Reporter's Review: The Underneath, by Kathi Appelt

Overall Grade: B-
Atheneum; 2008

The Underneath is Kathi Appelt’s debut novel; her writing skill certainly indicates that it will be the first of many. Her words have a beautiful, poetic quality—our one complaint is that this style may have been slightly overused for a prose narrative, but we could certainly see future books succeeding very nicely in an unadulterated poetry format. And yet, despite its many excellent qualities (honest characters, beautiful language, stunning descriptions), we still can’t say that The Underneath was a book we enjoyed. Especially considering Ms. Appelt’s skill with words, we felt betrayed and disappointed that she chose to manipulate her audience to feel one emotion: the weight of tragedy. Or rather, depression, for tragedy involves a basically good character failing through one unfortunate flaw, whereas The Underneath’s sadness stems from basically bad characters –with one or two good traits—being true to their natures and making bad decisions. And, although the end promises redemption, it doesn’t make good on the promise. In the very last paragraphs, the character who is the cause of most of the catastrophe saves the lives of the protagonists by making one good decision. Supposedly this redeems her—but we would have to argue that this is not redemption…it is simply a character finally making the kind of choice any decent person would have been making all along. There is absolutely no sacrifice, no risk to herself, that is the essence of true redemption.

Literary Quality: B
Plot: C
Voice: A
Originality: C
Descriptive Ability: A+
Humor: C
Illustrations: A (by Caldecott winner David Small)
Believability of Characters: A
Believability of Situations: B
Overall Reading Enjoyment: D


Possibly objectionable topics*: death; violence, including child and animal abuse.