The Lion and The Mouse - Jerry Pinkney

I've always loved the well-known tale of The Lion & The Mouse, but was having trouble figuring out how an intricate story like this could be transferred into a wordless picturebook. Jerry Pinkney took any doubt out of my mind in his beautifully illustrated version of this classic that only uses onomatopoetic words occasionally throughout the story.

Because I knew the fable of the lion and the mouse before reading Jerry Pinkney's interpretation, it was easier for my mind to infer from page to page. However, after finishing, I went back through and tried to (as objectively as possible) pick up each inference that could be taken from page to page and realized that this book (as do many other wordless picturebooks) require a vast amount of thinking and inferring. We as the general public often think of wordless picturebooks as books that are easy for children and babies (even at age 2 who haven't formed concrete reading skills yet) to understand, but they are much more intricate than we seem to give them credit for.


Many "morals" or "take-aways" can be interpreted from Pinkney's version of The Lion & The Mouse, and I was surprised in my take-away - one that I had never gotten before in reading this fable. In Pinkney's version, I took away the importance of family, and I think that that was cemented by the illustrations throughout the book that show both the mouse with his/her family and the lion with his family. The lion is pictured with his family in each endpaper of the book, while the mouse is pictured with his/her family in other sequences throughout the book, most notably after the lion chooses to allow the mouse's release and after the mouse rescues the lion.


My take-away proves to me that picturebooks (and particularly wordless picturebooks) have the potential to mean something new to each and every reader. Some students might take away my overwhelming message of the comfort of family. Other readers might take away the idea that if you help others, they will help you at a later point in your life. And there are many interpretations that remain yet undiscovered, which makes reading picturebooks and wordless picturebooks even more exciting.