Miss Renee's Mice - Hardcover

Elizabeth Stokes Hoffman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892725052 ISBN 13: 9780892725052

Publisher: Down East Books, 2001

Synopsis

Miss Renee lives in a large house filled with small houses. This is because she is a maker of dollhouses and miniatures. Everything she creates is tiny and perfect. Her big house and all her little houses are peaceful and tidy. Life is quiet, just the way Miss Renee and her lazy cat like it. Then, unexpectedly, a crowd of displaced barn mice arrives, and nothing about Miss Renee's life is peaceful or tidy anymore! Resourceful Miss Renee comes up with a clever plan to solve the mouse problem, only to realize it might not have been so clever after all. In this simply told and beautifully illustrated little tale, both Miss Renee and the mice come to find out how important good neighbors really are.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Stokes Hoffman is a children's book author who lives in Vermont.  Dawn Peterson ia an artist and designer who lives in Falmouth, Maine.

Reviews

reS-Gr 2-Miss Ren‚e is a rather eccentric soul who spends her solitary life in a big house by the sea crafting miniature houses and accoutrements. Dolls are added almost as an afterthought. Life in the stylish but dull dollhouses is forever changed after a fierce winter storm drives the barn mice indoors. They are naturally attracted to the perfectly proportioned little abodes and waste no time in chucking the plastic dolls out the windows and making themselves right at home. Miss Ren‚e is horrified by the festive, mannerless little marauders and concocts a plan to send them on their way. She fashions a little boat aptly named The Good Riddance and gives each mouse a one-way ticket around the world. Life, Miss Ren‚e discovers, is a good deal quieter and sadder without the cheerful rodents. Months later, when the mice unexpectedly return from their travels resembling a veritable United Nations delegation and bearing gifts, the reunion is a happy one. The coastal Maine setting throughout the seasons is nicely evoked by the watercolor illustrations. The mice are drawn with a good deal of personality and whimsy that is less apparent in the human face and figure of Miss Ren‚e. An additional purchase.

Rosalyn Pierini, San Luis Obispo City-County Library, CA

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Destined to delight dollhouse aficionados, this imaginative tale by a debut author introduces a Maine woman who spends her days decorating dollhouses with furniture, rugs and other miniature objects all of which she makes herself. Miss Ren‚e then buys plastic dolls to live in the houses, though the dolls "were dull and didn't do anything." But when Miss Ren‚e's barn blows down in a storm, its inhabitants, a cache of frisky mice, move indoors and before long the dollhouses acquire much livelier occupants. Peterson's (The Orphan Seal) sometimes staid pictures are at their most playful as they show the mice, now dressed in tiny doll outfits, pitching the plastic dolls out the window, cavorting in the "secret drawer" where Miss Ren‚e keeps her chocolate, and partying all night; meanwhile, she and her lazy cat lie awake, unable to sleep with all the noise-making. At last, Miss Ren‚e builds a small sailboat (named The Good Riddance) to carry the mice on a trip around the world, only to discover that she misses their "squeaky singing and pittery-pattery dancing" and that her houses look less beautiful with no one to use them. Kids will be as tickled as Miss Ren‚e at the return of the diminutive crew, who, sporting costumes from all parts of the globe, unload their cargo of wood and fabrics from various continents enough to keep the miniaturist busy for quite some time. A jolly and jaunty escapade. Ages 4-8.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Down East Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0892725052
• ISBN 13: 9780892725052
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Dawn Peterson
• Number of pages: 32