A Delicious Story
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"You ate the story?" says one mouse to the other in this funny, heartfelt read-aloud with pitch-perfect repartee and Barney Saltzberg's signature take on the joys of creativity.
Two mice—one big and one small—have a terrible problem. Little Mouse is looking for a story—they’re in a book, after all!—and Big Mouse has to admit the truth. The story is gone. And (gasp!) he ate it. That is not okay with Little Mouse, who is all ready to hear a story and will settle for nothing less. Saltzberg's improvisational dialogue showcases both the patience required of true creativity and the dazzling on-the-spot storytelling that can happen when you get in the flow. In the end, these endearing mice work out their conflict— and make the reader realize that they’ve been delivering a story all along. Parents and children will want to take this satisfying comedic journey together again and again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A small blue mouse walks onto an opening page of this picture book looking to find the volume's story. Instead, it discovers a larger gray mouse wearing a blissful expression. When pressed, the second mouse acknowledges that the book once housed a telling with pictures—even "a beginning, a middle, and an end"—and it eventually confesses to having eaten the tale. The story-consuming rodent offers to make amends, even though conjuring up a replacement puts on the pressure: "How do you expect me to make up a story while you watch?" Minimally detailed digital ink line drawings with soft washes of fill-in color appear against the blank background of the storyless pages, but Saltzberg (We Are Expecting You!) gets lots of mileage from his characters' expressive argy-bargy. The big mouse eventually recycles the book's opening incident into a new tale, and throws in a friendly green dragon as an added surprise, resulting in a light, cartooned meta-comedy combined with an object lesson in thinking on one's feet. Ages 3–6.
