MOUSTERWORKS

Two big-eared rodents—Pépin, who wears a blue bow tie, and Cosette, who sports a pink flower—accompany Grand-mère to the museum, where they gaze at Hawkins’ cartoonish interpretations (or MousterWorks) of well-known paintings by Edward Bannister, Johannes Vermeer, Claude Monet, and others. The enthralled Cosette eagerly engages with the art, imagining the scents and sounds the subjects might be experiencing, while Pépin’s more concerned with tracking down cheese. While readers will enjoy picking out the adorable rodents interspersed throughout the MousterWorks—a mouse is tucked into bed alongside the youngster in Rosa Bonheur’s Child and Cat, for instance—they won’t get that much out of the paintings themselves. The brief, plotless text provides no historical context or discussion of the pieces; readers curious about the performance depicted in Miyagawa Choshun’s Ryukyuan Dancers and Musicians, for instance, will need to go elsewhere to learn more. And though the MousterWorks are cute enough, alterations in composition, facial expressions, and color scheme mean that readers won’t get the full emotional effect. An author’s note includes a link to a website comparing the MousterWorks to the originals, while endpapers list the names and birth and death dates of the artists.

May 21, 2025 - 05:26

Two big-eared rodents—Pépin, who wears a blue bow tie, and Cosette, who sports a pink flower—accompany Grand-mère to the museum, where they gaze at Hawkins’ cartoonish interpretations (or MousterWorks) of well-known paintings by Edward Bannister, Johannes Vermeer, Claude Monet, and others. The enthralled Cosette eagerly engages with the art, imagining the scents and sounds the subjects might be experiencing, while Pépin’s more concerned with tracking down cheese. While readers will enjoy picking out the adorable rodents interspersed throughout the MousterWorks—a mouse is tucked into bed alongside the youngster in Rosa Bonheur’s Child and Cat, for instance—they won’t get that much out of the paintings themselves. The brief, plotless text provides no historical context or discussion of the pieces; readers curious about the performance depicted in Miyagawa Choshun’s Ryukyuan Dancers and Musicians, for instance, will need to go elsewhere to learn more. And though the MousterWorks are cute enough, alterations in composition, facial expressions, and color scheme mean that readers won’t get the full emotional effect. An author’s note includes a link to a website comparing the MousterWorks to the originals, while endpapers list the names and birth and death dates of the artists.