The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban

First published: 1967; illustrated

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Family, friendship, emotions, social issues, and nature

Time of work: The mid-twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: The environs of a small town in America

Principal Characters:

• The mouse Father, a windup toy, who strives heroically to meet the needs of his child
• The mouse’s Child, a windup toy, whose needs and desires initiate and sustain the central quest
• Manny Rat, a clever and evil manipulator, who pursues the mouse and his child
• Frog, a fortune-teller, who befriends the mouse and his child
• The Elephant, a windup toy, who, although imperious and unimaginative at first, gains wisdom
• Muskrat, a philosopher and teacher
• C. Serpentina, a literary snapping turtle
• The Tramp, a man with a dog, who sets the mouse and his child in motion

The Story

The Mouse and His Child blends two familiar yet contrasting staples of children’s literature—the magical toyshop where playthings come alive and the woodland, meadow, and marsh of the animal fable—into a powerful synthesis. The plot of The Mouse and His Child takes the form of a quest. The story begins at Christmastime as a tramp looks through the window of a toyshop featuring a splendid dollhouse and an assortment of windup toys, including an elephant, a tin seal, and two toy mice, a father and his child, who dance together in a circle. The elephant scoffs at the child mouse’s desires and explains that there are rules that must be followed. The mouse child, however, seeks to define his own identity and needs. Like a human child, he is curious; needs family, friends, and home; and has emotions that demand expression. The world of the toyshop is a false paradise, and inevitably the mouse and his child must leave it behind.

The mouse and his child are purchased and spend the next five Christmases as decorations in a human family’s home. Eventually, they are broken and discarded, and the tramp who observed them in the opening of the novel fishes them out of a trash can and repairs them. Yet the repair leaves them altered; they move in a straight line when their clockwork is wound rather than dance in a circle. “Be tramps,” says the tramp as he sets them going along a road.

The mouse and his child journey through a microcosm of twentieth century life. They are captured for a time by Manny Rat, the ruthless and clever ruler of a trash dump, who forces enslaved toys and animals to forage for him. Escaping his clutches, they observe shrews in a terrifying war. These experiences help them to clarify their search for a family and a home as a need for their own “territory” where they can feel safe and secure. As Manny Rat relentlessly pursues the fleeing mice through meadow and woodland, they experience a growing desire to be self-winding rather than dependent upon others for their ability to move forward. Heartened by the favorable prophecies of a fortune-telling frog, they encounter various characters of a philosophical and literary bent, including an experimental theater group of crows performing absurdist drama written by the snapping turtle C. Serpentina, and a philosophical Muskrat given to pure rather than applied thought. Receiving little effective help from these figures, the mouse and his child begin to understand that they must think and act for themselves. Their encounters also lead them to seek an understanding of the meaning and purpose of a cosmos that is infinite.

Ultimately, the mouse and his child complete their quest, although some of the answers at which they arrive are not what they at first expected. Friends join forces with them to win a fierce battle against Manny Rat and his cohorts for the possession of the dollhouse, which, after being discarded, had become Manny’s stronghold. They refurbish the dollhouse as a jolly hotel welcoming weary travelers. The mouse child gets the family he wanted: The elephant agrees to become his mother, and various windup toys and animals complete the family. Even Manny Rat, though not without second thoughts, allows himself to be adopted as the mouse child’s uncle. Manny Rat succeeds at making the mouse and his child self-winding for a time, but eventually their clockwork winds down—illustrating the principle that everyone needs friends, and no one is completely independent in this life. As for their quest for meaning and purpose, for knowledge of the ultimate truth beyond infinity, the mouse and his child find them in their own fully realized selves. The tramp reappears in the end, and he smiles and speaks to the mouse and his child for the second time: “Be happy.”

Context

Russell Hoban began writing short picturebooks for children in the late 1950’s, including his famous series about Frances the Badger. In all, he has published about fifty children’s books. The Mouse and His Child, which Hoban worked on for three years before publishing it in 1967, was his first full-length novel, and he has spoken of it as his favorite work. As of the late 1970’s, Hoban has written fiction for adults as well, including the critically acclaimed science-fiction novel Riddley Walker (1981), in which a twelve-year-old boy must make his way through the world of the future after a nuclear war. Hoban has also worked on and off on a sequel to The Mouse and His Child.

A common theme in much of Hoban’s work is the search for identity in the context of potential danger and disaster. The Mouse and His Child is about survival in the context of the violence of modern life and the despair of modern thought. It has many literary and mythic overtones, bringing to mind, for example, the poet William Blake’s concept of life in terms of a progressive movement from Innocence through Experience toward a more informed and active condition of Innocence. The novel echoes John Milton’s use of the concept of a “fortunate” fall from Eden into a world of choice and action. Just as Milton describes Adam and Eve as they left Paradise, Frog tells the mouse and his child, “The world lies before you.” Like the biblical Israelites freed from their bondage in Egypt, the mouse and child, freeing themselves from the laws of clockwork, embark on a lengthy, dangerous, but ultimately successful exodus to the home that has been prophesied for them.