Ratatouille meets The Tale of Despereaux in this timeless adventure tale of courage, friendship, and self-discovery from award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Donnelly.

The Story

Twix the rat is not a hero.

He’s a small, anxious, gray-furred nerd with a list of things to be afraid of that’s longer than his tail. But his worst fear of all is disappointing his big brother, Rolo.

Rolo is everything Twix isn’t: cool, fearless, and the fastest RATSCAR racer in New York City. When Rolo vanishes in a cat attack at the biggest race of the year, Twix refuses to believe he’s gone—and a mysterious trail leading to a sewer drain convinces him he’s right.

Armed with his two best friends and half an eggroll from the trash, Twix plunges into the city’s secret underworld—a shadowy place of gangster raccoons, rat librarians with ninja moves, and one very gassy chihuahua. And as the trail leads the friends to a treacherous garbage island that harbors sinister figures and a dark conspiracy, Twix soon learns that if he’s to save his brother, he’ll have to make a choice: keep running from his fears or finally turn and face them.

Perfect for fans of The Secret Lives of Pets and The One and Only Ivan.

Inspiration

Here’s something nobody tells you about New York City: the rats are in charge.

Beneath the streets, subways, and steam pipes, there’s a fully functioning rat civilization. Rats here are literate, principled, and deeply opinionated about dumpster dining. They have schools and sports leagues. Their economy runs on fountain coins. When they take something from a human — which they often do — they leave a coin as payment, because they have standards. 

This is the world of Twix Pettipaws.

Twix is a small, gray-furred middle-school nerd who has compiled the most comprehensive list ever of things to be afraid of. He’s devoted to his older brother Rolo, hopelessly in love with cool-girl Daisy Longtayle, and permanently accompanied by Stickee — his anxiety, named for glue traps, because once Stickee grabs hold, he never lets go.

Twix is not a hero; he’d be the first to tell you this. Then Rolo disappears.

What follows is a wild, funny, genuinely heart-stopping adventure through the secret underground of New York — from a racetrack hidden in an abandoned department store, to the book train beneath the New York Public Library, to a garbage island in the harbor – as Twix races to rescue his brother. Accompanied by his best friends and armed with found fireworks, a seagull air force, and Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, he must become the hero he’s always been convinced he isn’t.

But Stickee comes along on the journey, too. He always does.

I’ve wanted to write about anxiety for a long time. Not to fix it or cure it or tidy it away — anyone who actually lives with anxiety knows that’s not how it works — but to tell the truth about it. By the end of this book, something shifts inside Twix. Not because Stickee disappears, but because Twix finally stops running from him. And what he finds when he looks Stickee in the face is the most honest thing I know about fear: it’s been trying to protect him the whole time.

TWIX: A RAT’S TALE is for every child who’s ever felt too small for the thing standing in front of them. I hope you enjoy my small, reluctant hero, and I hope he finds a forever home in your heart, just as he has in mine.