by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 07, 2010

There's a surprise in the drawings for "The Good Mousekeeper". The kindly old woman who raises lots of adorable mice...is a cat! "I love them because they are soft and cuddly," she says - from a behind a pair of grandmotherly spectacles. And she also lists another reason for loving mice: they "squeak when I press them!"

Cats and mice make strange roommates, and each drawing savors the funny tension. This "mousekeeping" cat is matronly and kind, cooking porridge on an iron stove in a plaid dress and apron - plus a grandmotherly cap. "It's up at dawn to cook hot porridge for my mice," she explains - while the mice themselves appear frisky and mischievous. There's at least 11 mice scattered throughout the picture - jumping up and down, sitting on her faucets, playing in her teacups, and even hanging from the hands of her clock!

In fact, there's mice everywhere, since every one of the black and white drawings shows the house crowded with tiny but rambunctious mice. And each drawing is in a page-sized oval, like the picture in an old-fashioned locket, allowing illustrator Hilary Knight to draw even more mice in the corners. The drawings are tinted with blue, so each oval appears on a solid background - a homey light blue pastel. One corner shows a mouse juggling, one shows a mouse carrying cheese - but there's more mice than you can count.

Robert Kraus wrote the text, and he adds even more to the book's the funny tension. "Sometimes I get tense and nervous," the caretaker cat says sweetly, "but I try not to take it out on my mice." And she sighs with exasperation that "Bath time is sheer chaos."  (And the illustrator obliges with a drawing of two dozen mice - dancing on a stool, playing on the faucets, and diving into a bubble-filled tub!

In the end, all the tension adds an extra sweetness to the book's ending. "Now it is bedtime," says the mousekeeper, and she's tucked all her mice into cozy beds - in boxes, drawers, and tins. Maybe the author is trying to teach young readers both the joys of parenting and the effort. A sweet contentment fills the cat's heart, and "I read them a beautiful story, and one by one their little eyes begin to close.

"Sometimes, my eyes close too, and I fall asleep right in my rocking chair, a very tired but very happy mousekeeper."

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.