The Mouse and His Child

The Mouse and his Child

This is one of a few books that I read when I was a child that I have looked up and ordred or bought now as an adult to re- read . Partially I wanted to do this for nostalgia, to re-live the delight I had in the first reading or in this case, it had been read to me. The other motive I have is to discover if the book holds as much magic as it did for me as a child, or if it 's not as good reading as an adult. The last reason is to find my way back into that enchanted land part of my brain where ceratin ingredients from each of these books lurk as peices of a magic puzzle. They spark the way down the secret passageway from the land of the half remembered to the world of the partly imagined. From this place, most of my inspiration for paintings and stories comes, I would like to pull from here my own story, that I can write down someday. I just finished reading this book again. Actually, it was the first time I read it, because the first time it was read to me by my mother when I was little. It holds up very well for an adult read. This story had stuck in my head, but not everything about the plot, I could only recall little prize peices, like "The last visible dog" and Bonzo dog food, and moods from the story, but didn't know what was going to happen next and how the end played out along this second reading, so it was fun. There were parts I hadn't remembered at all, like the Woodchuck who was into abstract mathematical thought, and the fact that nature is so brutal in this story, in the first part of their journey a rat gets eaten by a badger, a whole army of shrews get eaten by a couple of weasels, which promplty get eaten by owls, and further into the story nature continues in this brutal circle of life type plot twists, something I 'm pleased to see is not considered to rough or graphic for children's book material.