Mousenet: When Mice Do More than Point and Click

Mousenet #1

by Prudence Breitrose

When ten-year-old Megan helps her uncle invent the Thumbtop, the world's smallest computer, mice are overjoyed, and they want one for every mouse hole.

The Big Cheese, leader of the Mouse Nation, has orders: follow that girl-even if it means high-tailing it to Megan's new home on the other side of the country. While Megan struggles as the new girl, the mice wait for their chance. But when they tell Megan the biggest secret in the history of the world-mice have evolved, and they need her help-she isn't sure anyone will believe her. With all of Mouse Nation behind her, Megan could become the most powerful girl alive, but just how will she create a Thumptop for every mouse?

Brought to life with whimsical illustrations, Prudence Breitrose's debut novel is full of charm and adventure and will captivate today's computer-savvy middle-graders.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Childrens, Animals, Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adventure

Audible Audio

First published November 8, 2011

About the author

Grew up in Winnie-The-Pooh country. Studied modern languages at Cambridge University, then went into journalism on magazines (including one for children under six)and newspapers, then into British television as a producer and director.

After moving to California and marrying a Stanford professor, I worked as a writer in health education until I had a dream that confused computer mice with the real thing, and I started work on Mousenet.

Reviews

[Alice T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may have a slightly soft spot for little mice that do pirouettes when they're happy but this was a well written cute book. From the description of the book, the main topic is about how mice could get tiny laptops for their use. What it doesn't mention is the underlying problems and eventual solutions for the main character, Megan. Megan's parents are divorced and has spent most of her life with her mother. A new research trip sends Megan's mother to Australia and forces Megan to stay with her father and his new wife. The awkwardness of a new family, new school, and new step-cousin are dealt with and works out in the end for everybody and the mice.

There's suspense and some adventure. The words flow well and are easy to read. I was hooked within the first chapter or two.

Recommended reading for both girls and boys, probably grade 4 and up.

Makes me want to go out and adopt a little mouse or two but they won't be as smart as the ones from this novel.. or are they?

[Arnis · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so much more than I was expecting! The cover illustration and the start of the story led me to expect a sort of cutsie or simplistic book but, instead, this was a well-thought out "what if". The world of mice that Breitrose has created is facinating! This book has humor, betrayal, forgiveness, ethics, and creativity. I highly recommend it!

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten-year old Megan and her mom have just returned to the United States after living on a remote island as they conducted two years of sheep research. Once in Ohio, Megan helps her uncle invent the world's smallest computer. But the "Thumbtop" is so small it is the perfect size for mice! Will Uncle Fred's latest invention end up on the trash pile? Not if the Mouse Nation can help it. In Prudence Breitrose's world, mice have evolved and are computer literate. Mice post on "MouseBook," communicate using "Mouse Sign Language," and glean information from "Whiskerpedia." Can mice help with the world's problems like global warming, or do they pose a threat to humankind? For strong-willed Megan, other pressing matters like relating to the civilized world, missing her mom, adjusting to life with her dad, stepmom, and step-cousin, and fitting in at a new school are hard enough. Now a mouse called Trey vies for her attention. What will all of this mean for Megan, mice, and the world? Middle-graders will want to read this playful mouse adventure to find out. (389 pages)

4 out 5 stars rating - May be a little long for target audience. Nice debut by Prudence Breitrose.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of an advance reader copy:
I wasn't so sure how I felt about this book for the first few chapters. In fact, I was kind of afraid I would be bored. Oh, not so! The story really picks up once we meet TM3, also known as Trey. And I love the idea of a very advanced mouse civilization which has their own sign language (MSL, or Mouse Sign Language) and knows how to use computers. They also have a fabulous communication network, thanks to those computers, so the mice can literally accomplish anything. I mean, they're all over the place, so with a way to communicate, they can really get things done. I think my very favorite part was when Megan got the mice working together to solve various problems for her family or when they took matters into their own paws to ensure the success of their goals. This is a very clever story, and has the same kind of rodent-behind-the-genius humor as Pixar's Ratatouille that will amuse readers.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked up Mousenet, I thought I was going to be reading about mice and computers. Somewhere around the middle of the book, it felt like the author switched to a book about how mice use computers to save the environment. Don't get me wrong - I understand and agree that we need to take care of the Earth. But if I wanted to read about climate change and going green, I would have read that book. I wanted to read about mice and computers, which is what the short description seemed to promise.

Also, I never understood why Joey was so hostile toward Megan or why he thought she was a spy. And if I was a girl who had found out that my male step-second-cousin who I had never met before was rifling through my bedroom, I would be telling my parents immediately.

By the time I closed the cover on Mousenet, I was left with the basic impression that Megan and her adorable mice were the sugar so that the reader would swallow the medicine of the importance of environmental awareness.

[Terry Galanoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Move over Mickey--there's a new mouse-a lot of them--in town. Sure, mice are one of the timeless staples of young folk literature but not mice like Prue Breitrose's breed. Here are those time-proven lovable critters updated to our technological times. They are organized into sociological and professional clans with a leader, are not only computer literate but capable of computer programming, and have created communication to and from some warm and compassionate young people whose search for love and home are also featured in this multi-dimensional tale .It is not only great fun to read but its important (both) contemporary and timeless messages--about tolerance, love and even global warming--provide an excellent basis for an important movie which can reach millions. It is time for another mouse movie, but this time, it should feature today's breed and important fun of Mousenet.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this story because it dealt with a lot of different themes, such as being the new kid, blended families, making friendships (with mice and people!), research (what kids' books discuss the benefits of using surveys to gain a sense of the public's opinion?), and environmental themes, such as climate control and the slow food movement. I also enjoyed that Megan, an elementary-aged girl, works alongside a step-cousin, a boy in middle school.

I didn't particularly like the ending; I think I just didn't buy the adults' reactions at the end, and I also thought the "plea" at the very end was a bit much.

Overall, I would recommend this read to a child interested in technology, mice, moving, blended families, the environment, etc.

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I liked this book, but it took a wee bit to get into, and it needs to be shorter! It's a good fit for Intermediate grades (3rd-5th) thematically and plot-wise; it's not as "mature" as many middle grades titles. But it's so LONG.

And, while it's a cute story, it's going to feel very outdated soon. The book hinges on the this mouse-sized laptop (the Thumbtop), and specific technology always dates a book soon. In fact, even a Blackberry is mentioned in one part. It will hold up for a few more years probably, but it's going to feel dated sooner than a similar story might if it depended on a generic phone or computer rather than a specific electronic device.

[amalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had just finished the series Hunger games and i had that filling you can sometimes get when you just read a really good book like you could never find a good book again. I was in the library and i saw a book just sitting in the shelf so i was like maybe this could be a good book. So i went home and i started reading it. This is a really good book. I would recommend this book to whoever likes books with talking animals.

[Izzy Book Queen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute. I enjoyed the first half more than the first, I guess I just felt like I took too long to read the story so it dragged on...and though I liked it, wanted it to be over. It was almost a 400 page book, but for such a short story it just didn't need to be that long.
I reallyy liked the little mouse characters & the pictures.

[Alvin]

Delightful, my eleven year old checked it out of the library, I wouldn't let him return it until I could read it too.

[The Book Squirrel · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the first 1/4 of the book, I was prepared to give this 4 1/2 stars and was thinking about reading it to Miss Nearly 7, but as it dragged on and on and on and on, the stars decreased, decreased, decreased. It dragged even listening to the audio at 1.5-1.8 speed.
It should have ended about when the "contract" was signed, leaving the adults finding out to the next book.

Most of the characters, and especially the adults, felt one-dimentional and for such a long book, they lacked development. I've read picture books with deeper characters.

I also felt like it got really political with the environmental thing. I am an avid believer in looking after the earth (littering really gets my goat and I think peole who throw cigarette butts out the car window and leave their rubbish in parks and on the beach are scumbags), but the climate change thing feels like it's preachy, self-righteous, and being shoved down the reader's throat. Maybe instead of "mice will use computers to change politician's speaches" and all the forced crap that was in the book, it should have been something like: mice will pick up trash and deliver it to the litterer's front door to make their point. I'd have found that more believable.

I give this 2 stars because it's only mostly bad not 100% awful, but it's definitely not one I'll be recommending.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mousenet is an interesting book about a little girl called Megan and her story with the watch of the mice who have different intentions.

Megan is the new girl, she has just come from an remote island and has come to live with her uncle. Her uncle is creating the smallest computer ever called the Thumptop causing the mice to be excited and they want it. They want it bad and will so anything to get it. Their big mission is for every mouse hole to have one. The leader of the mouse nation, the Big Cheese has told them to get it at any cost. So they follow Megan and her uncle. Megan is having trouble at the same time with making friends and being the new girl. But things for the mice aren’t working out and they need Megan’s help. Can they trust her and get her to help?

This is a nice story but I think it was a little slow paced. The plot wasn’t very deep but it was still nice. The mice in the book were very appealing as they did little pirouettes to celebrate. The characters were okay. I would recommend this to fans of books about climate change (as their was a message about it in the book) and fiction.

[Louie the Mustache Matos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mousenet is Book #1 of the Mousenet series of books written by Prudence Breitrose. The story is about the development of Thumb top computers, the world's smallest such computers for mice developed by Megan, a ten-year-old girl and her steady, somber uncle.

The technology was deliberately kept quiet in order to help decide the ideal approach of marketing computers to mice. Luckily, mice are borderline brilliant as a race, so they assisted in their own advancement. The Big Cheese (the acknowledged leader of the mice) directs a plan of mass production and marketing that is incredibly useful and forward-thinking in the process.

Mouse Nation backs Megan and her uncle. It feels that thumb tops are the ideal size for mice and in fact believe that thumb tops would be perfect for mice. Mice have already been observed using them.
Ir is all just a matter of mass production.

[claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about a girl named Megan who has a “thumptop” and mice want it (Mice now know how to use computers) the mice around the world do Megan some favors in exchange for letting them mass produce the thumptop

[Liza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really cute and creative book

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 and 1/2 really--it was cute but it went a little long at times.

[The · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely cute and fun story! I thought the book was going to get long for the story line but it never really slows down and is very entertaining! Can't wait to read the rest of the series!

[Cody Mo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it

[Loveday Byrd]

The best book about mice, If you like mice and cute animals and stuff like that then read it!!! There are 3 books in the series but only 2 of them are available 😭😭😭

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m really impressed with this book series and hope that the author writes more! It’s really very well written, with enough suspense to keep things interesting, but never scary for young readers. It’s a bigger book with more pages than easier chapter books, which could be intimidating to younger readers, but having illustrations helps draw in those kids. My son and I both loved this book!

[Dani Shuping · Rating 2 out of 5]

ARC provided by netGalley

Mice are the second most intelligent species on the planet earth, after humans of course. Only no one knows this. And the mice can’t change this because they have a problem. They don’t have a computer that is their size! That is...until the day an inventor comes up with one small enough for them. But how do the mice get their hands on it? And how can they mass produce the computer for all the mice across the world!? A plan begins to come together when the inventor’s niece, Megan, comes to live with him and the mice make first human contact.

This seems like such an interesting premise and upon reading the description it reminded me a lot of Beverly Cleary and Stuart Little. And I think that the author was trying to go for this type of feel of storytelling. But...they don’t quite succeed at getting it to that level. And don’t misunderstand, I’m not comparing the book directly to Cleary and White, just the genre and this book falls short in some ways. First outside of Megan and her little mouse friend, most of the characters aren’t well developed and seem like shallow cardboard cutouts. Even Joey her cousin, who is supposed to be a strong secondary character, never really develops. It feels like you could put any person in the street in their place and nothing would change. There are also some weird moments where the characters are hard to relate to. For example, Joey was really difficult to connect to. I can understand the awkwardness of not knowing his cousin, but at one point he leaps to the conclusion that Megan is a spy because she acts weird and sticks with this theory throughout much of the book. And I just lose the connection to him at that point, because I have trouble picturing anyone jumping to that conclusion.

Second the ending of the story is rather weak and feels like the author decided to wrap it all up at the last minute and pulled together as many strings as possible, but made it overly complex and convoluted that I kept scratching my head to try to figure out what was going on. Another problem for me is the length of the book. It’s almost 400 pages long and even though the text is big that’s just a lot of book to power through for an elementary school kid and I would worry about a kid getting frustrated half way through with just how much of the book is left. I think this would have been a great series of books vs. one overly long book.

I think that the story has promise and I hope there are kids out there that enjoy it. But for me...I can’t recommend it.

[Angie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mice are the second most intelligent species on the planet; they got smarter after learning about computers. But computers are too big for them; it takes a lot of mice to operate a computer. The solution: the Thumbtop, the world's tiniest computer, perfect for mice. And the mice want one in every mousehole. The only problem is convincing the humans to help the mice. The Thumbtop was invented by Fred and his niece Megan. Megan just got back from spending two years on an island studying sheep with her mom. Then mom heads to Australia to study wombats and Megan has to leave Fred and move to Oregon to live with her dad and stepmom. Megan has a hard time fitting in, then the mice make contact and things getting even stranger. The mice convince Megan of their plight and get her to help them with the Thumbtops. Along the way we meet her cousin Joey who thinks she is a spy and a talking mouse named Trey.

This book is aimed at ages 8-12 but at almost 400 pages it is a long book for an 8-year-old. I think the story could have been cut down and still gotten the message out. I liked Megan and I liked the mice, but I wasn't as impressed by the rest of the characters. I thought everyone was pretty one note and not very developed. I never got Joey and his obsession with Megan being a spy. He actually steals the Thumbtop from her at one point and he searches her room. This just didn't seem like normal behavior for an 11-year-old. I also thought all the adults were pretty much non-characters. I wish this was a better book because I think it has a cute premise and some potential. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work for me.

[P.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megan Miller has spent time on s semi-deserted island while her scientist mother did research on climate change. You'd think nothing would frighten her but you'd be wrong. When she hears that her mother is heading to the Australian Outback without her to research hairy-nosed wombats, Megan is terrified because she will have to attend public school and live with her father and unmet stepmother. The plot thickens when Uncle Fred gives her a Thumbtop, a miniature computer that is a perfect fit for mouse paws. The Big Cheese, the top mouse, realizes that access to mouse-size computers will put his "people" on a par with humans. Three mice, Curly, Larry, and Julia, part of the Cleveland Clan, fly to Oregon with Megan but it is up to TM3, or Trey, to make the first interspecies contact. Lonely Megan is thrilled with her new friends and even develops and signs a treaty that will protect both humans and mice.Uncle Fred starts a company to manufacture the Thumbtops and all is well. I really liked this story. Parts of it were chuckle-filled as Talking Mouse 3 interpreted MSL, Mouse Sign Language. The whole mouse culture was cleverly developed as Trey introduced us to mouse teamwork as they worked together to solve problems. We even learn about the classes mice take such as smiling in which Trey got an A. The illustrations showed how the mice operated a human-sized computer to surf the web and send e-mails. There is a sequel in the works which i will certainly read.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

An event of epic proportions! Mousekind has gone digital. Breitrose puts her tale of a small mouse contacting a young girl on a grand scale. It is up to these two to usher in a new age for mice and for humankind too. For the most part, the tone is lighthearted with plenty of things to squeal about. The pure cuteness is epitomized by the pirouette, "smiles", the mice do. Their actions and observations of humans serve as the basis of the humour. Where the tone changes is in the content itself; family relations, climate change, and interspecies interactions all have serious implications. For Trey and Megan, well-intentioned manipulation transforms into real friendship. They are from different species so the author builds their relationship up gingerly.

The mice have their own social structure, culture, and sign language. They gained intelligence by watching us, and their only limitation is the size difference. Then the Thumbtop is invented. The author takes great care to be as realistic as possible, even making the impossible seem plausible, especially regarding the ways in which mice accomplish tasks. Illustrations prove very helpful when demonstrating things like how they operate a human computer. Each chapter starts with its own adorable mouse silhouette atop the first letter.

Mousenet is a testament to the power of the collective, but it also warns that pure obedience lacks sympathy. True cooperation comes only from a bond based on shared values.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up as an uncorrect proof version at a convention. I wasn't terribly interested in the topic of mice using computers but I really loved this book. Megan and her mom are in Clevland between environmental work jobs staying with Megan's uncle. She helps as her uncle, an inventor, builds a tiny laptop. The mice in her uncle's house look on with amazement as they are quite avid internet users and have to go to a lot of work to use big human computers. Megan's mom gets news that she has to travel to Australia for work and decides that Megan should go live with her father in Oregon. This is the story of a 10 year old who catches the interest of the mice nation with her tiny laptop and ends up helping them in big ways. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a good talking animal story, but I love the way the characters were written and highly enjoyed the plot. My only complaint was that the ending was drawn out a little bit and could have probably ended sooner than it did.

[CaitlinTobin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the story at the beginning. I was bored after about 1/4 of the book. The story is about an entire underground mouse world that is capable of using computers and accomplishing pretty sophisticated tasks (like changing global warming). They need a little human help. Specifically, they need Megan's tiny thumbtop computer mass produced.

The problems Megan encountered dragged on way too long. The writing is not that interesting, and the one detail about Megan's crazy hair that the author mentions repeatedly drove me nuts. I think the book might have been better if the illustrations had not been included (the hair detail really comes out in the illustrations).

[Barbara Stroer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A current SSYRA winner, appropriate for fourth or fifth grade. This is a wacky little story about a little girl who is given a gift of a tiny computer by her inventor uncle. Unbeknownst to her, mice have been studying humans and technology for years and they know the computer is perfect for them. They set about to befriend the girl and get her to help them get computers. This was a cute story but a little too far fetched for it to really be one of my favorites. It is sprinkled with technology that the kids can relate to however.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very cute book. I liked the mice very much especially. There is so much that was cute about them...their mouse sign language, a few mice that have the capability of human speech, how they would pirouette when they were happy, and much more. I can't wait to read the sequel (Mousemobile). The only thing that bothered me a little was how much they mentioned global warming but overall it didn't bother me too much.