SUPERMOUSE AND THE BIG CHEESE ROBBERY

When thieves steal the monumental Big Cheese, all Mouseopolis turns to its favorite masked crime fighter.

With liberal use of flaps and die-cut holes, including one in the front cover, to add extra drama to the caper, Chambers follows seemingly ordinary citizen Peter Parmesan as he transforms himself into the mighty Supermouse to investigate the theft. He tracks a trail of cheese crumbs from the Hickory Dickory Docks to a dark warehouse where the culprits lurk. Miraculously avoiding an ambush involving a vat of bubbling fondue, Supermouse bursts in just as the villains are about to “cut the cheese.” After a bit of work with a string-cheese lasso (“Did I catch you at a bad time?”), the redoubtable rodent has saved both the Cheese—part of the latter, viewed through a round hole, doing double duty as the moon in a final nighttime cityscape—and the day. Sharp-eyed young sleuths will spot plenty of clocks and other sight gags to go with the jokes and tropes (“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s…”) Tahl has woven into the laconic narrative. Novelty elements include a pasted-in newspaper, the two-flap telephone booth in which Supermouse dons his costume, and small flaps that double as trapdoors through which our hero tumbles. Much of the story is printed on and under the large flaps, a clever device that also makes loss of flaps particularly compromising.

A brief but tasty morsel.