Mighty Mouse: Mouse and Lion by Rand Burkhert

ONE DAY MOUSE, HURRYING HOME, LOST HIS WAY ON A ROCKY LEDGE.

HE WAS IN SUCH A RUSH HE SCRAMBLED RIGHT OVER A TAWNY BOULDER THAT LAY IN HIS PATH.

WELL, THAT BOULDER ROLLED OVER AND CAUGHT HIM BY THE TAIL.

IT WAS KING LION, IN A BAD HUMOR.

Only a wise mouse with a glib tongue can talk himself out of such a situation, but Aesop's fabled mouse has the cause and the wit to make King Lion a proposition he hopes he can't refuse.

"PLEASE LET ME GO," MOUSE BEGGED. "SIRE, YOU MIGHT NEED ME ONE DAY--IN A PINCH."

King Lion laughs and laughs at the preposterous premise that so small a mouse could help one so great and powerful as he, but the joke improves his bad humor and he agrees to the deal.

And as veteran readers know and novice readers will soon find out, it was the best deal of his life, for when he is captured in the huntsman's trap, it is only little Mouse, with his stealth and sharp teeth who can nibble through the net in which Lion is snared.

"YOU ARE FREE, LION!"

One good deed deserves another and turnabout is fair play in son and mother Rand and Nancy Ekholm Burkert's latest collaboration on this lovely retelling of the famous fable, Mouse & Lion (Scholastic, 2011). Caldecott artist Nancy Burkert, celebrated for many exquisitely illustrated pictures books such as her award-winning Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, (Sunburst Book) here turns her prodigious talents to a portrayal of the world of Mouse and Lion with nature drawings that would make John James Audubon proud. Read this one along with Jerry Pinkney's equally stunning but very differently illustrated Caldecott-winning The Lion & the Mouse for a storytime that gives the ancient Aesop a whole new life.