A Brief Review of “The Mouse Raised a Cat” (Winner of the 9th Wenjin Award, 2014)

 
  The Mouse Raised a Cat is by Xiao Mao“Fairy Tale Dream Fac­to­ry”A col­lec­tion of fairy tales in25In this exquis­ite and short fairy tale, some impor­tant char­ac­ters in Xiao Mao’s fairy tale world — Baby Pig, Bobo Bear, Anmi, Frog and Lit­tle Fish, Tao­tao and Mili, etc. — appeared on the stage one after anoth­er, per­form­ing inno­cent, cute, humor­ous and wit­ty lit­tle sto­ries.

At first glance, this is a rather plain book, with­out fan­cy bind­ing or exag­ger­at­ed rec­om­men­da­tions. But upon clos­er inspec­tion, the illus­tra­tions are love­ly and appro­pri­ate, the type­set­ting is loose­ly spaced, and pinyin is pro­vid­ed, show­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for young read­ers at every turn. But more impor­tant­ly, once you start read­ing this fairy tale col­lec­tion, young read­ers will like­ly be deeply attract­ed.

In the open­ing chap­ter “Ref­er­ee”, the piglet is invit­ed to be the ref­er­ee of a run­ning race. The con­tes­tants include two-legged chick­ens, duck­lings and geese, four-legged pup­pies, kit­tens and bears, as well as six-legged and eight-legged ani­mals…42A cen­tipede with only one leg also com­pet­ed. The audi­ence cheered, think­ing, “The more legs, the faster it must run!” But it turns out that the lit­tle flower snake, with no legs, won! This sto­ry show­cas­es the typ­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of Xiao Mao’s fairy tales: clever cre­ativ­i­ty, seam­less inte­gra­tion of knowl­edge, humor­ous expres­sion, vivid imagery, an almost nat­ur­al child­ish­ness, and a touch of philo­soph­i­cal inter­est, which also allows adults to have some room for reflec­tion.

Read on, and as each sto­ry unfolds, you will find that the var­i­ous char­ac­ters in Xiao Mao’s fairy tale world have dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties: the baby pig is a sim­ple, kind-heart­ed opti­mist; Bobo Bear is good at every­thing except his love for hon­ey, he is smart, curi­ous, and will­ing to explore every­thing, so the lit­tle fox and the big bad wolf who are relat­ed to him also appear to be infi­nite­ly cre­ative; the naughty frog and the beau­ty-lov­ing lit­tle fish have an envi­able and sin­cere friend­ship, and their pur­suit of beau­ty can be called roman­tic; the friend­ship between the mouse Mi Li and the pup­py Tao Tao is also quite pecu­liar, and this spe­cial com­bi­na­tion always encoun­ters unex­pect­ed new things; and the boy An Mi is like an alien liv­ing on Earth, and he is always involved in events that shock the uni­verse.…What a rich and won­der­ful world this is!

In the fairy tale that serves as the title of this book, Mili and Tao­tao adopt­ed a cat that was called “Tast­ing Brand Cat Food”.”Zhang Mao­mao, the spokesper­son for the film, is actu­al­ly the celebri­ty cat, tired of her life with­out free­dom, and decides to become a nor­mal cat with an own­er, even if that own­er is a mouse or a pup­py. How­ev­er, as their love grows, the cat finds it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to sup­press her instinct to eat the mouse, so she res­olute­ly decides to leave and become a free stray cat. This is a fairy tale with a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern per­spec­tive, and the author clev­er­ly incor­po­rates ele­ments of real life, paint­ing a beau­ti­ful pic­ture while not shy­ing away from the some­times harsh real­i­ties of rela­tion­ships.

How­ev­er, no mat­ter how many mod­ern ele­ments he intro­duces into his works, Xiao Mao always main­tains the roman­tic tra­di­tion unique to fairy tales. In “The Adven­tures of Nine Lit­tle Mice,” the beau­ty-lov­ing moth­er mouse devotes her­self to dress­ing her chil­dren, turn­ing them into the most beau­ti­ful lit­tle mice in the world. All ani­mals mar­vel at their beau­ty, and the war­ring par­ties stop fight­ing because of their appear­ance. Even their nat­ur­al ene­my, the cat, learns sym­pa­thy and pity… In the end, the father mouse sighs:“I nev­er thought that beau­ty could change the world!”

Yes, this roman­tic tra­di­tion is also the ide­al of fairy tales. No mat­ter how help­less we are in the fan­ta­sy world or the real world, we must ulti­mate­ly promise our chil­dren that they will live hap­pi­ly togeth­er from now on.…

Only by believ­ing can you tru­ly achieve it.

Chil­dren’s read­ing pro­mot­er Ajia
2014Year4Moon in Bei­jing