Wendell Berry is an essayist, novelist, and poet who has written more than 40 books. He lives in Henry County, Kentucky, a place he knows intimately. In this enchantingly simple and elegant children's book, Berry recounts the adventures of a white-footed mouse who lives in the forest and finds herself adrift in a new world during a flood. She takes "a small feminine pleasure in being beautiful" and is "highly skilled in being a mouse."
Berry helps us enter her little world by writing: "To imagine the life and adventures of Whitefoot, you must compress your mind to her size. Think of going about with your eyes only an inch or two from the ground, among grass stems thicker than your thumb, weed stems thicker than your wrist, maple and oak leaves that you can slip under and hide, trees that touch the sky."
The author, aided by delightful black-and-white pencil drawings by Davis Te Selle, takes us on an adventure with Whitefoot. She clings to a log in the flood waters and is taken far from home into an alien world. Instead of trying to push against her troubles, she relaxes into them: "She was capable of patience, I think, but now she was simply doing nothing, which was all there was to do." Shades of Taoism. The story connects us with Whitefoot's keen survival instincts and her gentle acceptance of what has happened to her. Children ought to be emboldened by her experiences and see them as worthy of emulation.
