Review by Vanessa Bedford Gill
Tundra Books, 2022
40 pages, $21.99 CAD, 9780735269092
Picture Book, Ages 2-5
Fiction
Baby Mouse was a quiet baby…at first.
Then one day, Baby said Baby’s first word!
And then Baby said a second!
Baby Mouse talked and talked
…and talked.
Mama needed a little quiet.
As most parents can attest, we spend an inordinate amount of time encouraging our young ones to take their first step and say their first word. How ironic when you consider that we are preparing them for long days at school where they are told to sit down and be quiet!
Baby Squeaks, a picture book written and illustrated by Anne Hunter, is a wry tale of a baby mouse who is silent, until he is not. The chatty baby mouse leaves his mother rather frustrated until she is blessed with silence by placing baby mouse outside of their tree home. As a plot point, I think I might have preferred that the noisy mouse wander away accidentally, instead of being dumped outside the front door, but who am I to judge mouse parents? In the forest his incessant squeaking annoys many woodland creatures. Birds fly away, porcupines climb up trees and he squeaks so much that a fawn falls asleep. When his mother cannot find him, she knows to just follow the squeaking to locate her offspring.
Hunter is a Giesel Award honoree. Her whimsical illustrations in pen and pencil and the speech bubbles of the mouse filled entirely with the typewritten word “squeak” add charm and humour to this tale. The minimal colour palette, expressive animal illustrations cross-hatched in fine pen, and a pale blue sky throughout the book accentuate a simple story. One is left wondering what baby mouse is actually saying in those speech bubbles, and that perhaps he is just like a human baby babbling unintelligible words. Hunter’s exploration of early language acquisition is joyfully explored in this picture book and the repetition will make it popular with the toddler crowd.
This picture book reminded me of Five Minutes Peace by Jill Murphy. Even the cutest toddler can cause parents to consider multiple hiding places for a little respite!
Vanessa Bedford Gill is a Librarian and pursuing her MA in Children’s Literature at UBC. She enjoys creative writing, travelling, and drinking copious amounts of tea while reading picture books to her four children, even though they tell her that they are far too old for this pastime!
YOUNG ADULTING 