The Naked Mole-Rat Letters

My 9 year old and I read this in mother/daughter book club. Every adult and child really enjoyed it. lots to talk about - loss, friendship, siblings, dating, socio-economic differences. Fairly quick read and well worth it.

I am a middle school learning support teacher. I recently had a student recommend this book to me. I could not put it down. It was a very touching an believable book. Many of my students ended up reading it because of our great reviews of the book. My class all loved it and wished there was a sequel!

This book is a must read. I absolutely LOVED it. I picked it up and couldn't put it down, and then I gave it to my 12 year old daughter, and she couldn't put it down either. Prepare to laugh out loud, and prepare to cry a few tears (in a good way!). I can't wait to read more Mary Amato books. Keep them coming!

One of the best books I've read all year - and I'm 41 years old! I read this book to my children (9 & 11, but I confess I sneaked ahead on my own too. Amato writes very engagingly and is quite funny. The voice and frustrations of Frankie, the 12 year old lead character who is afraid of her widowed father's interest in dating a new woman are right on the mark. Frankie finds an email from this women (called Ratlady, due to her job as the keeper of naked mole rats in the National Zoo, and starts inventing wild lies sent by email to try to nip the relationship in the bud. Hence the title of the book. The entire story is revealed through emails and diary entries. (The diary entries are often too long and full of details to be taken for the actual writings that a 12 year old girl would really write, however the descriptions are necessary and well done in order to put you more into her story, and wouldn't it be great if she really did write like that!) The relationship with Ratlady evolves through email from antagonistic (and funnily so; we laughed out loud), to very sweet and quite helpful as Ratlady always responds with kindness and just the right touch to Frankie's obviously false emails. Her approach is a good lesson for all adults, and Frankie ends up seeing many parallels between her emails with Ratlady, her relationship with her own family, her school and friend situation and the society of Naked Mole Rats, about which Ratlady explains in her emails back to Frankie. The author does a fantastic job of tying up story lines by bringing in previous aspects, but doesn't shove them in your face moralistically, thanks to the diary/email format. In fact, some younger readers would not necessarily even see the way the author brought everything full circle. In short, this book will stay on my shelf for a while, and I highly recommend you give it a try.

Frankie is a middle school girl who stumbles on an email to her father from a strange woman. Her attempts to make sure they never get together lead to more and more lies and trouble at school. Funny and touching and a believable family. Mary Amato has the voice just right.