Once a Mouse

Brown, Marcia. Once a Mouse… New York: Atheneum Book for Young Readers, 1961.

I read this Caldecott winner to my second graders yesterday. Because of its age, I prefaced the reading with a comment about how old the picture book was. I find this helps the students to open their eyes to the book even though the illustrations are not what they are used to with today’s technology.

Marcia Brown based this delightful tale on an old fable from India. Once a Mouse… contains magical elements. An old man rescues a mouse from being eaten and magically turns it into a cat. The cat becomes scared so he changes it into a big dog. Each time the animal encounters a problem, the man turns it into something larger. Once it becomes a tiger, it is so proud it won’t believe it was ever a mouse. When the tiger threatens the man, he turns it back into a mouse and the man contemplates big and little.

Marcia Brown used wood cuts to illustrate the story. Her illustrations expand the text. Due to the technology of the day, only three colors are used in the illustrations but they kept the attention of my second graders.

If you don’t have a copy in your library, Once a Mouse… is available from Amazon. Thanks for using my affiliate link which helps support this children’s literature blog.