“A poignant and timely rumination on power, resistance, and compassion.” – Kirkus Reviews
Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: A. T. Balsara. Take it away, Andrea!
“Why rats?”
The man’s voice was thick with scorn, like he’d just stepped in something disgusting. It was 2017, and the first edition of my young adult novel, The Great & the Small, had just come out. Using dual narratives, the story follows a rat colony and a teenage girl as a plague war, started by rats, rages through the world, exploring the rise of authoritarianism, prejudice, and the cost of blind obedience. I’d just finished giving a presentation on my book to a local writer’s group and was gathering my notes when his question cut through me. It was just him and me left in the room. “Why rats?” he asked again, with a snorting laugh.
I wish I could say I responded with something witty or profound. Instead, I froze. Mumbling something vague about how rats are cool, I escaped to my car to have a good cry and think of all the things I should have said. It was my first hint that not everyone shares my love for the unconventional.
With the second edition of the book (released Fall 2024), I expanded the teenage protagonist Ananda’s arc—exploring themes of buried trauma, the reverberations of sexual abuse, and linking the search for truth not only outwardly, but inward as well. Even so, that same dratted question hung over my head like the sword of Damocles:
Why rats?
While I’m not shocked by the question anymore, it’s still a hard one to answer, because as a writer, I can’t fathom not being fascinated by stories about rats. My love of animal protagonists was born when I read Watership Down, by Richard Adams, about a warren of rabbits determined to find freedom and a new home. The world-building was so brilliant, so satisfying, that by the end, I felt like I’d glimpsed life as a rabbit. My world had expanded, and my perspective forever changed. With The Great & the Small, I wanted to do the same thing.
But why—specifically—rats?
Ananda saves Fin
First, rats are extremely cool. They can leap four feet in the air, chew through concrete, and navigate in pitch darkness by using their whiskers as a sophisticated sensory array of antennae as nimbly as ninjas wearing night-vision goggles. And while wild rats can take down a house cat, domesticated rats are affectionate sweethearts. In researching the book, I got a little dumbo rat who became my guide through this new world. Frodo would perch on my shoulder and give me tiny kisses on my cheek that conquered my heart. His depth of personality and intelligence surprised me, and his spirit echoes through the main rat character, Fin.
But it’s not all sweetness and light. In the mid-1300s, the bubonic plague hit Europe with such virulence that it wiped out up to half of the continent’s population within a few years. Rats were the plague vectors, carrying infected fleas. When I read about the rat’s role in an event that reshaped society—the repercussions of which we still feel today—I had a realization: if rats could organize, they could wipe out humanity. Armed with the plague, they would be unstoppable. Almost.
For years, I’d been trying to think of a story about the cost of blind obedience, sparked by a visit to the concentration camp museum in Dachau, Germany, with my family when I was 10. Needing to understand what caused one person to grow into a Hitler or a Stalin, and another person into a Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, writing was my way of untangling what I had seen and the deep confusion I’d felt growing up. As someone who had also experienced deep, buried trauma and undiagnosed PTSD from age five—recovering my memories in my early 20s—my need to understand the nature of good and evil bordered on obsession. Now, I finally had my story, with rats as the perfect foils.
Set in modern day, the rat colony is ruled by the Stalin-like “Beloved Chairman.” At first, the Beloved Chairman’s nephew, Fin, is a true believer and loyal enforcer in the colony’s plague war against humans. But when Fin is saved by Ananda—a teenage girl haunted by a trauma she can’t remember—it sets a chain of events into motion. As Fin sees cracks in the world he once trusted and Ananda searches for the truth buried in her past, their stories unfold in parallel, exploring how trauma shapes us, how dictatorships rise, and what it takes to find light in the darkness.
As for the man who, at a writer’s meeting, no less, scorned my choice of characters? Although it hurt, his comment helped me realize this: writing isn’t about pleasing the crowd. It’s about truth. It’s about letting the stories only we can tell come to life and sending them into the world to find their way. And now, as we face censorship, book banning, and pressures from all sides to conform to a particular narrative, our commitment to tell the truth through our stories matters more than ever.
With unconventional characters, readers must look closer and try harder to understand, but the rewards are original stories that stay with them and change their view of the world.
For writers, unconventional characters add layers of richness, depth, and detail, drawing readers deeply into our created worlds.
And while there will be doubters and the occasional scoff, there will be readers who dive in, feeling their own worlds expand alongside ours.
Why rats? Why not rats?
Ananda nurses Fin back to health
Andrea Torrey Balsara is an award-winning children’s and young adult author-illustrator, motivational speaker, and certified energy medicine practitioner. She is passionate about reframing life and art through the lens of “The Hero’s Journey.” Andrea writes and illustrates for young children under her full name, Andrea Torrey Balsara, and for young adults under A.T. Balsara.
She is available for motivational speaking, classroom and online presentations, book readings, one-on-one coaching, and podcasts.
Connect with Andrea at:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreatorreybalsara/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndreaTorreyBalsaraAuthorIllustrator/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/torreybalsara.bsky.social
Thank you for hosting me, Lindsey!
My pleasure!