We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
About this ebook
I am a snake.
No, not a rattlesnake. I just look like one. I’m a gopher snake.
One day an oily, filthy, fleshy human child crossed my path. As luck would have it, he knew the difference between a gopher snake and a rattlesnake. He has imprisoned me in a terrarium. His name is Gunnar. He calls me Crusher. He thinks I’m male. I’m not.
He dropped in a dead mouse and hoped I’d eat it. I buried it. He then dropped in a live one, which he called “Breakfast.” I didn’t lay a coil on it.
Gunnar thinks I’ll be his adoring pet. He’s wrong.
In fact, I am planning my escape. I may take breakfast with me.
- Unlikely Friendship: Crusher is supposed to eat the live mouse dropped in her tank. Instead, she finds herself protecting a tiny, white-furred creature named Breakfast.
- Sarcastic Narrator: Told from the witty, defiant point of view of Crusher, a gopher snake who has some very strong opinions about her “oily, filthy, fleshy human child” captor.
- Animal Adventure Story: From outsmarting her captor Gunnar to planning a great escape, this is a hilarious adventure about seeing the world through a very different pair of eyes.
- Friendship and Empathy: A laugh-out-loud chapter book for kids that explores big ideas about freedom, friendship, and what it means to care for someone you were never supposed to like.
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About the author
Patrick Jennings grew up in a small town in Indiana, where there were no wild, lethally venomous snakes. His family then moved to rural Arizona, where lived many, including seventeen varieties of rattlesnake. Patrick got seriously freaked out. He now lives on the Olympic Peninsula, where there are scarcely any wild, lethally venomous snakes. We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes is his fourteenth book for young readers.