Little Mouse's Big Book of Beasts

PreS-Gr 2—This worthy successor to Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears is another of Gravett's comic, inventive marvels. Little Mouse finds certain creatures worrisome. How can the rodent make them less scary? Using a paint set, paper, magazine cut-outs, and origami folds and doing some serious editorializing, Mouse tries to calm the ferocious "original" illustrations. In the section on lions, a handwritten Post-it note reads: "How to make this page less scary. 1) Remove roar. 2) Cover claws. 3) Turn the page." The growling, pouncing lion's mane has been watercolored, and his toothy jaw has been fastened with a tab labeled "shhhhhh." A decoupage of red mittens has been glued over his feet. Each animal spread is accompanied by a short poem, and in the lion's case, the last word is ROAR! But Little Mouse has clipped the word from the page and relocated it to the beast's own mouth. Like its predecessor, this book is not designed to be read aloud to groups but rather is a leisurely exploration of Gravett's, or one mouse's, ingenuity: the crocodile's mouth can't close because of a tall toothbrush someone placed between its jaws; the rhino's stampeding pace is slowed by dainty shoes. Little Mouse uses a paintbrush and an ad for a bouncy chair to launch through a hole in one page, thereby escaping three irate bears. Pages are torn, munched, and folded. Origami instruction booklets and wasp-battling newspapers spring out at readers.