The Little Snake

Starred review from September 15, 2018
This inventive fable tells of a special snake, the young girl it befriends, and the things they learn from each other.Mary is "a remarkable, wise little girl" who enjoys a garden about the size of a big tablecloth atop a building in which the "pipes only leaked on Mondays and Wednesdays." Sometimes food is short, but her city is "filled with good things." Then a small golden snake named Lanmo appears. It is "immensely handsome," wise, agile, and possessed of "a beautiful speaking voice" that can be "like buttered velvet" or "like being hugged with warm towels after a long bath." The snake teaches the "Very Attractive Girls" at Mary's school not to be nasty partly by turning into "a giant glimmering golden cobra rising from the dirty tarmac of the playground." Kennedy (Serious Sweet, 2016, etc.) will doubtless charm many readers in the early pages of this novella, but it's soon clear that she has more in mind. For one thing, the snake leaves Mary and speeds around the world to remove from life those whose time has come. Yes, Lanmo, whose "tiny needle teeth shone white as bone," is the grim creeper. For another, when he returns to Mary from often long periods of biting, her life among the have-nots has worsened, until she must leave her city and seek a new life elsewhere. Kennedy manages the considerable feat of touching freshly and often amusingly on friendship, love, honesty, education, hunger, greed, aging, war, courage, and displacement without getting preachy or patronizing. Her own voice recalls Lewis Carroll and his gift for taking children and their challenges seriously while using language and logic to have fun in the process.A delightful read with the earmarks of a classic.

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November 1, 2018
A magical snake named Lanmo appears before a sad and lonely girl named Mary while she maneuvers the tiny confines of her rooftop garden in a city slowly being destroyed by war. Lanmo speaks to Mary in subtle and wise ways that belie his booming, mellifluous voice. In him, Mary finds a friend and protector, a spirit who understands her as no human can or does. For Lanmo's part, Mary provides a source of constant comfort as well as confusion. Though Lanmo must periodically slither out into the world, lethally monitoring and meddling in the affairs of humans, his bond with Mary is steadfast. As she ages from child to woman to elderly widow, Lanmo always reappears at opportune moments to guide her through the increasing losses that come with an encroaching war and incipient old age. Quietly astute and surprisingly engrossing, Kennedy's spare, old-fashioned fable about trust and faith, loyalty and love is a charming read with a hidden punch, providing a much-needed antidote to contemporary cynicism and doubt.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)