Ten Old Men and a Mouse - Hardcover

A native of Toronto, Cary Fagan is an award-winning children’s author, a writer of adult novels, and editor and contributor to a number of magazines and newspapers, including the Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, and Books in Canada. His work has won the City of Toronto Book Award and the Jewish Book Committee Prize for Fiction. Cary has written several picture books for Tundra. Including Gogol’s Coat, and The Market Wedding. Daughter of the Great Zandini, winner of a Mr. Christie Silver Medal, was Cary’s first novel for children. The Fortress of Kaspar Snit, was his second. He also wrote Beyond the Dance, a biography of the National Ballet of Canada’s prima ballerina, Chan Hon Goh which was shortlisted for the Norma Fleck Award for children’s non-fiction. Cary lives in Toronto with his two children.

Gary Clement has been the political cartoonist for Canada’s National Post since its launch in 1998. As a freelance illustrator, his work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Time, and Mother Jones. His illustrations have received numerous awards in Canada and in the United States. He is the author and illustrator of two children’s books, Just Stay Put and The Great Poochini, which received the Governor General’s Award for illustration in 1999. He also paints, draws, and exhibits. Gary Clement lives in Toronto with his wife, Gill, their two children, and a couple of animals.

Kindergarten-Grade 2—Ten old men have seen their synagogue's membership dwindle as families moved out of the old neighborhood. Now they keep one another's spirits up during their daily prayers. Life becomes a little cheerier when an intelligent mouse moves into the shul, bringing out the men's nurturing instincts. The birth of baby mice, however, is too much, and they sadly relocate the family to the countryside. Loneliness sets in again—until the mother mouse, now an empty nester like her friends, returns home to the synagogue. The men tell her not to worry: "You'll hear from your kids again. You know when? When they need something." Fagan, whose storytelling is usually so vibrant, has written an odd, sad little story with an unclear message. Neither the mouse nor the old men learn or grow or change from the experience. The only lesson seems to be that old age is so lonely that the adoption of a pet is cause for great celebration. The Jewish content does not contribute to the story in any significant way. The 10 men form a minyan (the quorum required for Jewish public worship) but this is never mentioned in the text, leaving readers with too many characters and not enough fleshing out. They never learn what synagogue attendance means to the men or what keeps them coming back when nobody else does. The cartoon-style ink-and-watercolor illustrations are colorful, but the pathetic nature of the characters' lives is reflected in scene after scene of unpleasantly anxious faces. A surprisingly lackluster effort.—Heidi Estrin, Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel, Boca Raton, FL
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