Mouse Paint

This is the best "color" book I've ever read. I love that it has an actual storyline, and a clever one at that! The text is perfectly concise, and the illustrations are simple but engaging. My 5-month-old daughter loves it!

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh follows three white mice who discover the world of color and mixing colors. One day the three white mice discover three jars of paint: red, blue, and yellow. As the mice each climb into a jar of paint and emerge, they leave puddles of paint. Since the puddles looked fun, each mouse picks a color different from that they crawled into and dance in the puddles. By mixing colors they create new colors: orange, green and purple. They wash off the sticky paint and then paint much of the white page different colors, leaving some white because of the cat.

The use of a bold font, surrounded by white, and repetition make this a good choice for beginning readers. The simplicity of the text and opportunities for show more prediction are pluses.

Walsh’s cut-paper collage illustrations feature bold colors that contrast with the white background. The use of primary colors to produce secondary colors makes this a strong concept book. My favorite images include the cover, the mice hiding from the cat, mice climbing into and emerging from paint jars, each mouse dancing and creating a secondary color, the mice washing themselves, and the final image.

This is one of my favorite preschool read-alouds which I have often used in storytimes. It could be used with a color mixing activity as a concrete concept to extend the story. I love how the white mice use the white paper to hide from the cat, and when they use the cat's bowl for their bath. This is highly recommended for school and public library collections. For ages 1 to 6, colors, science, experimentation, prediction, mice, adventure, cats, art, read-aloud, and fans of Ellen Stoll Walsh. show less

Yet another picture book fresh and clever enough to charm adults. Three white mice experiment with paint in this delightful book with an unexpected ending. Highly recommended.

Cute, but all three mice are male. Unless you work hard to find books in which all the characters are female then this is just one more book that contributes to imprinting "default male" in children's minds. So recommended only with that caution.

Cute, but all three mice are male. Unless you work hard to find books in which all the characters are female then this is just one more book that contributes to imprinting "default male" in children's minds. So recommended only with that caution.

This one took its time and milked each step of the mice's paint adventure for all it was worth--the stepping in the paint, the mixing the paint, the painting the room all different colours. You can tell it was written by someone who really values paint.

This is a great lighthearted book introducing the color concepts (color wheel) to young children. I really enjoy how this book makes learning about colors interesting and enjoyable. This story could be a good lesson having students experiment with mixing other colors to see what happens and then have the students take what they learned into the art room. I also enjoyed the illustrations in the story, the colors that are being mixed are easy to identify and vibrant so the reader focuses in on the colors. I also like that the shows the mixing of the colors and the end result of what the color mixtures create. The last thing I enjoyed was the simplicity of vocabulary used. The author did not use crazy names for the colors ie; macaroni, show more magenta, turquoise, etc. This allows the children to understand the basic primary and secondary colors without overwhelming them with difficult color names. show less