MARTIN'S MICE

Rafaello Busoni's illustrations may help to rescue the old legend of the saintly Dominican monk and how he met the challenge of danger to his beloved mice. But for children other than Catholic the details of the scenes inside the monastery in far off Peru will seem so unfamiliar as to be incomprehensible. The slender thread of the threat to the brothers in the monastery with the influx of mice, of Brother Martin's talking to the mice as they approached the traps, and of how they gathered all their kith and kin and left the monastery, seems to suggest a denominational re-viewing of the classic Pied Piper, which is not very successful.