A young mouse has every right to be worried when her father brings home a "squirrel" in this pitch-perfect picture book by the author of the equally charming Pokko and the Drum.
Mina is a dreamy but slightly anxious mouse who spends her days reading and drawing while her adventurous but imprudent father brings home "surprises from the outside world." She doesn't mind... until one day when he calls her outside to see his latest treasure, quite obviously a large, black-and-white cat. "It's a squirrel!" Mina's dad says with arm-flinging delight. "I don't think that's a squirrel," says Mina. The impassive-faced cat joins the mouse family's household, and an uneasy (for Mina) calm settles in. The addition of two more "surprises" to keep the first one company is the tipping point, however, especially when all three "squirrels" seem not to have any appetite for acorns. What follows may be the best line ever uttered by a literary mouse doctor: "Oh, I see the problem," says the doctor Mina's father has called in. "The problem is that these squirrels are definitely cats."
As with Pokko and the Drum, Matthew Forsythe brings to Mina a dry, droll humor and exquisite watercolor, gouache and colored-pencil illustrations. Patterns abound in the earth-toned pages: flower parasols, pack baskets, stylized butterflies, "antique art" (postage stamps). Mina's "obsessive reader" poses--on her belly on the floor, in a homemade tent, in bed, on her back, even on the back of the cat--will feel exactly right to every bookworm lucky enough to find this treasure. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor