Thanksgiving Mice! - Softcover

Doug Cushman is a veteran mystery writer for children and the illustrator of more than 100 picture books. Among his many popular books are the seven HOLIDAY MICE books, written by Bethany Roberts. He lives in Northern California and Paris.

reS-Gr 1-The origins of Thanksgiving are explained by a group of mice as they put on a play for their animal friends. Cushman's cheerful spreads show the little creatures using handmade props and putting their all into this neighborhood production. The characters are charming and the colors are vibrant. Where pictures appear in a smaller frame, objects often extend into the borders for visual appeal. The problem comes with the text. Short rhyming stanzas at first seem to offer a pleasing read-aloud pattern, only to dissolve into an odd scheme, and readers may constantly try to recover a poetic balance that isn't there. Another problem comes with fictionalizing the Pilgrims as mice and keeping true to the Thanksgiving account. These diminutive Pilgrims wear clothes, sail on the Mayflower, suffer a hard winter, and plant corn, but that continuity breaks when "They built new homes in tree trunks-" instead of houses. There is a scarcity of Thanksgiving books for this age group that can adequately explain the historical significance of the holiday in very simple terms. Halloween Mice! (Clarion, 1995) by the same duo hit upon a combination of text and pictures that works very well, but it isn't trying to tie in a historical concept. If you aren't overly concerned with an odd poetic structure or a break in the logic of mice as Pilgrims, then this book should fill a gap in read-aloud Thanksgiving material for the younger set.

Carol Marshall, Bridgeport Public Library, CT

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