A TALE OF MIDDLE LENGTH

A Tale of Middle Length is of modest, mouse-size proportions, but neatly, satisfyingly told. Dominie was a shy attractive house mouse Miss who had been able to pass as one of the shorter-tailed field mice only because the tip of her tail had been bitten off by a mouse trap. The others in the field mouse community were suspicious of her anonymous origins and refused to heed her frenzied but cryptic warnings about a trap which suddenly appeared on their favorite garbage heap. Only elderly Alec and later Lance, a brave handsome mouse, were willing to lift a claw to help Dominie in her exile and to prevent the community from turning the trap into a children's playground. The anthropomorphizing is carried off very well here in a story that is good bait for young readers.