Mr. Hacker

By James Stevenson

Book Overview

Mr. Hacker begins to regret his move from the noisy city to the quiet country, until he is befriended by a stray cat and dog. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688092160
• ISBN13: 9780688092160
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Age Range: 5 years and up
• Grade Range: Kindergarten and higher

Customer Reviews

Quiet Story, Nice Message

This is a simple but warmly told mini-chapter book (nine chapters, each about three pages long), about a city dweller who moves to the countryside. Although only a couple of words actually rhyme, James Stevenson's rhythms, word choices, and formatting, convey the feeling and cadence of poetry. The book is short on excitement, but young ones will enjoy practicing their reading with this old-fashioned, nicely illustrated story. Mr. Hacker no longer knows his city: The neighbors are now strangers, and the things are noisy, dirty, or broken-down. He moves, but his new location is too quiet and too isolated, and he begins to wonder whether he made the right decision. However, Mr. Hacker makes friends-animal friends! A brown dog and a yellow cat begin to compete for the food he lays out for them. The dog (in one of the more humorous passages) wins, eating both the dog food and the cat food, but Mr. Hacker loses his temper. Eventually, with patient training and increasing affection for the animals, all is in order again, but the situation repeats itself when the squirrels eat the birdseed Mr. Hacker leaves out! This is a quiet book about making a home for yourself. There's very little plot and not much conflict, but Mr. Hacker's slow accommodation to his surroundings (echoed by the two animals acceptance of Mr. Hacker) is warm and reassuring. Mr. Hacker's initial anger with the food-stealing dog subsides, and one gets the feeling that they've forged a real friendship together. The watercolor and black pen illustrations resemble those of Stevenson, but they are by Frank Modell, whose style will be familiar to "New Yorker" readers. They convey the emotions in a book where emotion plays an important role.