The Stray

Reviews / Votes

"This charming tale of a family's encounter with an amiable alien is really two parallel narratives, one told in the text and the other in the illustrations. The simple, straightforward text describes a family's relatively ordinary experience of finding a stray and adopting it as a pet. . . . The illustrations, however, depict a more unusual story. . . . Vibrant lime-green beams radiate from Grub's whiskers and surround objects as they float across the pages-a signal to readers that something truly alien is afoot. Smart page-turns and high-impact double-page spreads enhance the already clever dual narratives of a unique lost-pet story."-The Horn Book

"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. . . . [Ruttan's] 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."-Publishers Weekly

"Many of the narrative details are cleverly embedded in the artwork: while the text alone reads as though the family has simply found a stray dog or cat, the illustrations clearly depict Grub as a small alien creature with stalk eyes and pointy teeth who emerges from a crashed spaceship and levitates objects in the family's house and neighborhood. Fun and layered, this is an appealing story for family bedtime reads."-Booklist