The Greentail Mouse

Originally published in 1973, this is an offbeat fable about the city mouse who visits his peaceful country cousins and tells them about Mardi Gras in the city. What fun it would be to make masks of fearsome animals and have our own Mardi Gras, think the country mice. And at first it is fun wearing their masks with sharp teeth and tusks and scaring each other, but after awhile they begin believing that they really are ferocious animals. All the mice are frightened and suspicious of each other until one mouse finds a way to make them happy to be real mice again. Leo Lionni's winsome mice, all cousins to his beloved Frederick, cavort across big double-page spreads of oil paintings and tell a story about what is real and what is not that is just right for preschoolers.