Tuesday Storytime: Mice

I love mice.  They're cute and furry and there's eleventy bazillion picture books about them.

Today's lineup:

Seven Blind Mice
Ed Young
ISBN: 9780399222610
Caldecott Honor Book, colorblock mice and textured elephant against a black background.

Ed Young is a genius, and I love this book.  It's fairly short, easy to read and for kids to understand, and the contrasts between the actual elephant body part and the interpretation that the mouse makes is really startling.  The trunk-to-snake transformation was especially a hit.  I also really enjoy the size contrast between the panels with the mice (in various configurations) and then the panels with the mice appearing as tiny little color blobs against the enormity of the textural tan elephant body parts.  The ONLY thing that bothers me (and I freely admit to overthinking things) is that I'm a little bummed that it was a white mouse who figured out the puzzle of the elephant.  I know that in color theory for light, white is the combination of all colors, but it still bugs me.  (/overthinking)


Mouse Mess
Linnea Riley
ISBN: 0590100483
Halfway between naive and pop-art, a chunky brown mouse trashes a kitchen as he eats.

This one is a first read for me, and I really liked it.  The fun here is that the mouse works his way steadily through various foods, leaving a huge mess behind him, and then at the end, finally notices the state of the kitchen, and immediately blames it on the absent humans before self-centeredly heading back to bed and leaving the mess behind.  Funny, short, and simple.


Mice
Original rhyme by Rose Fyleman, illustrated by Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 9781442456846
Mixed-media collage of funky big-eyed, big-toothed mice and various household objects and foods.

Lois Ehlert is a master of creating amazingly textured collage creations, and this one is no different.  Set to the old rhyme "I think mice are rather nice..." it does drag a wee bit with stretching the rhyming lines out onto multiple spreads, but the illustrations are so quirky and the rhyme so short that I almost don't mind the stretch.  The end has a lovely surprise as the narrator is revealed to be someone who perhaps thinks mice are "nice" in a very different way that initially imagined.



This set as a whole is really nice, because all three of them feature black or dark backgrounds, but each of them is still as totally different as can be.  I really love showcasing the variety of artistic styles and types of presentations that can work within picture book format, and I was very happy with how it turned out to be so varied this time.


Bonus book (under consideration but too long for my age-group)

Library Mouse
Daniel Kirk
ISBN: 9780810993464
Beginning of a series, text-heavy.  Notable artificial 3-D animated feel to surfaces and textures.

Sam is a library mouse, and he loves his home near the children's department.  Every night Sam read from the books in the library, and he soon decided that he wanted to write a book himself.  So he wrote it, illustrated it, bound it, and shelved it (alert readers will note that he shelves his books in the right places), where it was subsequently found by the library patrons.  He does this again and again, writing lots of different books, and eventually the library wants to know who their mystery author is.  Sam doesn't want to give up his secret identity or get evicted, so he creates a clever ruse that encourages other patrons of the library to become writers as well.  Interesting story, serviceable illustrations, and a great introduction to demystifying the writing process for very young kids.  Seems like it would be excellent for classroom use.  

Tuesday Storytime: Mice

Found a really cute book while selecting storytime reads called Busy Little Mouse, by Eugenie Fernandes, with clay-sculpt illustrations by Kim Fernandes, and so I decided to pair it with a couple of other cute mouse books for an easy theme.

Busy Little Mouse

Eugenie Fernandes, illustrated by Kim Fernandes

ISBN: 1550747789

Clay-sculpt illustrations, farms, animal sounds.

The story isn't technically about the mouse - it jumps from him pretty quickly over to a page-by-page handover of different barnyard animals.  Each is introduced through interactions with the previous, and each page ends with a "what does the little (insert animal) say?" which is great for a first story, as the kids can be interactive and bouncy and slowly settle into listening mode.  The illustrations however, do have the mouse tagging along with each animal switchover, and the story concludes with him going home to bed after his busy day.

Whose Mouse are You?

Robert Kraus, illustrated by Jose Aruego

ISBN: 0689840527

1970s Library of Congress and ALA notable book, yellow/orange naive illustrations.

This is one of those "classic" picture books that I feel I ought to like more than I actually do.  Not that I dislike it, but I don't get the cult love that many have for it.  That said, it is a classic, it is a cute little short story, and it fit well here.  Readers get a little mouse "Nobody's mouse" because his mom has been eaten by the cat, his dad is in a trap, his sister far from home, and brother is nonexistent.  Sparked into action, he saves his mother, father, sister, and wishes for a brother, and then the last third shows him happily belonging with each of his relatives, including the teeny tiny newborn brother.

I Miss You Mouse

Greg Foley

ISBN: 9780670012381

Lift-the-flap "search" story.

I love Greg Foley.  His stories are so cute and sweet and simple and nice.  This one is no exception - mouse gets a lovely note from Bear, and goes looking for him, because she has something important to tell him.  Lift-the-flaps hide animals in various environments - leaf piles, rocks, pond - where animals who are not Bear inform the mouse she has to keep searching, until she goes home at the end of the day to find Bear there, and tell him her important news (and give him a sweet lift-the-flap-wrapped present).