The Tale of Two Bad Mice Free

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Entered at Stationers' Hall. Jane was the Cook; but she never did any cooking, because the dinner had been bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings. There was no one in the nursery, and it was very quiet. Presently there was a little scuffling, scratching noise in a corner near the fireplace, where there was a hole under the skirting-board. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca went The Tale of Two Bad Mice across the hearthrug. They pushed the front door—it was The Tale of Two Bad Mice fast. Then they squeaked with joy! Such a lovely dinner was laid out upon the table! There were tin spoons, and lead knives and forks, and two dolly-chairs—all so convenient! It was a beautiful shiny yellow, streaked with red. Then Tom Thumb lost his temper. He put the ham in the middle of the floor, and hit it with the tongs and with the shovel—bang, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, smash, smash! They broke up the pudding, the lobsters, the pears and the oranges. As the fish would not come off the plate, they put it into the red-hot crinkly paper fire in the kitchen; but it would not burn either. She found some tiny canisters upon the dresser, labelled—Rice—Coffee—Sago—but when she turned them upside down, there was nothing inside except red and blue beads. He took Jane's clothes out of the chest of drawers in her bedroom, and he threw them out of the top floor window. But Hunca Munca had a frugal mind. After pulling half the feathers out of Lucinda's bolster, she remembered that she herself was in want of a feather bed. It was difficult to squeeze the bolster into the mouse-hole; but they managed it somehow. The book-case and the bird-cage refused to go into the mouse-hole. The mice rushed back to their hole, and the dolls came into the nursery. Lucinda sat upon the upset kitchen stove and stared; and Jane leant against the kitchen dresser and smiled—but neither of them made any remark. He found a crooked sixpence under the hearthrug; and upon Christmas Eve, he and Hunca Munca stuffed it into one of the stockings of Lucinda and Jane. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, The author died inso this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where The Tale of Two Bad Mice copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. Public domain Public domain false false. Categories : works PD-old Short stories. Namespaces Page Discussion. Views Read View source View history. Add links. The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter - The British Library

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want The Tale of Two Bad Mice Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks The Tale of Two Bad Mice telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. To celebrate Peter's birthday, Frederick Warne is publishing new editions of all 23 of Potter's original tales, which take the very first printings of Potter's works as their guide. The aim of these editions is to be as close as possible to Beatrix Potter's intentions while benefiting from modern printing and design techniques. The colors and details of the watercolors in t To celebrate Peter's birthday, Frederick Warne is publishing new The Tale of Two Bad Mice of all 23 of Potter's original tales, which take the very first printings of Potter's works as their guide. The colors and details of the watercolors in the volumes are reproduced more accurately than ever before, and it has now been possible to disguise damage that has affected the artwork over the years. Four were sacrificed in to make space for illustrated endpapers, and two have never been used before. But whatever the tale, both children and adults alike can be delighted by the artistry in Potter's illustrations, while they also enjoy a The Tale of Two Bad Mice good read. Because they have always been completely true to a child's experience, Potter's 23 books continue to endure. Get A Copy. Hardcover58 pages. Published March 7th by Warne first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Nov 04, Sean Barrs rated it it was ok Shelves: 2-star-readschildren-of-all-ages. Are the mice really that bad? Sure, they break into the house of The Tale of Two Bad Mice inanimate object big crime I know and smash up her stuff. But who cares? And the two mice are only trying to feed their babies. The dolls Are the mice really that bad? They lounge around the house all day teasing mice with food, and even go as far as to lay down traps for the poor creatures. Instead of talking to the mice they just go straight to the authorities. Nov 06, Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing Shelves: kids-books. My kid's grandma bought us a 12 book set of the original Beatrix Potter books. I'll be reviewing them at random and out of order! I thought I'd start on a high point. This is maybe the best of the bunch and has aged fairly well compared to the other books. No children get The Tale of Two Bad Mice by their parents or lose their parents to the farmer or anything awful like that. The two mice are fun and their adventure has an ok twist to it. One of them has the forgettable name Tom Thumb but the other mouse is named My kid's grandma bought us a 12 book set of the original Beatrix Potter books. One of them has the forgettable name Tom Thumb but the other mouse is named Hunca Munca and she steals the show. Potter still sneaks in some stifling values and really old school gender stuff. But the mice end up happy and the illustrations are great. So I guess if you're itching to read some classic animal stuff to your kids, this one is a solid enough pick. View 1 comment. Feb 11, Paul Bryant rated it really liked it Shelves: novels. I don't remember the last time you invited me to your burrow for carrots I ask for Justice. Make the two bad mice suffer as we suffer. How much shall we pay you? And you don't ask in respect or friendship. And you don't think to call me Bunfather; instead you come to my house on the day my 14 daughters are to be married and you ask me to get rid of these two bad mice But if you come to me with your friendship, your loyalty, then your enemies become my enemies, and then, believe me, they would fear you From me you'll get Justice. View all 3 comments. So I may be overdosing a bit on nostalgia tonight, but I'm feeling oddly sentimental and wanted to share my thoughts. I had a really rough day today. Christmastime is a time when we all think back on our lives for the past year. What did bring us? What is it that we remember as we reflect? Good times, bad times, scary times, happy times. We revel in the memories of friends and family, we sadden as we remember loss. We laugh when we think back to times we did stupid things or embarrassing thi So I may be overdosing a bit on nostalgia tonight, but I'm feeling oddly sentimental and wanted to share my thoughts. We laugh when we think back to times we did stupid things or embarrassing things, or jokes we've made. I've always loved the holiday season. A chill in the air, lights illuminating downtowns, The Tale of Two Bad Mice gorgeous trees strung up with ornaments and tinsel and The Tale of Two Bad Mice lights. Windows lit up for passing carolers. Shoppers trying to find that one perfect gift. People being abnormally friendly to one another. It's the spirit of the holiday season I look forward to every year more than the day itself. This year is a little different. Three people who were present at my holiday table last year are no longer with us. My friend Eric passed last February. My grandmother passed in March, and my uncle passed The Tale of Two Bad Mice May. All three were relatively unexpected. Never in a million years would I have guessed that last Christmas would be the last holiday I would spend with any of them. But I'm a tough broad. I knew this holiday season would be a little rougher than most but I knew The Tale of Two Bad Mice could handle it. Then a few weeks ago I received the news that my best friend and partner would be spending the holidays away from home. As hard as I try to remain positive, cheery, and hopeful, knowing that I won't be spending my Christmas with the person I love most in this world is the eggnog my demons are toasting with in my honor. Some days are better than others, and today has been the worst of all. I came home trying really hard to be Tiny Tim on the outside, while Scrooge was taking over my The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Trying to muster up even a scrap of Christmas spirit, I unpacked the ornaments and began decorating my yet undecorated tree. The last ornament I found was a wooden likeness of Beatrix Potter's Hunca Munca, one of the titular two bad mice from this little tale. There are few tales in this world that are absolutely perfect to me and this short story is one of them. I can sit here and list every plot point, every character, every perfect illustration and describe them all in intricate detail, but I won't. I love the story, the characters, and the illustrations, but above all I love this story so much because it reminds me of my grandmother. She had first edition copies of all of Potter's stories and read them to us as kids, but the only one I ever wanted her to read was this one. I loved Hunca Munca. I loved her nature, her pretty purple dress, her sweet little white apron. The Tale of Two Bad Mice - Wikisource, the free online library

The Tale of Two Bad Mice took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a doll's house being constructed by her editor and publisher Norman Warne as a Christmas gift for his niece Winifred. While the tale was being developed, Potter and Warne fell in love and became engaged, much to the annoyance of Potter's parents, who were grooming their daughter to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their London home. The tale is about two mice who vandalize a doll's house. After finding the food on the dining room table made of plaster, they smash the dishes, throw the doll clothing out the window, tear the bolster, and carry off a number of articles to their mouse-hole. When the little girl who owns the doll's house discovers the destruction, she positions a policeman doll outside the front door to ward off any future depredation. The two mice atone for their crime spree by putting a crooked sixpence in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and sweeping the house every morning with a dust-pan and broom. The tale's themes of rebellion, insurrection, and individualism reflect not only Potter's desire to free herself of her domineering parents and build a home of her own, but her fears about independence and her frustrations with Victorian domesticity. The book was critically well received and brought Potter her first fan letter from America. Merchandise inspired by the tale includes Beswick Pottery porcelain figurines and Schmid music boxes. Between November 26, and December 2,Potter took a week's holiday in Hastingsand, though there is no evidence that she did so, she may have taken one or both mice with her. Warne received The Tale of Two Bad Mice considered the three tales. Potter wrote to him that the cat tale would be the easiest to put together from her existing sketches but preferred to develop the mouse tale. She alerted Warne that she was spending a week with a cousin at Melford Hall and would run the three tales past the children in the house. Warne favoured the mouse The Tale of Two Bad Mice — perhaps because he was constructing a doll's house in his basement workshop for his niece Winifred Warne — but for the moment, he delayed making a decision and turned his attention to the size of the second book for because Potter was complaining about being "cramped" with small drawings The Tale of Two Bad Mice was tempted to put more in them than they could hold. Leslie Brooke's recently published Johnny Crow's Gardenbut, in the end, Potter opted for the mouse tale in a small format, instinctively aware the format would be more appropriate for a mouse tale and indicating it would be difficult to spread the mice over a large page. Before a final decision was made, Warne fashioned a large format dummy book called The Tale of the Doll's House and Hunca Munca with pictures and text snipped from The Tailor to give Potter a general impression of how a large format product would appear, but Potter remained adamant and the small format and the title The Tale of Two Bad Mice were finally chosen. Just before New Year'sWarne sent Potter a glass-fronted mouse house with a ladder to an upstairs nesting loft built to her specifications so she could easily observe and draw the mice. Potter had seen the house under construction and wanted to sketch it, but the house had been moved just before The Tale of Two Bad Mice to Fruing Warne's home south of London in Surbiton. Norman Warne invited Potter to have lunch in Surbiton and sketch the doll's house, but Mrs. Potter intervened. She had taken alarm at the growing intimacy between her daughter and Warne; as a consequence, she made the family carriage unavailable to her daughter, and refused to chaperone her to the home of those she considered her social inferiors. Potter declined the invitation and berated herself for not standing up to her mother. She became concerned that the whole project could be compromised. On February 12, Potter wrote to Warne and apologized for not accepting his invitation to Surbiton. She wrote that progress was being made on the mouse tale, and once found Hunca Munca carrying a beribboned doll up the ladder into her nest. She noted that the mouse despised the plaster food. She assured him she could complete the book from photographs. Potter wrote:. Thank you so much for the queer little dollies; they are exactly what I wanted I will provide a print dress and a smile for Jane; her little stumpy feet are so funny. I think I shall make a dear little book of it. I shall be glad to get done woth [ sic ] the rabbits I shall be very glad of the little stove and the ham; the work is always a very great pleasure anyhow. The policeman doll was borrowed from Winifred Warne. She was reluctant to part with it but The Tale of Two Bad Mice doll was safely returned. Many years later she remembered Potter arriving at the house to borrow the doll:. She was very unfashionably dressed; and wore a coat and skirt and hat, and carried a man's umbrella. She came up to the nursery dressed in her outdoor clothes and asked if she might borrow the policeman doll; Nanny hunted for the doll and eventually found it. It was at least a foot high, and quite out of proportion to the doll's house. On February 25 Warne sent plaster food and miniature furniture from Hamleysa London toy shop. By the middle of June proofs of the text had arrived, and after a few corrections, Potter wrote on June 28 that she was satisfied with the alterations. Proofs of the illustrations were delivered, and Potter was satisfied with them. The book was dedicated to Winifred Warne, "the girl who had the doll's house". In the summer of Hunca Munca died after falling from a chandelier while playing with Potter. I cannot forgive myself for letting her tumble. I do so miss her. She fell off the chandelier; she managed to stagger up the staircase into your little house, but she died in my hand about ten minutes after. I think if I had broken my own neck it would have saved a deal of trouble. Between and Potter wrote miniature letters to children as from characters in her books. The letters reveal more about their characters and their doings. Though many were probably lost or destroyed, a few are extant from the characters in Two Bad Mice. In one, Jane Dollcook has broken the soup tureen and both her legs; in another, Tom Thumb writes to Lucinda asking her to spare a feather bed which she regrets she cannot send because the one he The Tale of Two Bad Mice was never replaced. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca have nine children and the parents need another kettle for boiling water. Hunca Munca is apparently not a very conscientious housekeeper because Lucinda complains of dust on the mantlepiece. Two Bad Mice reflects Potter's deepening happiness in her professional and personal relationship with Norman Warne and her delight in trouncing the rigors and strictures The Tale of Two Bad Mice middle class domesticity. For all the destruction the mice wreak, it is miniaturized and thus more amusing than serious. Potter enjoyed developing a tale that gave her the vicarious thrill of the sort of improper behaviour she would never have entertained in real life. The tale begins with "once upon a time" and a description of a "very beautiful doll's-house" belonging to a doll called Lucinda and her cook-doll Jane. Jane never cooks because the doll's-house food is made of plaster and was "bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings". Though the food will not come off the plates, it is "extremely beautiful". One morning the dolls leave the nursery for a drive in their perambulator. No one is in the nursery when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two mice living under the skirting board, peep out and cross the hearthrug to the doll's-house. They open the door, enter, and "squeak for joy" when they discover the dining table set for dinner. It is "all so convenient! The two smash every dish on the table — "bang, bang, smash, smash! Tom Thumb scurries up the sootless chimney while Hunca Munca empties the kitchen canisters of their red and blue beads. Tom Thumb takes the dolls' dresses from the chest of drawers and tosses them out The Tale of Two Bad Mice window while Hunca Munca pulls the feathers from the dolls' bolster. In the midst of her mischief, Hunca Munca remembers she needs a bolster and the two take the dolls' bolster to their mouse-hole. They carry off several small The Tale of Two Bad Mice and ends from the doll's-house including a cradle, however a bird cage and bookcase will not fit through the mouse-hole. The nursery door suddenly opens and the dolls return in their perambulator. Lucinda and Jane are speechless when they behold the vandalism in their house. The little girl who owns the doll's-house gets a policeman doll and positions it at the front door, but her nurse is more practical and sets a mouse-trap. The narrator believes the mice are not "so very naughty after all": Tom Thumb pays for his crimes with a crooked sixpence placed in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and Hunca Munca atones for her hand in the destruction by sweeping the doll's-house every morning with her dust-pan and broom. Ruth K. MacDonald, author of Beatrix Potterbelieves the success of The Tale of Two Mice lies in the plentiful and meticulous miniature details of the doll's house in the illustrations. Potter persistently and consistently pursued a mouse-eye perspective and accuracy in the drawings. She could not have clearly seen the staircase down which the mice drag the bolster because it was impossible to take a photograph at that location, yet she placed herself imaginatively on the staircase and drew the mice in anatomically believable postures and in scale with the features of the doll's house. She took so much pleasure in the The Tale of Two Bad Mice miniature furnishings of the doll's house that Warne cautioned her about overwhelming the spectator with too many in the illustrations. The small format of the The Tale of Two Bad Mice miniaturizes the illustrations further, and their outline borders make the details appear even smaller both by the illusion of diminution the borders create and by limiting the picture to less than the full page. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh thinks The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a transitional work in Potter's career and reflects her concerns and questions about the meaning of domesticity, work, and social hierarchies. Changes in Potter's life were reflected in her art, Kutzer notes. Two Bad Mice may be viewed as an allegory in which Potter expresses not only her desire for her own home but her fears about and frustrations with domestic life. While earlier works reflect Potter's interest in broad political and social issues, Two Bad Mice demonstrates her interests shifting to local politics and the lives of The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Kutzer points out that the tale has three settings: that of The Tale of Two Bad Mice humans, that of the doll's house, and that of the mice, and that the themes of the book include "domesticity and the role of domiciles within domesticity" and tensions about the pleasures and dangers of domesticity and of rebellion and insurrection. The human and doll's house worlds reflect Potter's upper-middle-class background and origins: the proper little girl who owns the doll's house The Tale of Two Bad Mice a governess and the doll's house has servants' quarters and is furnished with gilt clocks, vases of flowers, and other accoutrements that bespeak the middle class. Kutzer points out that Potter is not on the side of the respectable middle The Tale of Two Bad Mice in this tale however: she is on the side of subversion, insurrection and individualism. The book is a The Tale of Two Bad Mice declaration of Potter's increasing independence from her family and her desire to have a home of her own, yet at the same time reflects her ambivalence about leaving home and her parents. Kutzer observes the tale is marked with a "faint echo" of the larger class issues of the times, specifically labour unrest. The mice, she suggests, can be viewed as representatives of the various rebellions of the working classes against working conditions of England and the growing local political and industrial conflicts revolving around issues such as the recognition of new unionism, working conditions, minimum wages, an 8-hour day, and the closed shop. She disapproved of the use of violence to attain reform but not of reform itself. Kutzer further believes that however much Potter wished to provide an example of moral behaviour for the reader in the last pages of The Tale of Two Bad Mice tale the mice "paying" for their misdeedsher sense of fairness and the subtext of British class unrest actually account for the tale's ending. Social authority the policeman doll and domestic authority the governess are both ineffective against The Tale of Two Bad Mice desires of the mice: one illustration depicts the animals simply evading the policeman doll to prowl outside the house and another illustration depicts the mice instructing their children about the dangers of the governess's mousetrap. Their repentance is merely show: Tom Thumb pays for his destruction with a useless crooked sixpence found under the rug and Hunca Munca cleans a house that is tidy to begin with. Their respectful show of repentance covers up The Tale of Two Bad Mice continuing rebellion against middle class authority. Although Potter approves of the domestic and social rebellion of the mice and their desire for a comfortable house of their own, she disapproves of the emptiness and sterility of the dolls' lives in the doll's house yet understands the attractions of a comfortable life made possible in part by the labour of servants. A reviewer in Bookman thought Two Bad Mice a pleasant change from Potter's rabbit The Tale of Two Bad Mice Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny and believed neither Tom Thumb or Hunca The Tale of Two Bad Mice were completely bad, noting they both looked innocent and lovable in Potter's twenty-seven watercolour drawings. The reviewer approved Potter's "Chelsea-china like books" that were Warne's "annual marvels Potter received her first fan letter from an American youngster in the wake of Two Bad Mice. Hugh Bridgeman wrote to say he enjoyed the book, and Potter in return wrote him, "I like writing stories.