Young Fredle - Louise Yates [0]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Cynthia Voigt
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Louise Yates
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Voigt, Cynthia.
Young Fredle / Cynthia Voigt ; with illustrations by Louise Yates. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Fredle, a young mouse cast out of his home, faces dangers and predators outside, makes some important discoveries and allies, and learns the meaning of freedom as he struggles to return home.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89586-9
[1. Mice—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Freedom—Fiction.
4. Dogs—Fiction. 5. Cats—Fiction.] I. Yates, Louise, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.V874You 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010011430
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Freddie, of course
contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1 Between the Walls
2 The Peppermint Pattie
3 Outside
4 The Unknown and the Unexpected
5 Bardo
6 Alone
7 Neldo
8 Around Front
9 Helping Sadie
10 The Way In
11 The Rowdy Boys
12 Living with Raccoons
13 The Moon’s Story
14 Escape
15 Downstream
16 In the Cellar
17 The Way Up
18 The Return
19 Home
20 In the End
About the Author
1
Between the Walls
“I’m not finished foraging,” Fredle protested. There was something on the floor behind the table leg. It didn’t smell like food, but you could never be sure. Besides, if it wasn’t food, Fredle wondered, what was it?
“That’s metal,” Axle said, adding, “Mice don’t eat metal, Fredle,” as if he didn’t already know that.
“You’re a poet and you don’t know it,” he snapped back, touching the round, thin disk with his nose. In the dim light of the nighttime kitchen, where all colors were dark, this thing gleamed as silver as the pipes in the cupboard under the sink. It smelled of humans. Fredle wondered what they might use it for, and why its edges were ridged. He wondered about the design on its surface. He’d never seen anything like it—was that a nose sticking out? An eye? And where was the body, if this was a head? He wondered, but he wasn’t about to ask his cousin. Sometimes he got tired of knowing less and being bossed around. “Metal rhymes with Fredle,” he explained, to irritate her.
“I’m not waiting around any longer,” Axle announced, and she scurried off. Fredle planned to follow, just not right away. He tried licking the metal thing. Cool, and definitely not food. He raised his head and, ears cocked, peered into the darkness.
A mouse could never know what awaited him out in the kitchen. There might be crusts of bread or bits of cookies, chunks of crackers, forgotten carrot ends, or the tasteless thick brown lumps that sometimes rolled up against a wall, behind the stove, or under the humming refrigerator. There were brown things in the cat’s bowl, too, if you were hungry enough, if you dared. On the pantry shelf there might be a smear of sweet honey on the side of a glass jar, or a cardboard box of oatmeal or cornflakes to be chewed through, and sometimes it was Cap’n Crunch, which was Fredle’s personal favorite, although his mother often warned him that his sweet tooth was going to get him into trouble. In the kitchen there were drops of water clinging to the pipes in the cupboard under the sink, enough to satisfy everybody’s thirst. In the kitchen, at night, you never knew what good surprises might be waiting.
However, any mouse out foraging