Fine Life For A Country Mouse

a fable by Aesop retold and illustrated by Susan Detwiler

Grosset & Dunlap, 2014

978-0448481548  (hardcover) 978-0448480619  (paperback)

Shy Tillie Mouse is visited by her city cousin Oliver, who is difficult to please and bored by the country. She agrees to accompany him back to the city, and sees his luxurious lifestyle is also fraught with danger. Tillie returns home with a renewed appreciation for her simple life. Fine Life For A Country Mouse is a retelling of a favorite fable by Aesop. This story stays close to Aesop's moral in which the country mouse learns something valuable. Children will relate to a tiny creature in a big, scary world.

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"You might reasonably think that this book with the sweet image on the front and the title Fine Life For a Country Mouse would be a serene and a quiet bedtime book. You’d be wrong! This retelling of Aesop’s fable had my four-year-old son on the edge of his seat as Tillie mouse encounters cars as big as dinosaurs (at least to her), narrowly being run over by a train, a dog with a gnarly snare, a viscous cat with long, sharp claws, and the vacuum cleaner (of doom). Whew! It’s all a bit much for Tillie. So she decides that even though Oliver’s city life is more luxurious — it isn’t nearly as nice as her bucolic home in the country. She heads home and all is right with her world.

This is a perfect book to read with your children before or after all the holiday visits with cousins and friends. It’s a great book to help shield children (and maybe even ourselves) from the grass-is-greener syndrome they may experience while visiting others and seeing the different things other people have that they may not."
~The Picture Book Review