The Town Mouse & the Country Mouse
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration is from Emily Gravett’s Wolf Won’t Bite! Emily Gravett is interviewed in this issue. Thanks to Macmillan Children’s Books for their support for this May cover.
Digital Edition
By clicking here you can view, print or download the fully artworked Digital Edition of BfK 188 May 2011.
The Town Mouse & the Country Mouse
Ayano Imai
I would think there are broadly two ways to treat this kind of well-known simple moral tale in a picture book. You could: use it as the springboard for some virtuoso illustration, playing with character and setting; or elect to let the words largely speak for themselves. Imai takes the second route, providing carefully composed illustrations of delicacy, restraint and some quiet humour.
While these illustrations offer little in the way of characterisation of the mice or dramatisation of a theme of the contrasting merits of simplicity and sophistication (except in showing the sophistication of art in the service of simple storytelling), they are distinctive and elegant, provide pleasure in themselves, and subtly invite the reader to make their own choice of mouse life-style. While the text favours the view of the country mouse, the penultimate illustration of the two mice each taking their own road to happiness is rather more even handed.