MINE!
What happens: The blue mouse declares the rock his. He plants his little mouse flag and feels very pleased with himself. But orange mouse also wants the rock. Blue mouse and orange mouse go back and forth enticing one another with things like cheese and presents in order to lay claim to the rock themselves. In the heat of their argument, the rock beneath them starts to rumble, shake, and move–what’s happening? Is this rock alive? Rock =/= rock. Rock=turtle shell that, of course, belongs to neither mouse. The piece of cheese, on the other hand, is a different story.
The good: It’s been a while since I read a wordless/nearly wordless picture book. I don’t find myself getting all googly-eyed over those suckers as much as other librarians do. I find those books difficult to utilize. Since I’m such a minimalist storyteller, I really need the aid of the text in a storytime.
This book, however, manages to be quite fun in spite of my preferences for other types of the books. The escalating conflict between the mice is humorous and I likely to be easily understood by any preschooler with any kind of social relationship whatsoever. I didn’t see the twist at the end coming and I liked that the last photo left the book open to the plot continuing without leaving some massive cliffhanger. You kind of know that it’s going to happen but it’s doesn’t feel trite when the moment finally comes.
The illustrations are bright and simple. This is good for very young kids because it’s very easy to see what is happening. There is nothing worse than a wordless book with shitty pictures.
The not so good: I mean, like I said, I’m not necessarily into these text lacking books. It’s cool to see a simple story for young kids with limited vocabularies but it doesn’t get me excited to share this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to read this book to toddlers, mostly because their favorite words are “no” and “mine” and I think it’ll be fun to have them yelling it in unison throughout the book. But will it go down as the best storytime ever? Unlikely. Will I reach for this more than once? Anything can happen but…probably not.
Rating: 2.75/5 stars.
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