Small Mole Makes Big Decision

This is a simple story, a universal story, simply told. All the best ones are, of course.

Mole finds a baby bird, which has fallen from its nest, and needs looking after. “Mole waited and waited but no big bird came to help it”. So Mole takes the baby bird home, to feed it and care for it and make it get better. “It’s very, very hard to take care of a baby bird.” says Mum. “They usually die.” says Dad. “My bird won’t die.” says Mole.

Mole is a serious and earnest little chap, who you can’t help but love. He has a big heart, and he is determined to help the baby bird. And so he and his friends find food for it, and build a cage for it. And Mole loves his baby bird.

Of course, the bird isn’t really Mole’s bird. The bird is a wild bird, and as with all wild things, the bird wants to be free, not caged in a wooden crate. Enter Grandad Mole (I love Grandads – they are nearly always right) who makes Mole see what he ought to do. But will Mole have the courage, and does he love his baby bird enough, to let it go free?

This is a children’s picture book, given to me because it has a mole in it, and I like things with moles in them. My husband read it before I did – and he had a real, salty tear in his eye when he turned the last page. I wanted to laugh at him but I was too anxious to read the book myself, and found the tears literally pouring down my cheeks at the end of the story, interspersed with laughter at myself for being so ridiculously moved by the whole thing.

It’s a beautifully crafted book – with few words to a page, but very well chosen and evocative ones. This is an old story and a timeless one, which could so easily have lapsed into cliché, but it doesn’t. Newman has the gift of conveying the maximum amount of meaning into the minimum amount of words, something many writers strive for and will never achieve. The fact that this story is written for 4-8 year olds doesn’t make it any less of a great piece of writing – in fact, the fact that it appealed to my nephew who made me read it three times in a row, and equally to my cynical, worldly wise husband made me appreciate just how good it is. It’s an adult message, which the best of children’s writing can often convey better than adult writing does.

It’s not just a story of a mole and a bird, but a story of love and loss – with themes including: making others happy by allowing them to be free to be themselves, the responsibility involved in looking after animals, the pain of losing something you love, and of respecting wild things and the natural world.

Patrick Benson (who also illustrated Owl Babies) is a superb illustrator. One illustration in particular, of Mole holding his baby bird tightly in both hands, with his back to his mum, is exactly the defensive posture my nephew adopts when he doesn’t want his brother to have whatever it is he has, right down to the pleading look in his eye. The pictures are a combination of watercolours and ink drawings, allowing for very fine detail. The anthropomorphism is wonderful. Grandad has a hat and glasses that fall down his nose, and Mole tucks a pencil behind his ear when he is busy being industrious making a cage. Mole’s home is your average country kitchen, brightly tiled and cosy, rather than a gloomy tunnel, but best of all is the baby bird, who is perhaps the cutest baby bird ever drawn – as well as being the most helpless, sad, and yet comical little creature you’ve ever seen. This book is full of big dark eyes and none more penetrating than those of the bird, who looks right at you in certain scenes and leaves you with a lump in your throat.

The story doesn't end when you turn the final page: the questions the book brings up might well involve you and the child you read it to in discussions for some time afterwards.

Ages: 4-8

ISBN: 1-58234-784-0

Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's Books