![]() Aesop tales are usually more about the morals than the animal actors here's a retelling that puts the animals front and center and breathes a note of furry reality into the proceedings. ![]() Pinkney is positively cinematic in his direction, with dramatic views emphasizing the mouse's smallness (in the title page illustration, the little rodent pauses in the dip of the lion's huge pawprint), relative size operating as a visual motif throughout, and a splendid suspenseful reveal introducing the lion in his first encounter with the mouse (fleeing a pursuing owl, the mouse scampers up a tawny hill that proves, two illustrations later, to be the lion's quarters). The textless rendition is an interesting approach, forefronting the nonverbal animal life and also allowing young viewers to make up their own captions. Most adults know this famous fable, wherein a mouse caught by a lion begs for its freedom with the promise of a return favor, which consists of gnawing the lion free when he's fettered by manmade ropes here it gets a dramatic wordless (save for animal noises) treatment in Pinkney's dramatic full-bleed watercolor illustrations. ![]()
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