Mice

"Mice are nice," especially when Ehlert is illustrating them with handmade paper and bits of string. The book's two mouse friends, one red and one gray, both with round, bright-pink ears, have quite the life: playing, dressing up, and nibbling on cupcakes and cereal. Borrowing the words from Fyleman's humorous poem for young children, written in 1917 ("I think mice / are rather nice. / Their tails are long, / their faces small. / They haven't any chins at all"), Ehlert keeps things light and bouncy with her energetic and droll collage illustrations. She even manages to sneak in an amusing surprise ending. Most of the illustrations' backgrounds are flat black, allowing readers to imagine the dark, secret places where mice spend their nights. The final line -- "But I think mice / are nice" -- pops against bright green pages, permitting a toothy orange tabby to shine for his smug cameo. Ehlert's clean spreads are made up of a variety of simple geometric shapes, mostly triangles, circles, rectangles, and trapezoids. One page shows the mice manipulating these simple shapes much the way the illustrator herself does -- with scissors, glue, hole-punches, paint, rulers, and pens. Attention art teachers: having your young students illustrate poems using Ehlert's technique will be a surefire hit. robin l. smith