Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary

Starred review from July 30, 2007
Admirers of The Borrowers
and The Tale of Two Bad Mice
will smile at this beguiling comparison of human- and mouse-scale worlds, Donofrio’s (Riding in Cars with Boys
) children’s debut. Mary, a midcentury child who favors flouncy skirts, lives with parents and siblings. In the same house, behind a wall, lives a mouse who “had a mother and a father and a sister and a brother, too.” Mary learns to beware of mice; the mouse, of people. “So Mary didn’t tell her family about the mouse. And the mouse didn’t tell about Mary.” Nonetheless, Mary often steals a glimpse inside the mousehole to exchange a wave with her friend. With an antique palette and an engraver’s fluid line, McClintock (Adèle & Simon
) designs ingenious accessories for the anthropomorphic mice. When a newly hippie-ish Mary leaves for college in a VW Beetle, the mouse packs her things in a walnut shell. Mary’s dorm room matches the mouse’s underground home, down to the green bedspread, yellow sheets and overflowing hamper; Mary’s striped pink rug looks just like the pink sock by the mouse’s bed. Eventually Mary raises her own children in a modern, glass-walled house, and her daughter, Maria, meets the mouse’s child. True, Donofrio and McClintock indulge in nostalgia and pay no heed to rodents’ life expectancy. Yet only a jaded reader could fail to be bewitched by McClintock’s meticulous panels or her piquant cover art, with its swingy hand-lettering and swaying heroines. Donofrio and McClintock give exquisite attention to the girl’s and mouse’s parallel lives, emphasizing cross-generational connections and shared secrets. Ages 3-7.

September 1, 2007
K-Gr 3-Mary enjoys a comfortable, affluent childhood in the 1940s/'50s in her family's impressive brick home. One evening, after dropping a fork on the floor, she spies a mouse. From that day forward, Mary and the mouse each drop a utensil after dinner so they can peek at one another. As they grow up, they lead remarkably similar lives. The girl dons hippie attire and goes to college. She lives in a dorm, sleeps under a green blanket, and misses the mouse, who, in nearly identical, rodent-sized trappings, misses Mary. When Mary starts a family, she moves into an impressive home of her own. As luck would have it, the mouse moves her family under the very same roof, and it is there that the next generation of daughters discover one another. McClintock's beautiful watercolors have a great deal of charm and are fun to pore over, but they can't save the slight story. Consider it a supplemental purchase for larger collections."Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2007
Little Mary lives in a big house with her mother, father, brother, and sister. And behind the dining-room wall, a little mouse lives with her mother, father, brother, and sister.Though the little mouse has been warned about people, and Mary has been warned about mice, they secretly wave to each other after dinner. Years later, Mary is grown, has a daughter named Maria and lives in a new house. Coincidentally, the little mouse lives in the same house with her daughter, Mouse Mouse. In its little girllittle mouse concept, the story is reminiscent of Jim Aylesworths Two Terrible Frights (1987), butthis develops differently. Since it takes two generations before a girl and a mouse actually speak to each other, the time frame is unusually long for a picture book, which makes this a bit static. Still, the telling is clean, the parallel structure of the tale is pleasing, and McClintocks warm, precisely drawn ink, gouache, and watercolor artwork will fascinate children and adults alike.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2008
A little girl grows up alongside the mouse child that lives in the walls of her house. The two become friends and, although their paths deviate, their children meet years later. McClintock's old-fashioned illustrations are the attraction here. Readers will ignore the story's weak logic, focusing instead on the mouse child's tidy home cleverly decorated with postage stamps and bottle caps.

(Copyright 2008 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)