Mouse Soup
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Cover
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| Author | Arnold Lobel |
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| Illustrator | Arnold Lobel |
| Series | I Can Read! |
| Genre | Picture book |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
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Publication date
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1977 |
| Pages | 64 pp. |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 2542419 |
Mouse Soup is a 1977 picture book by noted illustrator Arnold Lobel. Beginning with the simple sentence "A mouse sat under a tree", the book goes on to tell the story of a mouse who has to trick Weasel from turning Mouse into Mouse Soup. He does that by telling stories about Bees and the Mud, Two Large Stones, The Crickets, and The Thorn Bush, and tells Weasel to put them into his soup. It is then assumed that Mouse got away and Weasel got stung by bees.
In 1978, Scholastic Records issued a 7-inch 33 1⁄3 r.p.m. record (SCC 2807) of the author reading the story. It was directed by Bernice Chardiet, produced by Robert Mack, and contained music by Albert Hague.
In 1992, the book was made into a 26-minute musical stop motion animated film, directed by John Clark Matthews and starring Buddy Hackett as the voice of Mouse.
Mouse is in a jam-soon he'll be weasel soup. Weasel is ready for his dinner and poor Mouse is it. Just in time, he thinks up a clever and entertaining way to distract the weasel from serving up mouse soup for dinner.
A mouse leaves his house to sit under a tree to read a book. While he reads, a weasel suddenly captures him. The weasel then takes the mouse back to his home, thinking of making Mouse Soup, with the mouse. Just as the weasel puts the mouse into the pot, the mouse tells the weasel that the soup will not taste good without any stories in it. The weasel does feel hungry, but agrees to let the mouse tell him four stories that will go in the pot.
In the first story, a mouse is walking along when a bee nest falls on his head. He tries to reason with the bees to go away, but the bees like his head as their home. The mouse then comes up with a plan to go into a mud hole (making the bees think it's his home). As he goes deeper, the bees still like the mouse until they hate his bed (the mouse being submerged in the mud) and finally go away, allowing the mouse to go home to take a bath.
In the second story, two large stones sit on a hill and wonder what's on the other side, as they can't move from the spot where they sit. When they ask a bird to check, the bird soon returns and tells them about buildings on the other side. The thought of not being able to see those things makes the stones sad. A hundred years soon pass and when a mouse comes, the stones ask the mouse to check the other side of the hill. The mouse soon tells them that it is the same as the side the stones reside on. This make the stones feel glad that they're not missing anything, but wonder whether the mouse or the bird was right.
In the third story, a cricket gets the urge to sing a song in the middle of the night, but his singing disturbs a lady mouse who is trying to get some sleep. Each time the lady mouse demands not to have any more music, the cricket thinks she said she wants more music and so calls over a lot of friends. Soon, the crickets are making so much noise with their singing that the lady mouse simply shouts at them to go away, to which the cricket wonders why she didn't say so before. After the crickets go away, the mouse goes back to bed.
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Wikipedia