'scuse me if I don't say BREAKING, but kossack kappelt's book, The Underneath, has been selected as one of four 2009 Newbery Honor books.
(The Newbery medal is given annually by the American Library Association for the best children's book written by a resident of the US. The actual medal went to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which was a totally lame choice IMHO but nobody asked my HO.)
According to the publisher:
A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath.
Sound like something you might want to read?