The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear was one of our favorite children’s picture books. Husband and wife team Don and Audrey Wood wrote this fun story, and it is illustrated by Don Wood. It’s sold over a million copies!
The book opens with a tiny door in the roots of a tree. Coming out of the door are a tiny ladder and a little mouse. The narrator of the story asks the mouse what he’s doing. When the mouse leans his ladder against a strawberry plant that towers over him we figure out that he’s going to pick that red, ripe strawberry. The narrator asks the little mouse what he’s going to do about the big, hungry, Bear. Because that bear loves red, ripe strawberries. And he can smell them from a mile away. The little mouse tries to run away with the strawberry that is bigger than he is, he tries to hide it by burying it, he guards it with lock and key and thumbtacks all around it, and he tries to disguise it with Groucho glasses and mustache. But no matter what the mouse does, the narrator tells him it won’t work, and that’s there is just one way to save the berry from the bear. And that way is to cut it in two and share half. The mouse is happy to do so. Half a berry covers his entire table. The ending illustration shows a happy mouse in a hammock making the okay sign with his fingers and wearing a strawberry stem for a hat.
The illustrations are just marvelous, and the pictures of the mouse as happy, nervous, worried, and proud are all wonderful. I think kids like the story not only because the mouse is so cute, but also because of the repetitions in the text of the “red, ripe, strawberry” and the sounds. My own boys always laughed at the “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!” of the bear tromping through the forest on “his big hungry feet”.
This is a great book for toddlers, preschoolers and up. It’s a fun read aloud and even a good book for beginning readers.
Also See:
I’m as Quick as a Cricket and The Very Quiet Cricket
The Napping House – Audrey Wood
King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub – Audrey Wood