I quivered with delight when I first read A Moose called Mouse. Not an adult, sophisticated and knowing quiver, but a delicious, child-like quiver. The sort of quiver I remember from my own childhood. The sort of quiver which came from discovering a book so delightful, so free, so logical (in a child's sort of way), so strange that I couldn't fully understand it - even though I loved it at once.

A Moose called Mouse is the story of a young child and her friendship with her moose, whom she has named Mouse. The story has a dreamlike feel - the reader never quite knows whether moose is real, or the child's imaginary friend. Rather than distracting or confusing the reader this uncertainty heightens the appeal of the story because it takes the child out past reality into the world of the imagination. Often when children are deeply absorbed in play they are not distracted by adult concepts like 'what is real?' or 'what is made up?'. They do not seem fussed about where one ends and the other begins. Martine Murray has captured this quality of a child's concentration in a very sensitive way.

There is something here for all. For the pragmatists there are many features which one can, if one must, use as an educational justification for buying this book. The literary features include alliteration and rhymes ("Mouse is a moose. He's not a mouse or a louse"), similes ("horns that look like cauliflower, or coral or bare winter branches"), evocative word pictures ("this is the field trembling in the dark") and lilting textual arrangements ("But he isn't at all a monster. He's the most charming moose you could ever know"). The visual features include the deceptively simple illustrations (which match the atmosphere of the tale with a charming, textural naïvete) and a balanced approach to design (which marries a range of angles and arrangements of text, using the perfectly suited 'Dinosaur' font) to take the reader in and out of the story.

For the lovers of indulgent and apparently nonsensical books, this is a publication not governed by the holy dollar. I don't imagine it will make huge amounts of money for Allen and Unwin but I applaud them for its publication. It is a book driven by story, rather than the need to educate. It is the sort of book our young children need to have the time to engage with.

This is a book, which I imagine will be short-listed in next year's CBCA Book of the Year Award (Early Childhood category). It has all the elements of a beautifully crafted book. The text, illustrations and design capture the unhurried mood and the companionship of the story perfectly and I recommend it highly. 

Other books by this author:
The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (who planned to live an unusual life) (Allen & Unwin, 2002)
How to make a bird (Allen & Unwin, 2003)

Review by Sarah Mayor Cox

© 2002 Sarah Mayor Cox