The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson
Published 2005 · 32 pages · 8,800 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Children's Literature
How hard is The Snail and the Whale to read?
The Snail and the Whale scores 100 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 15 out of 100
- Donaldson uses simple, concrete words such as rock, whale, tail and sea, with a few place words like iceberg and volcano. It sits close to Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret in plainness.
- Sentence structure: 12 out of 100
- Short rhyming couplets with simple clauses carry the story. It is easier than Anne Frank's diary.
- Abstraction: 15 out of 100
- Everything is concrete: a snail, a whale, a rock, a bay. The only abstract idea, that small beings matter, rides on the action, as in Asterix the Gaul.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- At 8,800 words or fewer in picture-book form, each page holds one image and a few lines. Nothing demands careful tracking.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- The narrator states events and feelings plainly, and the pictures show the rest. It is as direct as Asterix the Gaul.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The tiny snail and huge whale carry one clear idea about size and worth. There is little beyond that, so it reads lighter than even Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- The tone is warm and sincere, with light humor in the pictures. It is as earnest as Judy Blume's Margaret.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- The whale is rescued, the snail goes home and the story closes neatly. It is as resolved as any children's tale.
- Structural complexity: 80 out of 100
- A linear journey out and back, with a rescue near the end. It is simpler than the diary form of Anne Frank.
How The Snail and the Whale is regarded
The Snail and the Whale holds a literary regard score of 40 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.