Mr. Maxwell's Mouse
- author: Frank Asch http://www.frankasch.com/home.html
- illustrator: Devin Asch "no author website"
- artwork rendered in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter
- year of publication: 2004
- publication city: Toronto, ON
- publisher: Kids Can Press
- ISBN: 1-55337-486-X
Annotation: Mr. Maxwell is a well-to-do cat who has just received an important promotion at his business firm. To celebrate he goes to his favorite restaurant and orders a live mouse for a meal, but disaster is bound to strike.
Personal Thoughts: This is an odd picturebook indeed. It has all the elements of a traditional story. A cat wishes to eat a mouse. Complications arise the mouse will try to outsmart the cat. But the presentation is unique. The cats are all living in this bourgeois, aristocratic society. The language is proper and formal, almost to the point of being British in the Wind and the Willows ilk. The cats speak in ***sophisticated language: “I’ve heard that this year’s Beaujolais is exceptional, but shamefully overpriced.” I can’t tell if maybe the reader is supposed to root against Mr. Maxwell because he represents upper-class elitism, while the mouse represents the common class that gets eaten by the wealthy. This is a tone that comes on strong in the book and the tone is what makes this picturebook more suitable for older readers. At one point, the mouse asks Mr. Maxwell to say a prayer before he eats the mouse. Mr. Maxwell replies that his is not at all religious. That is a strange political factoid to include in a picturebook. Building an antagonist out of a rich, white collar, atheist cat is a true sign of a complicated picturebook. I daresay there is almost a pro communist, pro-proletariat subtext to this book and I like it. But political intentions aside, viewing Mr. Maxwell’s Mouse as just a picturebook, it offers all the just rewards that you’d expect out of a cat and mouse tale. It is largely satisfying, and it leaves ample amount of theory to be explored. Highly recommended.
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