The Tale Of Two Bad Mice facts for kids
First edition cover
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| Author | Beatrix Potter |
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| Illustrator | Beatrix Potter |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Frederick Warne & Co. |
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Publication date
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September 1904 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Tale of Benjamin Bunny |
| Followed by | The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle |
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. Potter took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a doll's house being constructed by her editor and publisher Norman Warne as a Christmas gift for his niece Winifred. While the tale was being developed, Potter and Warne fell in love and became engaged, much to the annoyance of Potter's parents, who were grooming their daughter to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their London home.
The tale is about two mice who vandalize a doll's house. After finding the food on the dining room table made of plaster, they smash the dishes, throw the doll clothing out the window, tear the bolster, and carry off a number of articles to their mouse-hole. When the little girl who owns the doll's house discovers the destruction, she positions a policeman doll outside the front door to ward off any future depredation. The two mice atone for their crime spree by putting a crooked sixpence in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and sweeping the house every morning with a dust-pan and broom.
The tale's themes of rebellion, insurrection, and individualism reflect not only Potter's desire to free herself of her domineering parents and build a home of her own, but her fears about independence and her frustrations with Victorian domesticity.
The book was critically well received and brought Potter her first fan letter from America. The tale was adapted to a segment in the 1971 Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter and to an animated episode in the BBC series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends. Merchandise inspired by the tale includes Beswick Pottery porcelain figurines and Schmid music boxes.
Contents
Plot
Two Bad Mice reflects Potter's deepening happiness in her professional and personal relationship with Norman Warne and her delight in trouncing the rigors and strictures of middle class domesticity. For all the destruction the mice wreak, it is miniaturized and thus more amusing than serious. Potter enjoyed developing a tale that gave her the vicarious thrill of the sort of improper behaviour she would never have entertained in real life.
The tale begins with "once upon a time" and a description of a "very beautiful doll's-house" belonging to a doll called Lucinda and her cook-doll Jane. Jane never cooks because the doll's-house food is made of plaster and was "bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings". Though the food will not come off the plates, it is "extremely beautiful".
One morning the dolls leave the nursery for a drive in their perambulator. No one is in the nursery when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two mice living under the skirting board, peep out and cross the hearthrug to the doll's-house. They open the door, enter, and "squeak for joy" when they discover the dining table set for dinner. It is "all so convenient!" Tom Thumb discovers the food is plaster and loses his temper. The two smash every dish on the table – "bang, bang, smash, smash!" – and even try to burn one in the "red-hot crinkly paper fire" in the kitchen fireplace.
Tom Thumb scurries up the sootless chimney while Hunca Munca empties the kitchen canisters of their red and blue beads. Tom Thumb takes the dolls' dresses from the chest of drawers and tosses them out the window while Hunca Munca pulls the feathers from the dolls' bolster. In the midst of her mischief, Hunca Munca remembers she needs a bolster and the two take the dolls' bolster to their mouse-hole. They carry off several small odds and ends from the doll's-house including a cradle, however a bird cage and bookcase will not fit through the mouse-hole. The nursery door suddenly opens and the dolls return in their perambulator.
Lucinda and Jane are speechless when they behold the vandalism in their house. The little girl who owns the doll's-house gets a policeman doll and positions it at the front door, but her nurse is more practical and sets a mouse-trap. The narrator believes the mice are not "so very naughty after all": Tom Thumb pays for his crimes with a crooked sixpence placed in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and Hunca Munca atones for her hand in the destruction by sweeping the doll's-house every morning with her dust-pan and broom.
Illustrations
Ruth K. MacDonald, author of Beatrix Potter (1986), believes the success of The Tale of Two Mice lies in the plentiful and meticulous miniature details of the doll's house in the illustrations. Potter persistently and consistently pursued a mouse-eye perspective and accuracy in the drawings. She could not have clearly seen the staircase down which the mice drag the bolster because it was impossible to take a photograph at that location, yet she placed herself imaginatively on the staircase and drew the mice in anatomically believable postures and in scale with the features of the doll's house. She took so much pleasure in the many miniature furnishings of the doll's house that Warne cautioned her about overwhelming the spectator with too many in the illustrations. The small format of the book miniaturizes the illustrations further, and their outline borders make the details appear even smaller both by the illusion of diminution the borders create and by limiting the picture to less than the full page.
Merchandise
Potter confidently asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy. She was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales with a Peter Rabbit doll, a board game, and a nursery wallpaper between 1903 and 1905. Similar "side-shows" (as she termed the ancillary merchandise) were conducted over the following two decades.
In 1947 Frederick Warne & Co. gave Beswick Pottery of Longton, Staffordshire rights and licences to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. Seven figurines inspired by Two Bad Mice were issued between 1951 and 2000: Hunca Munca with the Cradle; Hunca Munca Sweeping; Tom Thumb; Christmas Stocking; Hunca Munca Spills the Beads; Hunca Munca cast in a large-sized, limited edition; and another Hunca Munca.
In 1977 Schmid & Co. of Toronto and Randolph, Massachusetts was granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter, and released two music boxes in 1981: one topped with a porcelain figure of Hunca Munca, and the other with Hunca Munca and her babies. Beginning in 1983, Schmid released a series of small, flat hanging Christmas ornaments depicting various Potter characters including several Hunca Muncas. In 1991, three music boxes were released: Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb in the dolls' bed (playing "Beautiful Dreamer"); Tom Thumb instructing his children about the dangers of mouse traps ("You've Got a Friend"); Hunca Munca spilling the beads from the pantry canister ("Everything is Beautiful"); and the two mice trying to cut the plaster ham ("Close to You"). Another music box released the same year played "Home! Sweet Home!" and depicted the exterior of the doll house, and, when reversed, the interior of the house with the bedroom upstairs and the dining room downstairs. Three separate mouse figurines could be placed here and there in the house.
Translations and reprints
Potter's 23 little books have been translated into nearly thirty languages including Greek and Russian. The English language editions still bear the Frederick Warne imprint though the company was bought by Penguin Books in 1983. The task of remaking the printing plates for all 23 volumes of the Peter Rabbit collection from the very beginning with new photographs of the original drawings and new designs in the style of the original bindings was undertaken by Penguin in 1985, a project completed in two years and released in 1987 as The Original and Authorized Edition.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was the first of Potter's books to be translated when the Dutch edition of Peter Rabbit (Het Verhaal van Pieter Langoor) was published in 1912 under licence by Nijgh & Ditmar's Uitgevers Maatschappij, Rotterdam. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Het Verhall van Kwakkel Waggel-Eend) followed the same year. Peter Rabbit and five other tales were published in Braille by The Royal Institute for the Blind in 1921. Twee Stoute Muisjes (Two Bad Mice) was first published in Dutch in 1946 and republished under licence as Het Verhaal van Twee Stoute Muizen (The Tale of Two Bad Mice) by Uitgeverij Ploegsma, Amsterdam in 1969. Two Bad Mice was first published in German as Die Geschichte von den zwei bösen Mäuschen in 1939, and was under licence to be published by Fukuinkan-Shoten, Tokyo in Japanese in 1971.
Adaptations
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is included as a segment in the 1971 Royal Ballet film Tales of Beatrix Potter.
Between 1992 and 1996, a number of Beatrix Potter's tales were turned into an animated television series and broadcast by the BBC, titled The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends. One of the episodes is an adaptation of both The Tale of Two Bad Mice and The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. In the episode, Hunca Munca is voiced by Felicity Kendal and Tom Thumb is voiced by Rik Mayall. It first aired on the BBC on June 29, 1994.
Cultural Impact
Author Iain Cameron Williams took inspiration for his 2020 debut children’s novel The Tail of ‘Too Bad’ Mike from the title of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice.
See also
In Spanish: El cuento de los dos malvados ratones para niños
