Of Mice, Moles, and Me

The Subway Mouse written and illustrated by Barbara Reid

Eeny, Meeny, Miney Mole by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Kathryn Brown

I'm trying to do this thing where I review a book and then mention a book from my childhood which I basically associate with it, or have been reminded of by it. Today we go into the underground...

Every time I see rats running along the subway in New York I gaze after them thinking about what a great children's book their lives would make. Probably ever since reading things like the Rats of Nimh or the Littles or even the Boxcar Children I'm mad about stories of tiny scavengers making it in the big bad grown-up human society!

I both loved the book and was dissapointed by it. The 'illustrations' are all photographs of scenes made from clay- I like how this techinique allows for the mice to horde real things like stamps or boxes or trinkets or, most interestingly, a little white feather that the mouse, who dreams of going to the beautiful yet deadly 'Tunnel's End', prizes very highly. The idea of 'tunnel's end' was lovely in execution- living in the subways your whole life and then emerging to a blossoming summer night under a wide, wide starry sky (what NYC subway tunnel emerges in an Eden like that)! However, the book could have been at least twice as long, to make up for the fact that the idea itself was not wildly original. The white feather sticks out but is  not at all fully utilized as a storytelling device. I remember so clearly that the Littles have postage stamps as paintings, that the boxcar children feel elated when they find some dinnerware, and the Nimh rats use christmas lights to light their tunnels.

The childhood book I was reminded of, Eeny Meeny Miney Mole, is about a little Mole (Eeny) who has never been to what her and her older sisters (Meeny and Miney) call 'Up Above'. In her world 'dark was light, day was night, and summer and winter seemd the same'. Eeny wanders underground and meets a worm, a centipede and a snake who tell her about Up Above- which her sisters deny ("Don't listen to addlepated centipedes'' or "never even speak to snakes"). Eeny wonders if light spreads like a blanket, or if it touches in and out like the thread in the hem of a dress. I particularly remembered how the centipede used the bulb of a jonquil as a periscope to view Up Above. The watercolors by Brown as also beautiful- as one reviewer put it, "The palette of befogged earth tones is complemented by scattered spots of luminescence when lanterns, fire and glass light up the underworld."

Though its quite silly, I feel I should disclaim that my unbridled love for Yolen and Brown comes not just from their talent and, especially in Yolen's case, staggeringly prolific work. Yolen attended undergraduate and graduate school in my hometown/neighboring town, and is well known in the area- as is Brown. (My hometown of Northampton, MA is home to countless cartoonists and childrens book authors/illustrators, the now-closed Words and Pictures Museum, and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art,) I'm sentimental. I mean, it was in the Eric Carle Museum that I first really acknowledged how interested in Childrens books I was- on my third visit I saw a whole bevy of local artisits and illustrators signing books in the lobby and got totally starstruck by almost every single one. Yolen/Brown had signed copies of Muledred and Eeny Meeny for me as a child, but at age 19 I was shy about going up to them for some reason! What I'm saying is, if you're unfamiliar with Jane Yolen, Shame on You.

Love,

Arla