Mouse Creeps
Digital version – browse, print or download
BfK Newsletter
Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!
Cover Story
This issue's cover is a photograph of Anne Frank whose diary is discussed by Michael Rosen fifty years after its first publication. Following the arrest of the Frank family and their companions, the secret annex in Amsterdam where they had been in hiding was locked up and everybody forbidden to enter it, since Jewish possessions became Nazi property and were carted away. Before this happened, the young woman, Miep Gies, who had provided those in hiding with food and who had a second key to the annex, risked herself once more by entering it. Miep retrieved Anne's diary from the devastation together with the Frank family photograph album.
Thanks to Penguin Children's Books for help in reproducing this cover.
PDF
Printer-friendly version
Send to friendMouse Creeps
Illustrated by Reg Cartwright
Cartwright's distinctive illustrative style fleshes out this picture book with its circular tale sparingly told in just 59 words presented as rhyming couplets. The action progresses from a peaceful hearth and home, to the farm outside and the wider countryside beyond where two armies are lined up for battle. But the opposing generals are brought down by a salvo of acorns rather than bullets, and pigs, rather than blows. Their discomfiture brings laughter -'Soldiers roar./End war.' - and the soldiers return, to the hearth and home where the story began. Each double page spread is built up with crisply defined blocks of colour and has an order and formality that fascinates. Children will enjoy exploring them while older readers will also reflect on the book's antiwar message.
