Mouse Paint

Book Title: Mouse Paint

Author(s): Ellen Stoll Walsh

Illustrator/Photographer/Artist: Ellen Stoll Walsh

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Copyright Date: 1986

Genre: Concept picturebook

Brief Annotation: Three mice find and play in three jars of paint one day while the cat is asleep. They climb in, turning one mouse red, one blue, and one yellow. While dancing in paint puddles, the mice discover that mixing certain colors makes new colors. They put this new knowledge to use while making a beautiful and colorful picture.

Your Rating (1-5) and why: 4.5—Mouse Paint is a cute story for young children, and its durable boardbook form is perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. The story gives a fun introduction to teaching children about mixing primary colors to make the secondary colors of purple, green, and orange. I also liked that this particular edition contained both English and Spanish versions of the story.

Readers who will like this book: Young readers (and listeners) who like funny stories, colorful pictures, and art (and what kid doesn’t?); adults who want to teach colors to preschool children or introduce the idea of primary and secondary colors to older children.

Teaching Strategy from Tompkins or Yopp & Yopp (you'll link a strategy to at least 10 of your 40 books) : Venn Diagram, p. 115. For Mouse Paint, I think it would be fun to use a Venn Diagram in a slightly untraditional way. Instead of using it to compare and contrast characters or settings, kids would use the diagrams to visualize which secondary colors are created when two primary colors are mixed. The teacher would draw three circles that overlap. Students would fill in the colors of the circles and their overlaps with a marker of that particular color. Where red and blue overlap, for example, a student would fill in “purple” with a purple marker. Students would then experiment with red, yellow, and blue paint to create their own Mouse Paint pictures.

Question to ask about this book before a read aloud: What happens when you mix red with yellow, yellow with blue, or red with blue? Do you think that you can create new colors? Let’s find out!

Optional, but noted as extra effort:

1. Interest Level (age): Kindergarten—second grade

2. Grade Level Equivalent (grade): 1.5

3. List awards: Redbook Children’s Picture Book, Parenting Reading-Magic, Horn Book Fanfare Selection, Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, ABA’s Pick of the Lists, IRA-CBC Children’s Choice

4. Book Trailer: None