The Stray

Praise

“This charming tale of a family’s encounter with an amiable alien is really two parallel narratives, one told in the text and the other in the illustrations. The simple, straightforward text describes a family’s relatively ordinary experience of finding a stray and adopting it as a pet. . . . The illustrations, however, depict a more unusual story. . . . Vibrant lime-green beams radiate from Grub’s whiskers and surround objects as they float across the pages—a signal to readers that something truly alien is afoot. Smart page-turns and high-impact double-page spreads enhance the already clever dual narratives of a unique lost-pet story.”—The Horn Book

“What the narrator never mentions—but readers can instantly see—is that the stray is a pet-size alien whose spaceship has crashed to earth. . . . [Ruttan’s] digitally enhanced charcoal and pastel drawings have heightened textures and an inner radiance that infuse the everyday settings with a lovely fairy tale quality. One can almost believe that extraterrestrial magic really can happen in the most ordinary of places.”—Publishers Weekly

“Many of the narrative details are cleverly embedded in the artwork: while the text alone reads as though the family has simply found a stray dog or cat, the illustrations clearly depict Grub as a small alien creature with stalk eyes and pointy teeth who emerges from a crashed spaceship and levitates objects in the family’s house and neighborhood. Fun and layered, this is an appealing story for family bedtime reads.”—Booklist