Norm : The Enormous Mouse

Christopher Ross and Pamela Southgate are on fine form in this first in a planned series of stories about an unusually large mouse.

This is a beautifully illustrated children's picture book, ideal as a bedtime story for 4-7 year-olds, aimed at children who have been through the important stages of repetition and predictability in storytelling and are ready to absorb something more challenging to the imagination.

Norm is a mouse who grows, and grows, and grows until he has to leave home because he has become too big to fit through the mouse-house door.

Soon troubles come upon the rest of his family and the future looks very sad as they all become homeless.

After a number of delightful adventures, in which Norm befriends Slomo the cat and outwits Ocho the bad-tempered spider, Norm manages to help his homeless family and the story ends happily with the family re-united in a new home.

The story is fast-moving with quirky humour - the outcome turns on Ocho's belief that the more legs you have, the more important you are!

The four main characters are well-developed and show traits with which children will be familiar: kindness, cunning, self-denial, bad temper, arrogance and naughtiness.