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CM . . .
. Volume XVI Number 36. . . .May 21, 2010
excerpt:
Originally published in 1990, this delightful cumulative tale has been republished in a more durable board book format, a wise choice as its join-in story is one that toddlers will want to hear read to them again and again and one that they will want to �read� on their own when adults aren�t available. As the excerpt above indicates, as the story opens, little Emily has a problem - well, two actually. The silence of her two-story, old brick house out in the country is being broken by the annoyingly �loud sounds� of a creaking front door and a squeaking house mouse. When Emily doesn�t know what to do about the offending noises, the mouse has a suggestion, the logic of which isn�t immediately obvious, given that the mouse�s suggestion is that a cat, one of its predators, be introduced into the house. Emily follows the mouse�s recommendation, but the cat�s loud meowing only adds to the level of the preexisting noise. Again the mouse has a proposed solution to the increased noise, a puppy dog. This pattern repeats itself, leading to a little sheep, a billy goat, a brown cow and a turtle dove also being brought into the little brick house. When Emily yells, �THERE�S TOO MUCH NOISE IN HERE!�, the mouse has one last suggestion, �Just try one thing new.� The mouse then evicts all the animals that he had caused Emily to bring into the house. After the cacophony of a meowing cat, bow-wowing dog, baa-ing sheep, maa-ing goat, mooing cow and cooing dove, a house with just a creaking door and a squeaking mouse was akin to complete silence for Emily. The book�s text is unchanged with two exceptions. In the original text, the mouse�s suggestion, �Get us a black sheep too� has become a �little sheep too.� While this change may have been made for reasons of political correctness, its follow through on the next page actually makes more story sense. The original read, �And she came home with a small black sheep.� Now that line reads, �And she came back home with a little lost sheep.� Given that later in the text �the sheep went baa/I want my maa�, it makes more sense that the young sheep be lost. One word change that was not made, and that could have been made, relates to the lines, �So Emily left with a five pound note/And she came back home with a billy goat.� Given that the intended young audience would likely have no idea of what five pound notes are, the word �dollar� could have been easily substituted. Though two decades have passed since Emily�s House was first published, the book still speaks to today�s youngsters, and it definitely belongs in homes with toddlers and in libraries serving preschoolers. Highly Recommended. Dave Jenkinson, who lives in Winnipeg, MB, is CM�s editor.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca. Copyright � the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
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Joanne Fitzgerald�s watercolour and ink illustrations are superb. Following the title page, the story is graphically introduced by a wordless, double page spread that shows Emily�s house in the countryside. Though readers don�t yet realize it, these pages also include all the animals that Emily will eventually fetch. Fitzgerald�s renderings of the rooms within Emily�s old-fashioned home provide lots of details for youngsters to pore over at their leisure. The increasing level of noise denoted by Scharer�s text is reinforced by the visual component wherein the pages are increasingly occupied by active animals.