Adam Mouse loves the country more than anything. No one could ever make him leave the beautiful blossoms and ripe vegetable gardens of the country. No one except Amanda. Amanda is Adam's city pen pal. So, when Amanda invites him to the city for her birthday, Adam decides to go. She picks a spot at the farmer's market. "I'll meet you at the cucumbers," she writes.
With Junius Mouse as his guide, Adam sneaks aboard a farmner's truck bound for the city and so begins the biggest adventure of his life. It is a journey filled with excitement, wonder, and danger. But the biggest surprise of all waits for Adam in the city library, when Amanda shows him that the thoughts he has been writing to her are actually poems. Adam is a poet -- and he didn't even know it!
Grade 2-5 Adam Mouse, a self-pro claimed country fellow who thinks in poetic images, is reluctant to accompa ny his adventuresome friend, Junius , on weekly trips to the city. After Adam begins writing his ``thinking- aloud ideas'' to city pen pal Amanda, he agrees to leave the peace of the fa miliar farm just for a day. Among his city adventures is a trip to the public library, where Amanda helps him real ize that he is a poet and that poets are important people. All of the characters are deftly developed, particularly Adam. ``You do make a fellow look twice, Adam,'' says his friend, Junius, upon hearing one of Adam's poems. The spare poetic text is a perfect ac companiment to Adam's poetry, which is interspersed throughout the story. Reminiscent of Randall Jarrell's The Bat-Poet (Macmillan, 1964), this has masterful writing that manages to achieve a charming simplicity while making profound statements about the human condition. It will also be en joyed as a lively animal fantasy. Car oline Ward, Nassau Library System, Uniondale, N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.