From Amazon.com
Although life is cozy in a hole in the wall of a diner, young Tom Mouse has grander ideas. Taking a tip from a hobo rat one day, he hops aboard a train, and his traveling adventures begin. Fortunately, he manages to find a temporary home in Roomette Nine--and a permanent friend with the other transitory tenant, an unflappable woman named Ms. Powers.
Ursula K. Le Guin, renowned author of the Newbery Honor and National Book Award-winning Earthsea sequence, as well as the Catwings series for younger readers, crafts a gentle tale of unlikely friendship and tame adventure. Readers will smile with relief when they discover, along with Tom, that Ms. Powers is not the kind of person to "scream and stand on the seat" when she sees a rodent. As it happens, she's the kind of person who doesn't mind a pocket-sized companion as she travels the world. Julie Downing, who also illustrated Le Guin's A Ride on the Red Mare's Back, captures the small-scale pleasures of molasses cookie crumbs and big-city exploration. (Ages 5 to 8) --Emilie Coulter
From Publishers Weekly
The creators of A Ride on the Red Mare's Back here take readers on another diverting ride. Tempted by the travel tales of a hobo rat who rides the rails on boxcars, Tom Mouse leaves his home in a hole in the wall of a station diner and sneaks aboard a Chicago-bound train. Though Tom fully expects that any human passenger who spies him will shriek, he has the good fortune to end up in a roomette occupied by Ms. Powers, a kind woman not at all squeamish or averse to sharing her small space and her snacks of cookies and carrots with a mouse. Le Guin's smooth, chatty narrative will endear both characters to readers as it relays the cheerful woman's one-sided conversation along with her new pal's unspoken thoughts. And kids will warm to the story's conclusion, which hints at a lasting friendship between the two. Downing's softly focused, appealing art at times recalls the work of Jim LaMarche in its use of imaginative perspectives and close-up images of the friends: the mouse scurries through human feet as he boards the train, gazing out on Ms. Powers's legs through the vents in her closet door, and views the passing world through the cabin's windowpane. Given its relatively lengthy text, this charmer makes a fitting read-aloud for the picture book set or an ideal beginning reader. Ages 4-8.
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