now lives happily in a tree with his squirrel friends. The story is grimly purposive and yet not very clear; since there are no decent models for animal caretaking to make it a lesson in husbandry, it seems to be just an old-school moral tale focusing here on the evils of animal domestication—but the solution offered isn’t likely to work out so well for most domestic hamsters, and the plot lacks the peaks and valleys that make animal welfare sagas like Black Beauty so absorbing. The smooth, softly shaded colored pencil and watercolor art sets the drama against bland, innocent backdrops, which makes the contrast of the anthropomorphized hamster’s distress and the savagery of the humans all the more alarming, especially in the hamster’s-eye view of threats such as the snarling dog. While this might be used as a scared-straight tool for encouraging better animal treatment, it’s a pretty blunt instrument likely to cause some collateral damage with its unhappy audience. [End Page 279] Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois