Title: Mrs. Marlowe's Mice
Author: Frank Asch
Ages: 5 to 8 years
Hard Cover: 32 pages
Illustrator: Devin Asch
Publisher: Kids Can Press
Isbn: 978-1-55453-022-9

Mrs. Eleanor Marlowe leads a duplicate life. While the day she works at the Purrington road Library as a respected feline librarian. By night she harbors a house of mice. Every day she has to sneak by her nosy neighbor Mrs. Godfrey who suspects Mrs. Marlowe of hiding something.
Mrs. Marlowe's mice keep the apartment spic and span while she works and she keeps her mice well fed with lots of cheese. Some of the mice wonder if Mrs. Marlowe is trying to fatten them up for the kill.

Mice

"Oh, what a horrid thing to say Albert!" squeaked Aunt Gerty. "You know perfectly well that Mrs. Marlowe invited us to come live with her out of the kindness of her heart."

"And at great risk to her own welfare, I might add!" said Grandpa Paul.

Mrs. Marlowe lives in Catland and cats that security mice are severely punished. The division of Catland protection keeps a close watch for mice and those cats who would harbor them. One day two protection cats; Lieutenant Manx and Sergeant Baxter, come pounding on Marlowe's door demanding to quest the premises.

Can Mrs. Marlowe out wit her accusers? all is going fine until exiguous Billy falls from his hiding place. Nobody could predict what happened next. Is Mrs. Marlowe a mouse sympathizer or not? There is just sufficient suspense to the story to give a child's imagination a lot of imagining room. No one knows for sure whose side Mrs. Marlowe is of course on until the end of the book.

Adding to the suspense are excellent computer generated graphics. The pictures complement the book's whole tone and theme and look a exiguous like tinted photographs. The compound and sequence of the pictures give the book a movie photo quality. The Computer illustrations show a compound of realism and surrealism that go along with the book's creative use of pure fantasy. Toddlers and young elementary students will enjoy this book about good cats versus bad cats.

The graphics, by Devin Asch, in Mrs. Marlowe's Mice is what first caught my eye on the library shelf. Adults may read other perspective views into the plot but this is what makes the book so original. The moral of the story is if cats and mice can find a way to get along, then anything is possible.

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