Space Mice

by Lori Haskins Houran, Priscilla Alpaugh (Illustrator)

Overview

When two hungry mice spot a giant yellow ball of cheese in the night sky, they get right to work building a rocketship so they can take a big bite out of that glowing full moon. After sailing through starry skies, the mice arrive at the feast of their dreams—and soon the moon isn't so full anymore! Simple, rhythmic text makes this a great read-aloud for future astronauts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807575536
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	03/01/2020
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD280L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Lori Haskins Houran is the author of more than forty books, including Next to You and Space Mice. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.

Priscilla Alpaugh earned her BFA in Painting and Illustration from UMass Amherst and studied for her MFA in Illustration at Syracuse University. Priscilla makes illustrations for the children's market. She has also been known to paint murals and traffic control boxes, design logos and bookplates, and make digital animations. She lives in Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

"Lots of humor on the page…A winner for young sky watchers with stars…or cheese…in their eyes."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2019-12-18
With that big ball of cheese hanging so temptingly in the sky, what's a pair of hungry mice to do?

Marching to a pared-down rhyme of just three or four words per line, Alpaugh's cute and capable mice determinedly gather tools and materials, design and build a rocket, and blast off. They touch down on a surface more like Roquefort than regolith and emerge from the capsule, equipped with a cleverly designed lunar backhoe: "Landing, standing / on the moon. / that's one small step— / and one big spoon!" After they've stuffed themselves, there's nothing left for an astonished young human astronomer back on Earth to see but a thin crescent. Presenting white, this child gapes up at the suddenly no-longer-full moon as the mouse astronauts tow their reentry capsule—and one last piece of moon—off the page. There's lots of humor on the pages, from the mice wielding full-size human tools to a cheese-loving stowaway ant. A Right Stuff head-on view of the spacesuited mice, helmets under their arms, is particularly chuckleworthy. The venture recalls Andy Mansfield's Journey to the Moon (2015), with its similarly cheesy climax, but it also pairs well with other extraterrestrial trips such as Dan Yaccarino's Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon! (1997; tragically, out of print) and Nancy Shaw and Margo Apple's Sheep Blast Off! (2008).

A winner for young sky watchers with stars…or cheese…in their eyes. (Picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews