Laura E Richards

Five Mice in a Mouse Trap Laura E Richards

Utterly enchanting children's book with the Man in the Moon as narrator and principle storyteller. The mice are actually children, five siblings the Man in the Moon calls Nibble, Brighteyes, Fluff, Puff, and Downy the baby, who come to live in an eccentric house he dubs the Mouse-Trap, in the little village of Nomatterwhat, in the state of Nomatterwhere. The Man in the Moon uses a giant mirror to look down on all the children below. He has a dog with the unlikely name of Bmfkmgth ('and none of you will be able to pronounce that, except the children who live in Wales'). There is an awful lot of effort gone into this book, which is jampacked with stories, songs and rhymes, featuring talking dolls, walking beds, trousers made of diamonds and steeplechasing whale. The Man in the Moon is also something of a Sandman, taking the children on various dream journeys to China, the North Pole, and the Indian Ocean, where they meet or hear about lively characters with pleasingly funny names like Pun-Chin and Michikee Moo.