Country Mouse Cottage: How We Lived 100 Years Ago - Hardcover

Nigel Brooks and Abigail Horner live in a seventeenth-century cottage in England with their children, Poppy and Harry, dog Jake, a kitten and two rabbits. Country Mouse Cottage, their second book, is a companion book to Town Mouse House.

Kindergarten-Grade 3-Country life circa 1900 is depicted in lovely detail from a mouse's-eye view. The simple account is related by young Edward Country Mouse, who describes the routines of everyday rural life from sunrise to sunset. Readers learn about the gentle rhythms of this bucolic existence including chores such as chopping wood, stoking a stove, doing laundry, and gardening. Edward Mouse also devotes pages to his one-room schoolhouse, playtime, and evening pastimes. Endearing watercolor illustrations give general views of the day's activities and present close-ups of objects relevant to the tasks at hand. These items and implements function as delightful borders and frames, and the creative layout and quaint typeface give the appearance of a child's scrapbook from an earlier time. While the book presents an overly sanguine picture of country life by omitting many of its hardships, it does serve as an introduction to farm life a century ago. A sweet, quiet offering appropriate for one-on-one sharing.
Rosalyn Pierini, San Luis Obispo City-County Library, CA
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