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      Readers’ Favorite ★★★★★5 out of 5 stars
    

“A fantastic political allegory, written for kids, with some of the best worldbuilding I’ve read in a while. By using an animal society to reflect real-world economic concerns, Ramallo makes the island’s institutional breakdown simple for anyone to understand.”

“It’s incredible to see a children’s fable keep its characters so authentic and relatable while delving into the profound political shifts taking place around them. No Silver on Rat Island delivers a stark lesson: the rules we passively ignore today are ultimately the ones that decide our actual freedom tomorrow. Very highly recommended.”

— Alija Turkovic, Readers’ Favorite

“This fable reads like the C.S. Lewis classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The characters, all animals, are believable and well presented. This is a touching fable with relevance in today’s world and will certainly make the young reader think more deeply about what they have and what they might lose.”

— Emily-Jane Hills Orford, Readers’ Favorite (5 stars)

“As an allegory it is precise, and as a portrait of a country eating itself slowly, it’s hard to shake. Anyone who has ever read 1984 will see shades of George Orwell here, although with a more optimistic outcome.”

— Anne-Marie Reynolds, Readers’ Favorite (5 stars)

“The writing flows well, and the moral develops naturally. It would make an excellent addition to homes, schools, and libraries. I’ll be thinking about this book’s message for a long time.”

— Jennifer Senick, Readers’ Favorite (5 stars)

“The animal cast carries the allegory nicely: rats as tax collectors who visibly shrink once the money stops being printed, penguins as populists, and a lion as a chainsaw-wielding reformer. The image of currency literally losing its color as inflation eats it is a clever, visceral touch. Anyone curious about Argentina’s recent economic history dressed up in fiction will find this an engaging and pointed read.”

— Manik Chaturmutha, Readers’ Favorite

The story

Where did all the plata go?

On an island lives a colony of rats who make a discovery. They cannot dig up more silver, but they can print more paper. They call the paper Hojas, and at first it feels like a miracle. There are more Hojas for everyone. Then the price of bread climbs, and the price of baskets, and the same coins buy less than they did last week.

No Silver on Rat Island is a fable about that quiet robbery: who gains when the printing starts, who gets the new paper first, and who is left holding money that leaks. It is the Cantillon effect and inflation as a hidden tax, told as a story a child can follow. Almost every absurd thing that happens on the island is drawn from real events. Only the species changed.

Federico began writing it to explain to his son why the money kept disappearing at home, and why the family left Argentina in 2008. The children's companion, The Wealth of the Island, is set in the same world.