It's not the first time a mouse has fallen for a cat. This seemingly mismatched pair recalls the roughened edges of Tracy as sportswriter to Hepburn as Hepburn, particularly in "The Philadelphia Story." While Pierre the fisher-mouse IS French, he's more Marseilles than Paree, more accustomed to life at sea than the haberdashery. The object of his affection--in fact, his intense l'amour--is Catherine, the elegant artiste equally at home in the ballet studio or a painter's studio. When Pierre "steams out" by the coast he hears Catherine's voice, "Plie, mes enfants, plie! floating like a silver ribbon over the harbor."
That's just one of many beautifully written sentences in this story of love, mistaken identity, and fish. The book's insightful take on love is astonishingly on target, adults will recognize the peaks and valleys of love's early course. For kids not averse to non-familial love, romance will never seem so appealing, so....romantic! Sara Pennypacker can also make them laugh tool; for example, when she describes how Pierre's obsessive longing for Catherine manifests itself with the day's catch:
"Some clams three lobsters, a single bass. The blue scales reminded him of how much he wanted to speak to Catherine. Of course, everything reminded him of this," incliding "empty potato chip bags." There's even a fantasy sequence in which Pierre saves his beloved from a toothy shark. Catherine would exclaim, "'Oh, how can I ever thank you?' Then Pierre would shrug modestly--he practiced his shrug so e would be ready--and brush off her gratitude. 'Not at all,' he would say in a voice quite a bit deeper than his regular one'"
Pierre vows that his daydreams will become reality, but because he has dressed up so much (even dying his moustache blacker with some squid ink), Catherine does not recognize him. She loves another, she tells him, crushing Pierre, and reminding Catherine that her love remains unrequited too, after all her intended is "an adventurer, bold and brave, and I'm only an ordinary ballet teacher. All I can do is paint pictures of him, and so I do, night after night." THe next morning, before returning to the sea, Pierre yells towards Catherine'sstudio what he himself has realized, that keeping your love a secret makes you miserable: "Tell him," he yells, "feelings are like tides, you can't hold them back!"
Cupid finally prevails, and the two meet on shore in one of the most quietly but deeply ROMANTIC scenes I can recall in books for kids. Pennypacker again combines love and wit in her singular way: As they fly into each other's arms for an embrace, "Her heart gave a grand jete and his cueged as wild as a hurricane sea...or was it the other way around?"
"It was impossible to say because their two hearts had become one." Petra Mathers, a four-time winner of the New YOrk Times prize Best Illustrated Children's Book, draws sumptious, enchanting sea- and landscapes, and her picture of Pierre's boat coming towards the docks is sumptuous and evocative. The ultra-talented Pennypacker could not have asked for a better partner, and neither could Pierre or Catherine.
The more cynical among us might ask whether the unwritten aftermath includes the eventual disintegration of this union of sole mates (double pun with a triple axel!). Fortunately, "Pierre in Love" shows kids and adults alike that true love can last until the cows come home, and that no matter what, there's always at least one cowbell ringing in the pasture. One of the best books for kids I've read this year!
