I received an electronic copy from BooksGoSocial through NetGalley.
A delightful crew of animals have created a home in the forest that gets disrupted from two sources - humans move into the abandoned cottage and the rats stage an attempted take over. The hero, Startup, is a young, inquisitive rabbit who stumbles into several situations and figures out how to solve problems along the way. In the end, he and his friends defeat the rats and save the day for the humans. Roll's characters are easy to distinguish and likeable. They have their flaws but elementary level readers will appreciate them and relate to them.

This was a fun read, geared towards 7-12 year olds who enjoy chapter books. The book centers around a young rabbit named Startup and his animal friends.

When a young couple moves into a cottage the animals think of as their own, Startup's curious nature leads him into many adventures with his animal friends.

I really enjoyed this book, and I could see it being a great week-long bedtime story.

Thanks to #NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I made it a quarter the way through this, but had too many issues with it to continue. It may appeal to a certain set of readers, but I found it inappropriate for children and downright objectionable in parts.

The story is of a young rabbit named Startup who lives with his mom and dad in a community close by an old house. When a couple move into the house and bring their cat, an alarm runs through the wild community. This part I could get with because pet cats are in fact devastating our ecology. There are so many of them preying on wild birds and other animals that they're actually destroying wildlife at an alarming rate. Unfortunately that's not the thrust of this novel at all. On the contrary - rather than trying to do good with the fiction, it seems like the story is going in the opposite direction. More on this shortly.

My first problem with this is that while this is obviously a children's book, one of the rabbits smokes a pipe. Admittedly he does have it taken away by his wife later, but the fact that he had it at all is a problem in a children's novel. This is not the nineteen-fifties! I don't mind some anthropomorphization of animals in children's books, but if you're going to make them completely human, then why have them as animals at all? To me it makes no sense to divorce them completely from their nature. These rabbits - and other animals such as squirrels and owls, for example - were entirely human - so much so that they'd lost all connection with nature. That was a problem for me. This lack of a vision as to what their origin was, had become so all-encompassing that at one point Mrs Rabbit, Startup's mom, was making curtains. For a burrow. Which by definition is underground. Where there are no windows. I won't get into why mom is depicted in traditional female roles and so on.

The next problem was that Startup - who seems to be appropriately named, sought to trick a squirrel into paying him for recovering some nuts. I could not get my mind around exactly how this came to be despite going back and re-reading several pages, but clearly Startup's motives were hardly altruistic. I didn't think this was a good example to set before children.

Right after this we're introduced to a hare, the characterization of which is evidently heavily-influenced by the idea of 'mad as a march hare' and the creature is depicted as crazy which again to me was a highly inappropriate precedent to set before children when thinking about a person who appears to have to some mental health issues, or who is maybe simply a bit different in his approach to life. He was called 'Lenny the Looney' and Startup's attitude to him is described like this: "He had no desire to get caught up in a dotty duscussion with Hare'. That's about where I decided I didn't want to read any more of this book, and why I cannot commend it based on the portion of it I have read.

This is a cute story! My 11 year old daughter enjoyed reading it with me. Startup the rabbit has many fun adventures with his friends and will keep the reader engaged throughout the book. I would recommend for readers ages 7 to 12. I am grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.