The pictures were made with plasticine that is shaped and pressed onto illustration board decorated with acrylic paint, found objects, and other materials and then photographed. Although the story is somewhat flat and predictable, Reid's artwork is outstanding. When they finally crawl out of the tunnel and into a starlit night, they discover a world that is more dangerous than they expected, but also more beautiful, and make a home together. Along the way he meets Lola, a female mouse who joins him. When he returns to find that his cousins have ransacked his home, he decides to leave and go in search of Tunnel's End. A true pack rat, he collects all sorts of objects and lovingly arranges them into a cozy nest. He loves to listen to stories, especially those about a special but dangerous place called Tunnel's End. Kindergarten-Grade 2–Nib lives with his family beneath a busy subway station. All rights reserved From School Library Journal: Gillian EngbergĬopyright © American Library Association.
Children will enjoy poring over the detailed images of the world from a mouse's viewpoint, and many will see themselves in intrepid Nib, who feels at odds with his cacophonous family and dreams of a sweet, cozy nest of his own. Working in found materials and expertly molded, brightly colored plasticine, she sculpts remarkably expressive characters and a vivid, subterranean world filled with "thundering trains" and messy people, whose scattered refuse (created from bright scraps of feathers, beads, and food wrappers) ingeniously lines the homes of the mice below the tracks. Reid creates a charming, lively adventure in short, smoothly paced sentences, but it's her marvelous collage illustrations that really bring the characters and richly imagined world to life. Along the way, he meets Lola, a lovely mouse who joins him on his quest, and together they reach open air and start a family.
At last, he sets off on a perilous journey, traveling the tunnel to its finish. Nib's fascination with the fabled land grows as he gets older, and he feels increasingly more crowded and restless in his underground community. Subway mouse Nib has grown up listening to bedtime stories about Tunnels End, a "dangerous, roofless world," where the air is sublime, the food tasty, and the nests soft and green.
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