Marielle in Paris

Marielle, a dressmaker mouse who is “smaller than a baby’s fist,” takes inspiration from the sights of Paris as she works to make dresses for the nine daughters of the snooty Madame de Sooree. After the finished dresses blow out an open window overnight, Marielle’s pigeon friend, Pierre, helps her retrieve them, though her fear of heights doesn’t make it easy. Schur (Gullible Gus) recounts Marielle’s whimsical adventures in straightforward narration, which is occasionally dashed with French vocabulary. “Sit on my back, ma petite,” Pierre tells Marielle, distraught over the lost dresses. “We will fly above the city and find them.” Lined in delicate pencil, de Sainte Marie’s paintings faithfully reproduce a variety of Parisian sites (the cathedral of Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower where the final dress awaits), though not all are identified. Her humans, mice, and birds come across as stiff and posed in several scenes, but readers will enjoy the creativity Marielle brings to her designs, and the final pages invite them to locate the sources of her inspiration in de Sainte Marie’s images. Ages 5–up. (Sept.)