About a young mouse who ventures into the forest in search of emotions and is adopted by a rat, it received mixed reviews that praised Hague's illustrations but criticized the text and ending.

Cunningham shows him at a junction in his life, a protected wide-eyed innocent eager for experience and unacquainted with tears, fear, or hunger.

[5] Reviews were mixed; the School Library Journal criticized the text for its "surprising illogic and insensitivity", along with its ending, at the expense of Hague's "rich, detailed, darkly mysterious" watercolor work.

"There is something disturbing about this story," the latter wrote, "something vaguely kinked in the suggestion that there is pleasure in discomfort.... And the richness of Julia Cunningham's language only compounds the problem.

[7] Jane Yolen of Massachusetts' Daily Hampshire Gazette commended its strengths, but added, "I wish this had been a bigger[, older] book.