The Complete Story of the Three Blind Mice

Galdone's last work is an expected delight. His mice are three-as-one, identifiable only by the colors of their mufflers and clearly small in contrast to the vast open spaces around them and the oversize people nearby. In the course of this longer version of the familiar rhyme, they go from bold to scared, grow hungry, sad and sick. A narrow escape from a cat sends them into the bramble hedge that scratches their eyes and makes them blind. Then their tails are cut off by the farmer's wife. Now, ""they could not see and they had no end.'' But this story doesn't end unhappily, and readers will enjoy the lesser-known verses of the mice's adventure. The illustrator's daytime world is lit by a large orange sun disk and colored with a variety of flowers, insects and birds, where things good and bad can happen and where adventure, experience and learning are fully possible. Watercolors and ink lines are used adroitly to fashion into existence a remote but welcoming place in the imagination. Ages 5-8. (September)