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The Underneath by Kathi Appelt is the story of an abandoned cat who goes to live with a maltreated hound dog underneath a crooked old house in a bayou on the border between Louisiana and Texas. Published in 2008, The Underneath is a John Newbery Honor book, ALA Notable Children's Book and was a National Book Award Finalist.

Synopsis
The story takes place underneath the a ramshackle house. Where the hound dog Ranger is chained, and never released, since his leg has been shot accidentally by his evil owner, Gar Face. He meets a calico cat who has kittens, and he names the kittens "Sabine" and "Puck". When Puck breaks the rule of going outside the underneath, things get worse. There are important events going on beyond the house, in the bayou and swamps nearby, near the Texas-Louisiana border. Those events are related to others that happened a thousand years ago, when the Grandmother Moccasin in this story which is also portrayed as a cottonmouth water moccasin lamia, lost her only daughter to a Hawk Man, another being who is part animal and part human, who became her daughter's husband. Grandmother was trapped in a clay jar because Hawk Man trapped her there, and has been thinking about that loss ever since. The Alligator King was an alligator who was friends with grandma moccasin before her imprisonment by the hawkman he during that time has grown to a hundred feet in length, has been around, thinking about these matters, for that seven thousand years, too. When storms release Grandmother, she decides to do something unexpected. She sees the love between the kittens and the hound, and frees Ranger. Although the kittens and the hound are now free, the calico cat had been drowned by Gar Face, who, himself, meets a bad end. The book also mentions the Caddo native Americans, who used to live in the area.

Awards

 * John Newbery Honor Book 2009
 * 2009 ALA Notable Children's Book
 * National Book Award Finalist 2008