Jenny Broom

the Lion and the Mouse is a fable that teaches people to be kind, humble and thankful. The lion is a prideful animal who helps a little mouse to reach some berries. The mouse is thankful and tells the lion that if he ever needed help that she would be glad to help him. The prideful lion doubts that he would ever need help from a tiny little mouse. However, one day the lion gets trapped in a net and cannot escape, and the tiny little mouse came to save him by chewing him out of the net. The lion realizes that he was wrong to think a mouse could not help him and the lion and the mouse becomes best friends.

Jenny Broom, like many others, readapted this story from the Aesop's fables. I enjoyed reading the story and especially liked the peek-through windows on every page and the cool illustrations.
I also read peoples thoughts on this fable and generally people call attention to the Lion's pride and the mouse's humbleness. But for some reason, I associated this story with gender roles as well. The lion is prideful, but also the king of the jungle (man of the house, provider etc.) and the mouse is just a tiny, small part of the wild (the woman, the help). The lions attitude towards the mouse offering help was much like the attitudes of men in 40's who believed women were incapable of providing or working or anything! And until the humble little mouse freed the lion, the lion would have remained full of pride.… (mer)

Summary:
This book is a detailed book on the tree of life and all of the animal groups that are named on it. The author overviews the classification tree for the animal kingdom. then the author breaks down each animal group, providing remarkable detail and masterful illustrations.

Review:
First of all, this is one of the coolest animal books I have ever seen. While the language makes this book more suitable for over grades, I believe younger students would be enthralled by simply looking at the illustrations. In an upper elementary classroom, this type of book would be an excellent tool in a lesson or unit on animal classification since the book is broken up into those groups already.… (mer)