Elliot and Mouse are the best of friends. Mouse is looking forward to his family reunion where he’ll eat his grandmother’s cheese chowder with his 15 brothers, 19 sisters, 25 aunts, 27 uncles, and 147 cousins. When Mouse leaves, Elliot is all alone. He walks around the city and sees families everywhere. “Elliot wondered what it would be like to have 147 cousins. Or even just one.” Just as he’s about to be taken over by loneliness, Mouse comes to find him and invite him to join his family in their reunion.
Mike Curato’s debut, Little Elliot Big City tells the story of how a small polka-dotted elephant and a mouse bonded over a shared love of cupcakes. Maybe it’s my bias talking, but I think this one is even better than the first. As someone who comes from a large extended family, I really appreciated this family-oriented story. You have the main storyline of a lonely elephant, and his touching adoption into the mouse family. You also have a number of lovely family scenes as he walks around 1940s New York: brothers playing baseball, fathers playing with their children, sisters sharing secrets. It’s touching and it evokes the feelings I have about family.
Curato’s pencil illustrations are soft and inviting. He creates a vintage feel with his unique combination of pencil and Photoshop (read about it here). Often his illustrations look like they could be scenes out of an old movie. He uses color and composition to enhance the mood and emotions of the story. Curato pictures Elliot as a small, lone character among a sea of empty seats, or as the only soul on a snowy street. Page after page is perfectly composed. I just love looking at the illustrations. The family photographs that cover the endpages are a kick, too.
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