Itsy Bitsy Baby Mouse

PreS-K—A tiny mouse explores a house, chasing a fly and nibbling pie until it realizes that it is lost. After a close encounter with a cat, the mouse finds a friendly stranger who helps it identify landmarks to find its way home. The little creature is almost there when something grabs its tail. Baby throws a kicking, screaming fit, thinking it's the cat, but when it opens its eyes, it sees its parents, and the book ends with a family hug. Though slight, the story reads aloud well. The rhyme scheme is similar to Anna Dewdney's "Llama Llama" books (Viking) but is less dense since there are never more than four lines per spread. Cordell's normally delightful cartoon art is a bit uneven here. Some spreads shine, especially those that play with perspective and show how truly "itsy bitsy" Baby is in a human-size world, but the spread showing the path home is static and two-dimensional. The text calls for Baby to "Climb up on a wooden ledge./Cross and hop down off the edge," but the flat perspective makes it seem unnecessary to climb at all—it appears to be a straight line home. Additional.—Anna Haase Krueger, Antigo Public Library, WI