There’s a Mouse Hiding in This Book! by Benjamin Bird (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- There’s a Mouse Hiding in This Book! by Benjamin Bird
Right from the title page, Tom Cat (yes, of Tom and Jerry fame) lets audiences know that a mouse is loose in his book. Viewers are encouraged to help him in his hunt for Jerry, through a mousehole, across a field of mousetraps, and under falling paint, while turning pages, shaking the book, and blowing to clean up the mess—right up to the end, where the book can be snapped shut, trapping the mouse until next time. This book’s frenzied chase captures the tone of the classic cartoon and the familiar faces might offer some appeal. However, its rather prosaic approach to the interactive genre (“I can hear him breathing. Can’t you? Shut your eyes and listen closely”) lacks the whimsy of classics like Schwarz’s There Are Cats in This Book, the inventiveness of Tullet’s Press Here, or even the grabby humor of recent additions like Lehrhaupt’s Warning: Do Not Open This Book! (BCCB 9/13). The evenly saturated digital illustrations have the polished sheen of animated classics, complete with comic-book style speech bubbles and colorful onomatopoeia, but the attempt to pack in the frenetic energy of a TV cartoon often clutters the page and makes the illustrations difficult to follow. Still, storytime leaders who’ve gone through aforementioned titles several times will likely be happy to have one more interactive tale to add to their bag of tricks.
