Chester Midshipmouse: Special Full Color Edition

Behind the walls of the US Naval Academy’s massive hundred-year-old stone dormitory, a select community of mice undergo their own rigorous military training program. A tawny-coated mouse named Chester gets the call to serve when his dim-witted cousin accidentally starts a fire by chewing through a wire in the wall. Impressed with the confident, efficient, noble midshipmice who respond to the emergency, Chester vows to join the Naval Mouse Academy.

Unfortunately, an injury and a close call with the notorious “water rat” leave Chester at the bottom of the academy’s list of candidates. But with support from his family, including his veteran grandfather, Chester puts in night after night of “toilet training” (healing his wounds while learning to swim) and barely makes the cut.

This charming story follows Chester and his comical nest mates, as well as their unsuspecting human counterparts in the “Rooms Below” the rafters, as they endure the rigors of the legendary Plebe Summer. Even though the humans consider the mice pests rather than comrades, they share the same joys and challenges as they overcome adversity, escape catastrophe, and learn life’s lessons of friendship, teamwork, leadership, courage, duty, honor, and service to others.

Susan Weisberg’s inspiration for Chester Midshipmouse came in the form of a letter from the US Naval Academy dictating that any food sent to her two sons be packaged in tightly sealed plastic boxes. The reason? There were mice in Bancroft Hall!

The notion of rodents running through the nearly five miles of dormitory corridors sent Weisberg’s imagination spinning as she wove a whimsical tale of the tiny animals mimicking the lives of the human students, including her sons, who brought home larger-than-life stories during their overlapping seven years there.

Weisberg holds a degree in nursing and has worked in emergency, and urgent care. She has also freelanced as a food writer and food stylist for a large city newspaper—progressing in her writing from mousse to mice! The author and her husband live in a coastal New Jersey town and have three adult children.