Children's Literature
- Carolyn Mott Ford
The rhymed text is easy to read and the illustrations are amusing. The little mouse raised all her babies in a little shoe. Their home was a purple Mary Jane with a shiny buckle. When the babies were all grown, the little mouse knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to take a nice relaxing hot bath and then a long nap. Each time the little mouse thought she had a chance for her bath and a nap a knock would come upon the shoe. First Tortoise and Hare wanted to stay in the shoe, then the Little Red Hen and finally even the Big, Bad Wolf. Mouse knew her shoe was too little to share, so she told her friends to find their own shoes and put them in the field. A boot, an old sneaker and a yellow pump are placed next to the Mary Jane, forming a town of shoes. This is a Level 2 book in the "Green Light Readers" series.
School Library Journal
K-Gr 2-These three easy-readers combine brightly colored illustrations with short simple stories. Readability is determined using the Reading Recovery model, and each book features a meet-the-author section. In Sometimes, an alligator engages in all sorts of activities, such as cooking, ice fishing, and playing the banjo. The text is repetitive: "Sometimes I am happy. Sometimes I am sad." The reptile has lots of expression, and even nonreaders could recite/read this story after hearing it once or twice. Catch Me features a T-rex that frightens all of the other dinosaurs, except for one, who turns out to be his loving grandchild. The illustrations, done in markers, reflect Most's typical flat style. Written in rhyming couplets, Shoe Town is the best of the bunch. After her children move out, a mother mouse just wants to relax in her shoe home. Various nursery-rhyme characters ask to move in, but she insists they get their own shoes. The cow jumping over the moon keeps a count of the population of "Shoe Town" as it grows. Stevens's illustrations are irresistible, and the tale works well as a read-aloud or read-alone.-Sharon R. Pearce, formerly at San Antonio Public Library, TX Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
