The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread Review

The hardcover version of this book is beautifully put together, with it's mouse-torn pages and wonderful illustrations. Unfortunately, the story did not live up to it's binding. "Despereaux" follows the lives of a handful of characters who, mostly through no choice of their own, live with unfortunate circumstances. Throughout the story, the characters are beaten down even more, mentally and/or physically. It's not until the last few pages that the author attempts to resolve the issues, but at that point the reader has been bombarded with so much negativity that the point of the story is lost, and it's hard to feel any satisfaction from the ending.

I can understand what the author was trying to do - the whole light verses dark theme - but I feel it was poorly executed. Perhaps she was trying to relate to too many real-life situations her readers might be going through - illness, physical differences, abuse, abandonment, stereotypes, racism, perfidiousness (the author's favorite), etc - but I trust that young readers can empathize and relate without having each situation explicitly represented. Perhaps she could have cut back a few and achieve the light and dark balance she was trying to attain.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the type of person that wants a candy-coated happy ending in all my stories, in fact I'm a sucker for a good tragedy. I'm not the type of person that thinks we should shield children from the realities of real-life - the unfounded hatred and violence, and unfortunate situations, that occurs. I am, however, a person born with a rare syndrome and have had health challenges my whole life, and also struggled with looking 'different' because of it - I think I know a thing or two about finding light in life. If that is the goal of this story, it fails to capture it. Get more detail about The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread.