Mousenet

Mousenet

Prudence Breitrose, illustrated by Stephanie Yue

Disney Hyperion, 2011

$16.99, Hardcover

978-1423124894

April 12^th, 2012

Genre: Fantasy

Age: 8+

Description: Ten-year-old Megan is a bit of an outsider. She’s been traveling the world with her journalist mother and has mainly been homeschooled. She’s not ready for the shock that is learning she can’t follow her mother on her next assignment to Australia and she can’t stay with her Uncle Fred either—she’s being forced to move to Oregon to live with her father and his new wife, Annie. At least Uncle Fred is allowing her to take his latest fun invention with her—the Thumbtop—an itty-bitty laptop computer that actually functions (but it’s so small Megan has to type with a toothpick!). She’s glad she gets to keep it because she helped her uncle build the prototype. Unbeknownst to her though she’s got some admirers—a trio of mice has followed her across the country as the fate of the mouse world rests in her hands. The mice are super smart and want to help mankind but it would be more helpful for them if they had computers that were there size. So they see the Thumbtop as being the revolutionary MouseTop! A special mouse—TM3, who prefers going by Trey—is assigned to make “first contact” with Megan since he has the special ability of being a talking mouse (the rest of the mice use a modified sign language to communicate). It is Trey’s job to convince Megan to act as an ambassador between the human race and mice and to usher in a new era for both species.

Opinion: Mousenet caught my eye with the title alone. The book is long—nearly 400 pages—but it never really seemed dull or felt like it was dragging. Megan develops a tender relationship with Trey and strives to help the mice who have a lot of connections in the world. Her step-cousin Joey infiltrates her plan and gets brought in to help the mice. The book has cute illustrations and lots of whimsical mice-orientated people things, such as Micebook. This is a fun tale for animal fans. It’s a good book for both genders and is pretty safe content-wise that it is a good book to give young readers ready for a bigger read—so all ages can enjoy it.