Crackle Creek by Mary Elise Monsell, Kathleen Gary McCord

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Annotation

Rival newspaper printers in Crackle Creek are brought together by an emergency.

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4 --Crackle Creek is a location of muddled imagination, and the hodge-podge of events and characters set there waft about with nothing to root them. Douglas, a mouse, singlehandedly runs the only newspaper in town until Rosemary prepares a competing paper. When he sets out to collect the day's news, he finds that she is scooping him. After the usurper leaves him a pot of stew and later rescues him and his printing press from a flood, though, Douglas relents and the two cooperate. The message is pretty blatant, but the events leading up to it carry so little dramatic impact that most readers won't get to it. The accompanying full-page black-and-white illustrations are dark and unwelcoming smudges that require close inspection to make out the characters. The samples of newspaper writing, done with childlike simplicity, seem merely condescending and are poor examples for children who might like to try writing. A riverside anthropomorphic tale invites comparison with A Wind in the Willows , but Crackle Creek is not even close. --Sally T. Margolis, formerly at The Newport Schools, Kensington, MD