Small Readers: Mouse loves snow and Mouse loves spring by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Buket Erdogan

I'm looking at two easy readers by Lauren Thompson today. I freely admit that I bought these for the library without looking at them. I've seen other work by Thompson and it's usually popular with the kids and their parents, mice and seasons are generally popular subjects, and sometimes you jusCybils that they're actually extensions of picture books about Mouse.

t buy books to fill in, especially in the easy readers! I didn't realize until I read them for

In Mouse loves snow the titular character and his father go outside to play in the snow. Each activity includes a repetitive phrase. First, his father does the action, "Poppa slides down the hill. Woosh, swoosh!" and then on the next page Mouse copies him, "Now Mouse will try. Pliff, ploof! Good job, Mouse!" The story ends with them creating a snow mouse together.

In Mouse loves spring, he experiences another season, this time with his mother. This has slightly more complex text, although it still includes some repetition. Mouse sees a creature, described by an adjective "something flittery" and his mother tells him what it is. "The wind blows whoosh!" and the creature hides, flies, or otherwise goes away. The story ends with something cuddly - a hug and a kiss with Momma.

Erdogan's illustrations are soft and fuzzy, often with little halos of light around objects. Mouse is a cute, fuzzy grey ball and his parents are larger versions. The art runs along the top two thirds of the page with the text in a bold font on the bottom. The books are labeled as "pre-level one" but the made up words like "flittery" actually bump this up to about a level one for us. Erdogan's illustrations are copyright 2005, so from a little research it looks to me like these easy readers are just cut-down versions of two older picture book titles, which have also been reissued as board books, Mouse's first snow and Mouse's first spring. I also found these rather annoyingly stereotyped - the father does all the active things, the mother looks at pretty flowers and animals and gives hugs. Mouse defaults to male, his father wears a blue/green scarf and his mother is pinkish-grey, rather than just grey.

Verdict: These aren't particularly stand-out easy readers, but they're solid backlist fare to fill in your easy reader collection. Kids need a lot of easy readers to work through as they're building fluency and these are acceptable for that purpose.

Mouse loves spring
ISBN: 9781534401853; This edition published January 2018 by Simon Spotlight; Purchased for the library

Mouse loves snow

ISBN: 9781534401822; This edition published November 2017 by Simon Spotlight; Purchased for the library