Charley Mouse Cleans House and Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony

Gorelik, Katerina. Charley Mouse Cleans House
March 11, 2025 by Red Comet Press
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Charley Mouse lives in a two story teapot that is beautifully clean and organized. This makes sense, since she works as a cleaner across the Wild Wood and Magic Forest (maps are provided). She works as a cleaner for various animals like Mr. Fox, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snail, and the mole families. Extremely detailed cross sections of the houses provide a glimpse into the often messy lives of these creatures, and there are seek and find games suggested on every page. Charley also works in the Magic Forest for the witch at the Cauldron Cottage, at the unicorn stables (where unicorn poop smells like strawberry jam!), for Mr. Dragon, and at the candy themed home of the Gingerbread family. After her long week of work, she goes home to find that her own home is in need of cleaning!

This is a delightful longer picture book, similar in length and text complexity to the Greenwalds' The Rescues books. The pictures have a 1970s vibe to them and are quite delightful, I read this as an E ARC, and will be interested in seeing the trim size of the print book, which I hope is a little larger, so that all of the details are easy to see. I loved the idea of a mouse cleaner scurrying about cleaning up after all of the creatures in the forest, and would have adored this as a child. I spent a lot of time wearing an apron and dusting for my mother in a very serious fashion! I wish the pictures had been a little brighter; I love the combination of pink and brown, but some of the spreads could have been brighter and cheerier.

I have a soft spot for books about mice who act like humans; I even did a podcast episode about middle grade books about mice! This reminded me a little of the work of Richard Scarry, Daly's A House for a Mouse, or Godden's Mouse House, and is sure to be a hit with organized, detail driven young people everywhere!

 

Rogers, Lisa and Innerst, Stacy (illustrator)

Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony

February 25, 2025 by Calkins Creek

Copy provided by the publisher

Joan Mitchell was a US artist living in France who created a series of paintings in the 1980s entitled La Grand Vallee. This book follows her artisitc journey and discussed not only the techniques of her abstract expressionism, but the emotions and feelings she was trying to convey with her work. There is an author's note at the end that sheds more light on Mitchell's life, along with a timeline, bibliography. There is also a photograph of Mitchell as well as a reproduction of the sixteenth painting in her famous series.

Producing a picture book about a famous artist can't be easy, but Innerst does a great job at paying homage to Mitchell's style without slavishly trying to recreate it. We get a good feel for the brush strokes, colors, and exuberance of the paintings, while we see Mitchell herself portrayed in black and white.

This book isn't as much a biography of the creator as it is a biography of a piece of art. It's interesting to see the emotional aspect of artistic process depicted.

Readers who love to see how artists use color will enjoy this book along with other exuberant artistic titles like Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos by Brown and Parra, Dancing Through Fields of Color by Brown and Sicuro, My Name is Georgia: A Portrait by Winter, and Out of This World: The Surreal Art of Leonora Carrington by Markel and Hall.