Stuart Little by E.B. White

by Sandra Merville Hart

Stuart Little is a mouse, but one thing that makes him extraordinary is that his mother, father, and older brother are human.

Since Stuart is only two inches tall, his bed is a cigarette box. He has plenty of adventures with his family and the family cat before Margalo, a beautiful bird, comes to live with the family.

Stuart exudes confidence and gets into many scrapes dangerous to a mouse.

I didn’t read this book as a child when I might have liked it. As an adult, the story seems disjointed. He acts like more like an adult than a child from the beginning. When Stuart is seven, he leaves his home in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. At seven, he didn’t ask permission to leave, which a young child will notice.

The main character isn’t successful in his quest to find his friend Margalo, who flew north. The book ends on a vague note with no real ending or resolution. It almost seems the author grew bored with the story or perhaps ran out of ideas.

After loving Charlotte’s Web, another book by the same author, I was disappointed in this one.