Customer Reviews

Too Many Mittens

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Set in snowy Michigan, this is a delightful children's story, especially appropriate for use with preschoolers during winter. In the story, Grandmother comes to care for twins while their parents are away on a trip. The entire town becomes involved when word gets out that a twin has lost a mitten. The community appears, one by one, at the door of the twins' home, offering lost mittens they have found. Soon the 'lost mittens', none of which belong to the twins, overwhelm the household. When the twin's mitten is finally found (at home all along), a "Lost Mitten Line" is established in the back yard. An announcement is made that anyone in town who has lost a mitten may come to the twins' house to look for it on the "Lost Mitten Line". This is a delightful story of community, and would work in nicely with a Winter Unit for K4 or K5. Children may make a mitten line in the classroom like that in the story from paper mittens (or a true "Lost Mitten Line" for the school)! The illustrations are classic Louis Slobodkin!

The tale here is pretty simple---a pair of twins, being cared for while their parents are away by their grandmother, loses a red mitten. The word is put out that the mitten is lost, and suddenly people are finding red mittens everywhere, and bringing them to the house of the twins. Pretty soon a whole drawer is stuffed to popping open with mittens! The family has the idea to put all the mittens out on the clothesline for the real owners to take. Eventually all but one are taken. That's about it for the story, simple and sweet. The pictures are the real story, though---I love this illustrator, and this is a classic one---lines and lines of people bringing red mittens to the house, and then lines and lines taking away red mittens---the line of mittens on the clothesline, having been rained on and snowed on and frozen over and over---the drawer full of mittens popping open and sending mittens all over...wonderful! My 11 and 8 year old were a bit older than the target audience of this book, but they loved it anyway, and so did I.