Lucky Wish Mouse: Starting School

Fairy mouse and her ten tiny mice are excited. Today is the first day of school for the tinies, and life inside the family teapot is proving hectic. Everyone is getting dressed and finding their new school bags and pencil cases and apples. But the twin tinies are nowhere to be found. When Lucky Wish Mouse discovers them hiding under a newspaper, they admit they want to stay home. ‘But why?’ she asks. There are lots of reasons: they are worried they will get lost, they won’t know what to do, they won’t know where the toilet is, etc. Lucky Wish Mouse is very reassuring and tells them she will definitely find them when it is time to come home. They have a busy, happy first day at school and return home with great plans for tomorrow. This whimsical story, where mice live in teapots and go to school in balloons, is a gentle introduction to the joys and worries of starting school. Vulliamy’s tiny, detailed pictures of the mice in all sorts of poses – putting on shoes, and coats, losing things, enjoying activities at school – are redolent of families everywhere. But one does wonder how Lucky Wish Mouse copes with quite so many children! This story is a joy in both illustration and text and can serve as a counting book too.