Charming story, great illustrations!
From the team that brought you Harry the Dirty Dog and other terrific stories comes my absolute favorite, the story of Tom, a baker who works in the royal kitchen but is at the bottom of the staff hierarchy. No one knows what a brilliant pastry chef he is except for his friend Tina, the white mouse. Tom bakes her tiny little cakes and she does cute little tricks.
When Tom decides to enter the royal cake contest, competing for the top royal pastry chef spot, he creates a fantastic entry, a tiered cake with molded white sugar mice. At the top are a sugar mouse king and queen on little thrones. But when he gets to the contest site, he finds the little mouse queen is broken! Tina rescues the moment by posing as the sugar mouse queen. Can she pull it off? And if she does, how can Tom get her back?
There's a surprising amount of entertaining tension in this story, and the illustrations are truly memorable. The only downside is that the human queen in the story is negatively typed as fat, argumentative, gluttonous, and foolish. Not to say that there aren't such people in real life, but if you're trying to avoid such stereotypes or emphasis for your own child, this one might not be for you.
I adored this book as a child and can't believe it's out of print. I'm very pleased to have a copy to share with my own daughter (though we'll take the queen with a grain of salt).
