Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
The Tall Man and the Small Mouse
Illustrator: Birgitta Sif
Picture Book
For ages 4 to 6
Candlewick, 2019 ISBN: 978-1536201680
On a high hill there was a tall house, and in that house lived a tall man. This man used his height to do “tall things that needed doing.” Among other things he helped people pick apples, he untangled swings, and rescued cats and kites from trees.
In that same tall house there lived a very small mouse, and every night she spent her time doing “small things that needed doing.” She was particularly good at finding small things that were lost and gathering them up.
One day the tall man went to fix the clock in the town. He was the perfect person to do the job because the clock, like the man, was tall. The problem was that he was too tall to get inside the clock. Try as he might he could not find a solution to the problem of the clock that “would not tick and would not tock.”
That night the mouse, after gathering up a variety of small lost things, fell asleep in the tall man’s boot, and in the morning, the two residents of the tall house met for the first time. When the tall man saw the mouse’s collection of small missing things he got an idea. Perhaps together they could figure out how to put the tick and the tock back into the town’s clock.
In this heart-warming picture book, lovely illustrations are paired with a rhyming text to give young children a tale that celebrates the way in which two very different characters are able figure out how work together to solve a problem. Better still, they find something that both of them come to value.
