The Walk of the Field Mouse

On this particular morning’s walk, the field mouse finds a toad, snail and starling all gathered at the base of the big rock and looking at a blue object. After the toad identifies the object as being a robin’s egg, the snail observes that it had probably rolled down from its nest atop the rock, a remark that causes the starling, in turn, to wonder how the robin will be able to roll the egg back up the rock to its nest. The field mouse immediate supplies the answer to the starling’s question: “I will do it...I will roll it back up to the robin’s next.”

The bystander trio immediately mock the field mouse’s offer, pointing to its small size and lack of strength while suggesting that they should seek out the larger, stronger groundhog to carry out the undertaking. Undeterred, the field mouse begins its self-appointed mission, and, as expected, it succeeds. That the task was most arduous for the little mouse is reinforced by Robert’s choice of words and supported by the book’s design which involves employing nine of Vidali’s collage double-page spreads to document the egg’s journey from the rock base back to its original nest. Vidali also visually addresses how long it took the field mouse to complete the egg rescue. It was morning when the field mouse began its climb, and, as it ascends, the background sky increasingly darkens and a waxing moon appears and progressively moves through the night sky. By the time the mouse summits the rock and returns the egg to its nest, he is engulfed by a dark starlit sky.

Now, with the possible addition of the field mouse’s returning to its three detractors and enjoying an “I-told-you-so” moment, Robert could have essentially concluded her story at this point. However, she does not for, just as the mouse is enjoying a moment of rest, a gust of wind topples the egg from its precarious perch, sending it tumbling down the opposite side of the rock, with the mouse in pursuit. The height of the rock is again emphasized for it takes the rock some eight spreads before it comes to rest, unbroken, the next morning at the rock’s base. In its chase, the mouse takes a tumble that sees it land beside the egg. Hearing the noise generated by the tumbling egg and mouse, the snail, toad and starling seek out the source of the disturbance. When they find the mouse and egg still on the ground, they immediately conclude that the field mouse had obviously failed, and they dismissively walk away. As evidenced by the book’s final three spreads, the field mouse was not deterred by the trio’s disparaging comments, and so, knowing it had succeeded once, begins anew.

The book’s large format, 8" wide x 12" high, serves Vidali’s collage illustrations well as it allows the illustrator to be able to emphasize the size disparity between the tiny field mouse and the, relatively speaking, much larger robin’s egg. At one point, Vidali inserts a bit of an Easter egg by having the mouse overtake a column of ants, with many of the ants rolling or carrying “burdens” larger than themselves. Though this portion of the image may be a bit of a throwaway for younger readers, others will pick up on the comparison that is being made between the field mouse and these tiny insects that can lift up to 5,000 times their own body weight. Vidali has readers again encounter the now burden free and descending ants during the mouse’s chase down the rock in pursuit of the falling egg. This scene also subtly hints at the book’s ending for these are worker ants that, upon reaching the rock’s base, will undoubtedly start up its face again with new items.

Adult readers will recognize Robert’s passing nod to the Sisyphus legend from Greek mythology, but the book’s intended young readers will relate to the story’s content in terms of their current lives in which they may find (or have found) themselves being told that they can’t achieve something they wish to do because they are somehow deficient, as in being too young, too tall, too short, too fat, too weak and so on. Readers will take delight in the field mouse’s success and mentally put it in their storehouse of resources. An additional takeaway that Robert provides in The Walk of the Field Mouse is that we do not need the approval of others to validate our successes. The field mouse “had rolled the egg up the rock once.... [and] it could do it again.”