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MOUSE AROUND by Pat  Schories

MOUSE AROUND

by Pat Schories & illustrated by Pat Schories

Pub Date: May 9th, 1991
ISBN: 0-374-35080-9
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

There's plenty to discover and discuss in this carefully devised wordless story: A baby mouse, awakened by a dripping pipe, falls into the plumber's pocket to begin an adventurous journey that takes it out the door in the resident paperboy's doughnut and to various places around town before—having made numerous transfers (all unobserved by the humans) from one conveyance to another and survived dangers (including a cat and a garbage truck)—it serendipitously makes its way back, via an oblivious visitor's hat, to drop down the kitchen sink through the still-open-ended pipe, into its basement home. Using illustrations in round-cornered squares of various sizes to contrast scenes from the larger human perspective with smaller vignettes pinpointing the mouse's activities, Schories cleverly sequences her pictorial narrative, always focusing attention on what happens next. Her humans may be merely serviceable and her mouse more toy than live creature, but the astutely observed action here is consistently amusing and the overall design and organization are nicely harmonious. An unusually strong debut. (Picture book. 2-8)