Author Description

Product DescriptionTwo cheerful cousins, Town Mouse and Country Mouse, decide to pay each other a visit -- Town Mouse to the country, Country Mouse to the town. But the home comforts of one become the unexpected adventure of the other. Many surprises -- and a dose of danger -- convince the cousins that there's truly "no place like home."From Publishers WeeklyJones's charmingly illustrated, engagingly straightforward work retells the beloved Aesop fable about two mice who discover that indeed "there's no place like home." As in her earlier peep-hole books, two-inch openings in the center of alternate pages offer tantalizing glimpses of things to come and provide cheery "backward glances" at the malcontent mice. With the finely wielded lines of her elaborate pen-and-watercolor art (somewhat reminiscent of John O'Brien's work, though less stylized), Jones opts for a warmer and lighter take on the tale than the cool-toned opulence found in Jan Brett's 1994 rendition. The full-bleed pictures are jammed with amusing details, beginning with a cozily crowded Town Mousehole into which peers a hopeful kitty (while a sign by the lair's exit warns, "Look left Look right Every night"). Ages 4-8.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.From School Library JournalPreSchool-Grade 2?This well-loved fable benefits from this low-key retelling. Jones enlarges upon the friendship between the two cousins and the myriad dangers that await each mouse when he sets foot on unfamiliar ground. She repeatedly reinforces the moral of the story and concludes with the familiar "There's no place like home." Like several of Jones's earlier picture books, this one features die-cut holes on every other page that give readers a hint of the illustration to come. This clever design doesn't work quite as well as it did in Old MacDonald Had a Farm (1989) and This Old Man (1990, both Houghton), but it does allow for plenty of interaction when sharing the book with young children. The full-page pictures are fairly realistic in style and appear to be drawn in pen-and-ink with watercolor washes. The palette emphasizes muted earth tones for the Country Mouse section and a jazzier color scheme for the Town Mouse. While there are other memorable versions of this fable, most notably Janet Stevens's humorous The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (Holiday, 1987) and Jan Brett's richly detailed Town Mouse, Country Mouse (Putnam, 1994), this rendition deserves a place on library shelves.?Denise Anton Wright, Illinois State University, NormalCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.About the AuthorBorn and educated in England, Carol Jones now lives in Australia. She is a full-time author and illusrutor who has given new life to many old favorites.From BooklistAges 5^-8. What's always fun about this fable is the juxtaposition of two different worlds, which readers can see but the mice cannot. Here, the pictures show a Martha Stewart^-like urban and rural mousedom, with point of view precisely the point: every other page has a hole (might we say a mouse hole) through which readers can peek at the next scene. Food fantasies are the best part of the city mouse's country crisis; it's troubles with traffic, wonderfully pictured, that plague the country mouse. In each locale, the predator, whether owl or cat, appears as a prominent presence. An old favorite done with pictures that bear up to long and pleasant scrutiny.Mary Harris VeederReview"An old favorite done with pictures that bear up to long and pleasant scrutiny." Booklist, ALA