Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Synopsis
Originally published in 1973, this is an offbeat fable about the city mouse who visits his peaceful country cousins and tells them about Mardi Gras in the city. What fun it would be to make masks of fearsome animals and have our own Mardi Gras, think the country mice. And at first it is fun wearing their masks with sharp teeth and tusks and scaring each other, but after awhile they begin believing that they really are ferocious animals. All the mice are frightened and suspicious of each other until one mouse finds a way to make them happy to be real mice again.
Leo Lionni’s winsome mice, all cousins to his beloved Frederick, cavort across big double-page spreads of oil paintings and tell a story about what is real and what is not that is just right for preschoolers.
Publishers Weekly
A city mouse explains Mardi Gras to a group of country mice and they decide to stage their own celebration, complete with wild animal masks, in The Greentail Mouse by Leo Lionni. In a wordless spread, the artist indicates the mice's personalities transformed into the ferocious beasts with dark shades of gray and brown-a fitting juxtaposition to the holiday's otherwise festive tones.