Rat Rule 79

 
 
Rat Rule 79

by Rivka Galchen

art by Elana Megalos

Restless Books

2019

 

 

Rat Rule 79 is a middle-grade book in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth. Fred (presumably short for Winifred) and her mother, an itinerant math professor, have just moved into yet another new apartment in a new city, it's the day before Fred's birthday, and Fred is mad at their whole situation. Their economic situation suggests that Fred's mom is a contingent faculty member who moves because she has to, rather than a star mathematician moving up the R1 ranks.

 
Fred refuses to fall asleep until her mom apologizes, then has a vision of her mom stepping through a portal and disappearing, so she follows after. Fred is transported to the Land of Impossibility, which is shaped by various math concepts and pun-logic. It's also officially ruled by the Rat, who is much-loved, currently missing, and has most recently issued Rat Rule 79, which forbids birthdays and birthday parties, as well as growing older and the passage of time more generally.

 
Fred quickly meets a depressed elephant named Downer, and Gogo, a fightin' mongoose. She agrees to help them find the Rat, and they agree to help her find her mom. They also run into trouble from characters like the Know-It-Owl and Dogma, a cute little dog who enforces the Rat Rules.

 
About halfway through the book, they find the Rat, who isn't really missing, just depressed, because her son the Hart ran away in protest when she declared Rat Rule 79. Downer, Fred, and Gogo agree to find the Hart. Fred thinks that the Rat needs to accept that her son is getting older, that this is unstoppable even if you make a Rule, and that trying to follow Rat Rule 79 is causing problems for everyone, all over.

 
They do find the Hart, and by throwing him a birthday party, engineer a reconciliation between Hart and Rat, who abolishes Rule 79. Along the way, Fred stops being angry at her mom, realizes she's dreaming, and in the end, wakes up to have her own birthday.

 
Galchen writes rather playfully. Her narrator is a sympathetic close third-person, who occasionally chimes in to say things like 'I think Fred was being too hard on herself,' which makes the whole thing feel like a bedtime story. She gives us very short chapters describing interesting math ideas in between major scene breaks. And notably, the chapters aren't conventionally numbered. The first chapter is 'Chapter Zero,' and the last is 'Chapter One.' In between, perhaps keeping woth the theme of stopped time, we get things like 'Chapter Red,' 'Chapter Redder,' 'Chapter Fork,' 'Chapter Spoon,' and 'Chapter Ate.'

 
I don't think it's quite as good as The Phantom Tollbooth, but it's pretty good, and might be nice for kids who want more books like that, or girls who have their own complex mom relationships to think through.