Ned Mouse Breaks Away - Hardcover

Tim Wynne-Jones is one of Canada's foremost writers for children. The author of over thirty-five books, he is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Award, as well as a two-time winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and of the Arthur Ellis Award. He is the recipient of many other prizes at home and internationally including the Edgar Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. In 2012 he was made an Officer to the Order of Canada. He lives in Perth, Ontario.

Dušan Petričić is the award-winning illustrator of more than twenty books for children. Most recently, he has illustrated Snap! by Hazel Hutchins, Invisibill by Maureen Fergus and My Family Tree and Me, which he also wrote. Mr. Zinger’s Hat, written by Cary Fagan, was selected for the 2015 TD Grade One Book Giveaway. A former professor of illustration and book design, Petričić’s work appeared for years in the New York Times, Scientific American, the Wall Street Journal and the Toronto Star. He continues to work as a political cartoonist for Politika and to illustrate for American, Canadian and Serbian magazines. He lives in Belgrade and Toronto.

Grade 2-4-Ned Mouse, a political prisoner sentenced to life for writing negative things about the government (using pureed spinach), is desperate to escape jail, but his attempts are always thwarted by his dumb-as-a-post prison keeper. After 17 years, a letter from an old friend prompts him to try a daring new escape; he mails parts of himself to Morty, a few pieces at a time. He fashions replacement parts out of tin so as not to raise suspicion. All goes according to plan until most of him is residing happily by the sea with Morty, and only a tin replica is left in prison (except for his writing arm, which he had to leave behind to wrap and address the last package). The tone of this surreal story is both quirky and matter-of-fact. Readers will become so fond of this tenacious mouse with an amazing facility for tinwork that they will accept with a grin and barely raised eyebrow the idea of Ned sending off a package containing "some claws, a whisker or two, and his funny bone." The protagonist's clearly impossible tin creations, his eye-rolling comments about his keeper's mental abilities, his endless variety of far-fetched escape attempts, and even the goofy illustrations are reminiscent of Warner Bros. cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Roadrunner, but with more sweetness and humanity. Funny, light, and deliciously different.
Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library
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