Little Bitty Mousie

It’s nighttime, the coast is clear—the perfect opportunity for Little Bitty Mousie to explore, in alphabetical order, all the delights of a human household: “She climbed the dirty Dishes/ That at dinner held some stew./ She sniffed into an Eggshell,/ But she found it hard to chew.” Every four letters, Aylesworth (Old Black Fly ) offers up a catchy refrain tailor-made to elicit audience participation: “Tip-tip tippy tippy/ Went her little mousie toes./ Sniff-sniff sniffy sniffy/ Went her little mousie nose.” Hague’s (The Tale of Peter Rabbit ) digitized drawings combine a traditional storybook aesthetic with the vividness of photorealism, and a tall format allows for large-scale renderings. Mousie, with her winsome rodent face and her ankle-length polka-dotted pinafore, would be very much at home in a vintage English picture book, while many of the things she tastes or scampers over have an almost palpably physical presence. Ages 3-6. (Oct.)