Mice Nibbling Village

This collaboration contains a selection of poems about the assorted rodent inhabitants of Nibbling. We meet, for instance, Mrs. Poppitt, who ""loves to eat/From morn to eventide. She says she isn't greedy,/ She just has a hole inside,'' and Belinda Bookery``When other mice are sound asleep,/ Belinda leaves her home to creep/ Into the human house above,'' where she reads books. Greaves's poetry is often whimsical, but occasionally strains for the rhymes. Pinkney's old-fashioned illustrations are richly and beautifully detailed, though perhaps too intricate for her young audience. The Mice of Nibbling Village may be more appealing to adults's idealized perceptions of the things that please children than it is to the children themselves. (All ages)