“Once upon a time there was a little mouse house. It was like a doll’s house, but not for dolls, for mice.” Not proper mice, but a flannel He-Mouse and She-Mouse with beady eyes and bristle whiskers who stand quite still, propped on their hind legs in the sitting room. Mary knows real mice run and scamper, and disappointed with her new gift, she puts the mouse house away in her room. Meanwhile, down in the basement, a real mouse named Bonnie has been jostled out of her woefully inadequate flowerpot home by her older brothers and sisters. Overlooked by her harried parents and desperate for shelter, Bonnie ventures upstairs and finds the mouse house. And before too long what was a miniature make-believe house becomes a marvelously messy home for proper mice who know how to play, much to everyone’s delight.

Rumer Godden (1907–1998) grew up in India, where her father ran a steamship company. She wrote more than sixty books for adults and young adults, several of which, including An Episode of Sparrows, and The Mousewife have been published in The New York Review Children’s Collection.
 
Adrienne Adams (1906–2002) was a children’s book illustrator who won two Caldecott Honors (for Alice E. Goudey’s Houses from the Sun in 1959 and The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up in 1961) and the Rutgers Award for her contribution to children’s literature. She illustrated more than thirty books, including the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.