Translated from French, the book What the Rat Told Me is a retelling of a folktale about the creation of the Chinese Zodiac. This is a story of a trickster—the rat—and how each animal was chosen for the zodiac. As the Emperor, ruler of Heaven and Earth, invites all the animals to visit him before sunrise at the top of Jade Mountain, the clever rat devises a plan—he tricks the cat into sleeping late with a promise to wake her up in the morning. The rat cleverly ignores his promise, and hops on the ox to ride up Jade Mountain to be the first to reach the emperor. Each animal that arrives at the mountain top is rewarded with a year for all time. Since the cat remained asleep, she has been left out of the Chinese calendar. And this, the reader is informed, is why the cat and the rat are not friends.

The illustrators used bold colors of black, white, and red, in calligraphy and linoleum prints, to tell the story. The back matter includes the Chinese calendar, a zodiac wheel, and a glossary of characters written in Chinese, linoleum block print, and English.