Hopper's Destiny

Zusatztext For ravenous readers of Erin Hunter! Brian Jacques! and Kathryn Lasky! this is a not-to-be-missed series. Informationen zum Autor Lisa Fiedler is the author of many novels for children and young adults. She divides her time between Connecticut and the Rhode Island seashore, where she lives happily with her very patient husband, her brilliant and beloved daughter, and their two incredibly spoiled golden retrievers.Vivienne To has illustrated several books, including The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins and the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective series by Octavia Spencer. As a child, she had two pet mice escape. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia, with her partner and her ginger cat. Visit her at VivienneTo.com. Klappentext A brave pet shop mouse named Hopper attempts to rebuild a fallen empire in the underground rat civilization of Atlantia, located in the subway tunnels of Brooklyn, while Queen Felina and her band of street cats declare open season on the rodents.Hopper’s Destiny CHAPTER ONE LA ROCHA’S JOURNAL—FROM the Sacred Book of the Mus I, the mystical and revered La Rocha, look down now upon the remains of the once-prosperous city of Atlantia. It has been a fortnight since the battle—a mere two weeks, yet it feels like two thousand years. Below me the city smolders. The factories no longer produce, and the streets no longer bustle with Atlantia’s fortunate citizens, who so recently went about their business, blissfully secure in the guarantee of safety and prosperity. Safety purchased at an unspeakable cost. The rats who dwelled here were not directly to blame; they were ignorant to all of it. But then, if they never thought to wonder or investigate, do they not share a fraction of the guilt? The Atlantian citizens only knew that their emperor, Titus, had arranged a peace accord with the feral cats that provided the rodents with comfortable lives and untroubled minds. They never bothered to ask the true cost of that peace. Now the city is overrun with the refugees who would have been sacrificed to keep the ferals from preying upon Atlantia. These were mice and rats and squirrels and chipmunks found wandering in the subway tunnels by Titus’s soldiers and offered up to the feral queen in exchange for peace. These are the ones who were liberated from Titus’s death camps and have now taken up a precarious residence behind Atlantia’s once-impenetrable walls. The rebels acted in good faith when they liberated the camps, but the results are grim. It must be said: they did not think far enough into the future. They were so determined to end the tyranny that they never considered what would happen in the aftermath. Such small crusaders are they! Such high hopes they had! And I count myself among them. When this rebellion began, long ago, the goal was for all creatures to coexist in peace. A true peace in which we would aid one another, regardless of our species, as we struggled against the daily strife that comes of being tiny and hunted, or far from home and hungry. Of being loved once and then forgotten, turned out, abandoned. For this is the condition of the poor souls who find their way here, to the belly of the earth. At the heart of this campaign was the belief we could learn to refrain from preying upon one another. Alas, I see now that this may have been too much to hope for. Because I have come to understand that even in the presence of justice and fairness, nature overrides all. Hunger must be fed, and nature has designed us so that such instinct and need can rarely be entirely quelled. I have learned that there is no evil in the true course of nature, there is only what must be. We form a living chain, from the enormous humans who dominate the upland world to the most humble creatures among us—rodent, insect, reptile.

Product details

• Authors: Lisa Fiedler, Lisa/ To Fiedler
• Assisted by: Vivienne To (Illustration)
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 8 to 12
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 17.03.2015
• EAN: 9781481420891
• ISBN: 978-1-4814-2089-1
• No. of pages: 352
• Series: Mouseheart; Mouseheart
• Subject: Children's and young people's books