Mouse and Mole: A Perfect Halloween

written and illustrated by Wong Herbert Yee
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children | September 2011

The most recent Mouse and Mole book is entitled Mouse and Mole: A Perfect Halloween. This adorable early reader chapter book feature best friends, Mouse and Mole, and their fall adventures revolving around carving pumpkins for a contest, making costumes, and facing the scariness Halloween can bring. Yee uses a clever story-within-a-story as a way for Mouse to help Mole be less afraid. In the end, Mole gets Mouse back, startling him in his ghost costume, and "together, Mouse and Mole had a perfect Halloween!"

The artwork is colorful, rendered in gouache and litho pencil, which provides strong lines and soft details. As appropriate in an early reader, the illustrations provide clues to the text to assist new readers still working out new words. There's a fair bit of text on each page, which makes this book perfect for those ready for a little more work, but broken up well into four separate chapters to allow for breaks. The typical early reader trim size is great for little hands.

There are six Mouse and Mole books in all. The other five are: Upstairs Mouse, Downstairs Mole, Abracadabra!: Magic with Mouse and Mole, A Brand New Day with Mouse and Mole, Mouse and Mole: Fine Feathered Friends (2010 Theodor Suess Geisel Honor Award Winner), and Mouse and Mole: A Winter Wonderland. I'll confess I've not seen the others, but judging by the Halloween title, I'd feel safe assuming they all provide good little stories for the just-starting-to-read set. Set up your slightly older child to read aloud to his/her younger sibling/cousin/friend - these are just right for such an endeavor!