书名：The Underneath 木屋下的守护者
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数830L
作者：Kathi Appelt凯西·阿贝特
出版社名称：Atheneum Books for Young Readers
出版时间：2010
语种：英文
ISBN：9781416950592
商品尺寸：15.5 x 2.3 x 20.3 cm
包装：平装
页数：336

The Underneath《木屋下的守护者》是美国作者凯西·阿贝特的首部长篇小说，荣获美国纽伯瑞儿童文学奖银奖、美国铅笔文学奖、美国图书馆协会优良图书奖，并入围美国国家图书奖。小说以虚实结合的独特手法穿插讲述了两段发生在古老丛林中的传说。失去女儿的蛇妖祖奶奶、被父亲赶出家门的黑暗男孩、三十米长的鳄鱼王、流浪的花斑猫、被铁链锁住的猎犬以及银灰色的小猫双胞胎，他们之间上演了一场跨越千年的神奇故事；数不尽的新奇植物和野生动物更给故事增添了无限神秘，让读者可以身临其境地感受到故事所传达出的爱与信任、忠诚与勇敢。
推荐理由：
1. 首部获得纽伯瑞文学奖的动物魔幻小说；
2. 荣获美国铅笔文学奖、美国图书馆协会优良图书奖，入围美国国家图书奖；
3. 台湾地区“中小学生优良课外读物”；
4. 体现爱的珍贵与奇妙，让孩子懂得爱、学会爱；
5. 诗意的语言+短小的篇幅，适合课堂朗诵，丰富的主题有利于组织阅读教学。

★悲苦的猎人、忠心的猎犬、被遗弃的花斑猫与想复仇的蛇妖，共同交织出一个关于爱和失落、寂寞与希望的故事。——纽伯瑞奖颁奖词
★《木屋下的守护者》用缭绕的声调与回响，共同谱写出一个诉说着爱与希望、寂寞与失落、宽恕与崇敬、令人心碎却又魔幻引人的故事。——美国国家图书奖评语
★这是一则冒险故事，充满魔法、神话、玄想、悲伤，盈满了家族与生命的伤痛，像一片细致的织锦编织在一起，美丽怡人，却又令人敬畏。——台湾教育专家张子樟

Review
“The Underneath is as enchanting as a hummingbird, as magical as the clouds.” — Cynthia Kadohata, Newbery Medal-winning author of Kira-Kira

“Kathi Appelt’s novel,The Underneath, reads like a ballad sung.” — Ashley Bryan, Hans Christian Anderson Award Nominee and Three-Time Coretta Scott King Award Medalist

“A mysterious and magical story; poetic yet loaded with suspense.” — Louis Sachar, Newbery Medal-winning author ofHoles

“Rarely do I come across a book that makes me catch my breath, that reminds me why I wanted to be a writer — to make of life something beautiful, something enduring.The Underneath is a book of ancient themes — love and loss and betrayal and redemption — woven together in language both timeless and spellbinding. A classic.” — Alison McGhee, author of the New York Times bestsellingSomeday

一千年前，蛇妖莫卡辛祖奶奶为了夺回变成人形、组建家庭的女儿，不惜摧毁女儿的幸福，并导致女儿失去生命。她自己也因此受到惩罚，被关进坛子，深埋地底一千年；
一千年后，小猫帕克和妈妈花斑猫一起被冷酷、残忍的猎人针鱼脸扔进河里，妈妈顶出帕克后溺水而亡，帕克牢记对妈妈的承诺，独自踏上营救姐姐和猎犬爸爸的漫漫长路。
帕克终于找到姐姐和猎犬爸爸，莫卡辛祖奶奶也终于破坛而出；他们在一棵老松树下相遇。被饥饿与背叛折磨了一千年的莫卡辛祖奶奶，这次能放下仇恨与伤害，成全帕克一家吗？
There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road.
A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath... as long as they stay in the Underneath.
Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten’s one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who lovesSounder,Shiloh, andThe Yearling, for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love — and its opposite, hate — the fragility of happiness and the importance of making good on your promises.

凯西·阿贝特（Kathi Appelt），美国诗人、作家，也是一位教师。已出版三十余部作品，包括小说、绘本、诗集，曾获纽伯瑞文学奖、美国铅笔文学讲、美国青少年文学奖等。《木屋下的守护者》是其长篇处女作，一出版便获纽伯瑞儿童文学银奖、美国铅笔文学奖、美国图书馆协会优良图书奖，并进入美国国家图书奖决选。作品还有绘本《我爸爸奥利》，小说《跑吧，狐狸小南》等。
Kathi Appelt is the author of the Newbery Honoree, National Book Award finalist, PEN USA Literary Award–winning, and bestsellingThe Underneath as well as the National Book Award finalist The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, Keeper, and many picture books including Counting Crows. She has two grown children and lives in College Station, Texas, with her husband. Visit her at KathiAppelt.com.

大卫·司摩（David Small），美国知名绘本作家。曾多次获凯迪克大奖。擅长用水彩、铅笔及粉蜡笔作画，画风幽默、夸张、潇洒、动感，颇具特色。代表作有《如果你想当总统……》《小恩的秘密花园》等。
David Smallis the Caldecott Award-winning illustrator ofSo You Want to Be President? by Judith St. George. He received a Caldecott Honor medal forThe Gardener by Sarah Stewart. He has also illustrated many other beloved picture books, which includeThe Library andThe Journey, both by Sarah Stewart, and Imogene’s Antlers, which he also wrote. He lives in Michigan with his wife, Sarah Stewart.

1
THERE IS NOTHING lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. A small calico cat. Her family, the one she lived with, has left her in this old and forgotten forest, this forest where the rain is soaking into her soft fur.
How long has she been walking? Hours? Days? She wasn’t even sure how she got here, so far from the town where she grew up. Something about a car, something about a long drive. And now here she is. Here in this old forest where the rain slipped between the branches and settled into her fur. The pine needles were soft beneath her feet; she heard the water splash onto the puddles all around, noticed the evening roll in, the sky grow darker.
She walked and walked, farther and farther from the red dirt road. She should have been afraid. She should have been concerned about the lightning, slicing the drops of rain in two and electrifying the air. She should have been worried in the falling dark. But mostly she was lonely.
She walked some more on the soft pine needles until at last she found an old nest, maybe a squirrel’s, maybe a skunk’s, maybe a porcupine’s; it’s hard to tell when a nest has gone unused for a long time, and this one surely had. She was grateful to find it, an old nest, empty, a little dry, not very, but somewhat out of the rain, away from the slashes of lightning, here at the base of a gnarled tupelo tree, somewhere in the heart of the piney woods. Here, she curled up in a tight ball and waited, purred to her unborn babies. And the trees, the tall and kindly trees, watched over her while she slept, slept the whole night through.Copyright © 2008 by Kathi Appelt
2
AHH, THE TREES. On the other side of the forest, there is an old loblolly pine. Once, it was the tallest tree in the forest, a hundred feet up it reached, right up to the clouds, right beneath the stars. Such a tree. Now broken in half, it stands beside the creek called the Little Sorrowful.
Trees are the keepers of stories. If you could understand the languages of oak and elm and tallow, they might tell you about another storm, an earlier one, twenty-five years ago to be exact, a storm that barreled across the sky, filling up the streams and bayous, how it dipped and charged, rushed through the boughs. Its black clouds were enormous, thick and heavy with the water it had scooped up from the Gulf of Mexico due south of here, swirling its way north, where it sucked up more moisture from the Sabine River to the east, the river that divides Texas and Louisiana.
This tree, a thousand years old, huge and wide, straight and true, would say how it lifted its branches and welcomed the heavy rain, how it shivered as the cool water ran down its trunk and washed the dust from its long needles. How it sighed in that coolness.
But then, in that dwindling of rain, that calming of wind, that solid darkness, a rogue bolt of lightning zipped from the clouds and struck. Bark flew in splinters, the trunk sizzled from the top of the crown to the deepest roots; the bolt pierced the very center of the tree.
A tree as old as this has a large and sturdy heart, but it is no match for a billion volts of electricity.The giant tree trembled for a full minute, a shower of sparks and wood fell to the wet forest floor. Then it stood completely still. A smaller tree might have jumped, might have spun and spun and spun until it crashed onto the earth. Not this pine, this loblolly pine, rooted so deep into the clay beside the creek; it simply stood beneath the blue-black sky while steam boiled from the gash sixty feet up, an open wound.This pine did not fall to the earth or slide into the creek. Not then.
And not now. It still stands. Most of its branches have cracked and fallen.The upper stories have long ago tumbled to the forest floor. Some of them have slipped into the creek and drifted downstream, down to the silver Sabine, down to the Gulf of Mexico. Down.
But the trunk remains, tall and hollow, straight and true. Right here on the Little Sorrowful, just a mile or so from a calico cat, curled inside her dry nest, while the rain falls all around.Copyright © 2008 by Kathi Appelt.