Fictional Rodents Magazine (Volume 2) by Sandor Ligetfalvy

FICTIONAL RODENTS VOL. 2 M

Giftguide 2012/13

RODENT CLASSICS Dormouse in Wonderland HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Take a look at our rodent themed gift ideas for your family, friends or yourself ;) TWO OF A KIND Rodent duos

LITTLE STARS, BIG MONEY Over the years Rodent franchises have pulled in some serious coin

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WORLDWIDE Rodents are talking

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FICTIONAL RODENTS

VOLUME 2 Volume 2

Fictional Rodents is a free digital publication produced by Sandor Ligetfalvy VOLUME ONE: PUBLISHED FALL 2012 Rats of Decay: Banksy, Ebichu, Calhoun VOLUME TWO: PUBLISHED WINTER 2012 Family Values: Gifts, Films, Duos

VOLUME THREE: PUBLISHED SPRING 2013 Creativity: Contemporary Artists

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My loyal interest (not obsession) in talking rodents began in childhood. At my fifth birthday party the other kids were probably bored as I shushed them to re-watch The Secret of N.I.M.H. The film contained the imposing image of rats being injected with a syringe and transforming into intelligent creatures; consequently they faced the existential and moral dilemmas of becoming civilized -the same problem a child faces as their own intelligence blooms. I was raised in an era when talking mice were becoming big business. From 1973 to today, box-office earnings of mice movies total more than US$740 million. (See ‘Million Dollar Mice’ on page 20.) A child of the 1980s was born into megahits such as The Rescuers and The Great Mouse Detective, both based on book series from the 1950s and published as films in the 1970s-80s by Disney. Both titles exist in a similar premise which forms the bedrock for the genre thereafter: there is a replica of our world just for mice, and their friends. Anything you might see out your window, a mouse sees out his. Programs such as Motorcycle Mouse and childhood books like Stuart Little were intimate portions of my youth. These other anthropomorphic mouse titles don’t have the sciencefiction-like premise of Secret of N.I.M.H, which was not produced by Disney. For that reason it is darker and more nuanced, perhaps deeply affecting my taste as a young man and may have helped to shape my ideas about society itself. A question -- posed in my editorial for volume one -- was asked by author Kristen den Hartog. She writes on her blog, “I wonder why mice so often figure in children’s literature?” (This story is republished on page 6.) Her question covers some interesting ground and includes a review of a kid’s book Mouse Soup which is about the ingredients of reading

skills and storytelling. She notes, “In many of the stories that come to mind, the mouse is threatened by someone bigger and stronger, and needs to be brave to overcome the odds.” I think this is adept because it touches upon the idea of scale. Being as small as an action figure is the perspective occupied by these furry little creatures. Seeing the world from the perspective of being six inches tall means even the smallest, most disinteresting space, is a huge chasm to be experienced by a rodent-sized explorer. While a naked mouse may look like a mere mouse, we know there is an unseen side to his life. He dashes for the hole in the wall and beyond it who knows what is beyond. May as well assume there is passageways that lead to a Mouse’s replica of the city of London, complete with Big Ben made from popsicle sticks. For every Sherlock Holmes, there is a Basil of Bakerstreet. For every United Nations, there is the Rescue Aid Society. Anthropomorphic mice, in their pure form, are often a parody of our own society. In this way they offer storytellers the ability to express the larger structures of society without directly disturbing or boring the child with un-due seriousness. The danger of action and adventure is contained in the promise that it’s just silly mice, not serious men, who are embarking upon saving the day. The rodent-society fantasy takes the framework of our society and shrinks it the scale of being so small that even a four year old could command it. The appearance of the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland is a more primal occasion. Here we see an embellishment of the insanity of childhood itself, as, quite perplexingly, a mouse (of all creatures!) begins to speak to Alice and tell her sad tale. Perhaps Alice puts the words in Dormouse’s mouth, just as child breathes life into his or her action figures. (A re-print

of the sad tale of the Dormouse is on page 5). When I got my first hamster I wondered why only talking mice were being represented in stories and thus (as discussed in volume one) began designing my own hamster hero project. Apparently I wasn’t the only one in the early 1990s who noticed hamsters needed some representation as a series of titles appeared almost as soon as I made the observation. Titles were imported from Japan featuring hamsters such as Rick the Hamster from the Gameboy game Kirby’s Dreamland 2; and the TV shows and toys of Hamtaro, Zhuzhu Pets. Picking up on this more recently Disney incorporated the supporting character Rhino the hamster in the film Bolt. They also resolved my childhood ambition to create a troupe of crimefighting rodents when they released G-Force in 2009. I have watched titles appear in mediascape since the early 1990s which have seemed to specifically satisfy what I wanted to see in this genre. Either I could read the zeitgeist, or the zeitgeist could read me, but even more recently titles such as Flushed Away and Ratatouille seem perfectly tailored for what I would hope to see, and both continue the tradition of exploring a secret world of rodents that lives among us. (Check out the ‘Nine Films You Should See’ on Page 16.) The popularity of rodents leads inevitably to a plethora of toys, books, comics, and other entertainment products. In this edition of Fictional Rodents we have a colourful and diverse four-page ‘Gift Guide’ on page 8. We sing Three Blind Mice on page 12 take note of more than a half dozen famous pairs of rodent ‘Dynamic Duos’ on page 14. Finally, we look at a handful of ‘Rodents International’ (page 22) from around the world. This is the second volume of a total of three volumes of Fictional Rodents Magazine.

FICTIONAL RODENTS M

MOVIES 14 NINE YOU SHOULD SEE

MILLION

20 DOLLAR

MICE

Editorial

Classics

Gift Guide

Rodent Duos

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Classics

Dormouse

Alice In Wonderland

By Lewis Carroll

ILLUSTRATION

John Tenniel, 1869

1951 4

2010

“The Mouse’s Tale” is a concrete poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Though no formal title for the poem is given in the novel, the chapter title refers to “A Long Tale” and the Mouse introduces it by saying, “Mine is a long and sad tale!” 5

Putting stories into soup By Kristen den Hartog I wonder why mice so often figure in children’s literature? Think of Beatrix Potter, Aesop’s Fables, The Tale of Desperaux, Stuart Little, Chrysanthemum, Library Mouse, The Gruffalo, and Doctor DeSoto. There’s the Dormouse in Alice, as well as the Three Blind Mice and Hickory, Dickory, Dock of nursery rhymes. In many of the stories that come to mind, the mouse is threatened by someone bigger and stronger, and needs to be brave to overcome the odds. I’m thinking back to a time when my cat and I chased a mouse. Actually I was chasing the cat, trying to keep him from catching the mouse. And the poor mouse’s heart must have been ready to explode as he darted in and out of hiding spaces. Finally he was trapped, and I managed to scoop my cat out of the way and peer in at him, wedged as he was into a corner. I looked into his quivering mouse face and he actually squeezed his eyes shut in terror. I suppose sometimes you reach those moments, when there is nothing left to do but hope the inevitable will not happen. And amazingly, sometimes it doesn’t. One of my top mouse books is Mouse Soup by Arnold Lobel, who wrote the wonderful Frog and Toad series I’ve mentioned before (here and here). My child has been home

Darwin’s leaf-eared mouse, from George Robert Waterhouse’s Mammalia

sick the last couple of days and wants to hear Mouse Soup over and over. It’s constructed as stories within a story, a concept she easily grasps now, whereas a few years ago, when we first got the book, she didn’t seem aware of that architecture. Now, she calls these brackets at each end of the book her favourite part. Note the book beside the mouse in the dreaded soup pot Mouse Soup begins with a mouse sitting quietly, reading his book, when suddenly he’s caught by a weasel, taken up by the tail, and carted off to “be soup.” But the mouse – as charming and as quick-thinking as the mouse in The Gruffalo – tells him, Oh no! Your soup won’t taste good if it doesn’t have any stories in

it! The belly-rumbling weasel falls for this trick, and the stories unfold as ingredients. The first is about a mouse plagued by a nest of bees who’ve decided to live on his head like a huge hat. How will he trick them into moving elsewhere when they constantly tell him how much they like his nose, his ears, his whiskers? The second features two large stones confined to a sedentary life on one side of a hill, believing for 100 years that life on the other side is better. How will they ever be happy? The third sees a mouse trying to sleep, but kept awake by a cricket chirping. She shouts at him to be quiet, but he misunderstands her, and invites more and more crickets to join him

THIS STORY WAS ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON ‘BLOG OF GREEN GABLES’ BY KRISTEN DEN HARTOG http://blogofgreengables.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/putting-stories-into-soup/

in song. How will she ever get any sleep? The fourth and final soup story is about a policeman who comes upon a crying woman. She’s sat on her beloved thorn bush and now all the branches are falling over. How will they revive the suffering plant? Each of the four stories is decorated in the top corner with an image of the mouse in his soup pot, his tiny book on the counter beside him. When we finish the last story we see the weasel scratching his head, the mouse gesticulating, the ominous salt and pepper shakers sitting near a spoon. “But how can I put the stories into the soup?” the weasel asks. The mouse tells him to run outside and gather a nest of bees, two large stones, ten crickets, and a thorn bush. “Come back and put them all into the soup.” Which of course allows the mouse to make his getaway. Stories can be powerful things, and the little mouse has known this all along. It’s why he carries that book with him right through the tales, and why he goes home with it under his arm once he’s fooled the weasel. He settles into his mouse easy chair, eats his supper by the crackling fire, and then finishes his book right to the end. What a perfect, subtle way to convey to children the joy of reading. Note the book beside the mouse in the dreaded soup pot THIS STORY WAS ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON ‘BLOG OF GREEN GABLES’ BY KRISTEN DEN HARTOG http://blogofgreengables.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/putting-stories-into-soup/

Fictional Rodents Gift Guide

THE CHRISTMAS MOUSE

CHRISTMAS WITH THE CHIPMUNKS

I YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE BY

Numeroff & Bond

GUINEA PIG, PET SHOP DETECTIVE “HAMSTER AND CHEESE” BY

TALE OF DESPERAUX (Book and DVD/Bluray) BY

Kate DiCamillo

Venable & Yue

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Fictional Rodents Gift Guide

DIDDLGiftcard and Cardstock series BY

Thomas Goletz

ZHUZHU PETS MINNIE MOUSE STUFFED DOLL BABY MOUSE QUEEN OF THE WORLD BY

Jennifer and Matthew Holm