Customer Reviews

The Three Blind Mice: The Whole Story

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I have reviewed a version of this book by Mr. Ivimey. It was illustrated by someone different than Mr. Courbold, so while I can not tell you much about the drawings, but if you like I can tell you something about the poem/story that Mr. Ivimey concocted.

Like me, apparently Mr. Ivimey was never quite happy with the well-known story of farm-wife versus mice. He subsequently came up with a `completed' tale that takes us (the reader and our children, of course) from the fateful moment in which the 3 mice leave home, to their full recovery from their injuries (blindness and tail removal).

In this `complete' version we see the mice leaving home, getting into trouble, and then finding a cure-all for their profoundly bad state. As three *small* mice they leave home. As three *bold* mice they drop by an inn and ask for a bed. As three *cold* mice they wake up out in the open after being rejected by the innkeeper. As three *hungry* mice they look for food and find only a dried out walnut shell, which is how they came to be at the farm as three *starved* mice. The farmer takes pity on them and gives them a morsel or two which temporarily leaves them as three *glad* mice. That is until that ole wife shows up. Sicking the cat on them the mice end up blinded by a briar patch and tailless by the classical means. Thus they transition from being three *poor* mice to *scared* mice to *sad* mice. They are only saved from being three *sick* mice by a large hare who give them some salve that fixes everything, leaving them three *wise* mice.

See below a refrain/example of text from the book.

Three bold mice

Three bold mice

Came to an inn

Came to an inn

"Good evening host,

can you give us a bed?"

But the host just grinned and shook his head,

So they all slept out in the field instead,

These three bold mice.

Four Stars. [B]. The text can pretty much be sang. If you don't want to sing it - it is a long song - you can just drop some of the lines and make it a read-aloud. Don't know about the illustrations except what you can learn from the cover shown here.