The Outermost Mouse
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 19, 2026
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A tiny-but-mighty little mouse faces down an incoming storm to protect her home. A tribute to courage and the rugged beauty of Cape Cod from Newbery Honor–winning author Lauren Wolk.
“A triumphant tale of defending what you love.″ —Kirkus, starred review
The Outermost Mouse loves her life at the tip of the beach. She has blue sky above and sand as warm and soft as her mother below.
Best of all is the house, a huge nest she has made her own. There are jam-jar posies, lanterns full of gold, and a clock that tick-tocks her to sleep at night.
But a storm is coming. When the sky goes dark and a cold wind rises, the little mouse must do everything she can to protect her home. Even though she’s small enough to fit into a teacup, the Outermost Mouse is smart, strong, and brave—and ready to face the wild waves.
Illustrator Kristen Adam brilliantly captures the snug warmth and fierce beauty of the Outermost Mouse’s shoreline world in Newbery Honor–winning author Lauren Wolk’s glorious tribute to the courage and tenacity of a tiny-but-mighty heroine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With compassionate prose, haunting artwork, and an open, mythic ending, Newbery Honoree Wolk, making her picture book debut, and Adam (The Urban Owls) capture what it means to face a literal sea change. A brown mouse "in love with her life" shares with an old man the Outermost House, a ramshackle cabin perched on a beach "where the land slipped away." Nature provides for the mouse's needs, and the house supplies creature comforts, including a clock that "tick-tocked her to sleep at night." But the waters are rising nearer the residence, and while other animals prove unconcerned and the house itself seems resigned to its fate, the mouse attempts to build rodent-size defenses. When the human owner finally abandons the abode, the ocean rushes in, and sweeping digitally finished watercolors turn genuinely frightening as the mouse, clinging to a post, is enveloped in stormy darkness. Then realism gives way to legend: the protagonist lashes her tail to the porch—now her prow—and standing with hands on hips, heads into open waters, "the sea itself singing her name as she joined the ranks of captains everywhere." The creators acknowledge real loss—climate change, displacement, homes that can't be saved. But they also offer young readers navigating their own "outermost" futures a path forward, defined by courage and a sense of adventure. An author's note concludes. Ages 4–8.
