The Tale of Two Bad Mice (Beatrix Potter Originals)

Product Information

One day, when the house is empty, the two naughty mice, Tom Thumb and his wife, Hunca Munca, make themselves at home, only to find that the delicious looking ham that they were planning to devour is made of plaster, and the fish is glued to the plate! While Tom Thumb was up the chimney, Hunca Munca had another disappointment. She found some tiny canisters upon the dresser, labeled— Rice—Coffee—Sago—but when she turned them upside down, there was nothing inside except red and blue beads. The Tail of ‘Too Bad’ Mike by Iain Cameron Williams. ‘'My inspiration for The Tail of 'Too Bad' Mike came from a visit I made to London's V&A Museum in 2009, where I saw a Beatrix Potter display. I was fascinated by her life, especially her philanthropy. After leaving the museum, as it was a sunny afternoon, I walked up to Hyde Park and lay down for a while on East Albert Lawn. One of Potter's book titles kept going around in my mind and sparked my imagination. The book was The Tale of Two Bad Mice. From it, I devised the title, The Tail of 'Too Bad' Mike. That was my starting point; from there, I concocted the imaginary world of 'Too Bad' Mike.’

How do you think the dolls felt when they came home to find everything in their little home ruined or stolen? Two dolls named Lucinda and Jane live in a doll's house. The house belongs to Lucinda. Jane is the cook. There is, however, no need for Jane to do any cooking because she and Lucinda do not eat and all of the food in the doll's house is made of plaster. Between 1992 and 1996, a number of Beatrix Potter's tales were turned into an animated television series and broadcast by the BBC, titled The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends. One of the episodes is an adaptation of both The Tale of Two Bad Mice and The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. In the episode, Hunca Munca is voiced by Felicity Kendal and Tom Thumb is voiced by Rik Mayall. It first aired on the BBC on June 29, 1994. The book-case and the bird-cage were rescued from under the coal-box—but Hunca Munca has got the cradle, and some of Lucinda’s clothes. But Hunca Munca had a frugal mind. After pulling half the feathers out of Lucinda's bolster, she remembered that she herself was in want of a feather bed.The doll's-house stood at the other side of the fire-place. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca went cautiously across the hearthrug. They pushed the front door--it was not fast. While Tom Thumb was up the chimney, Hunca Munca had another disappointment. She found some tiny canisters upon the dresser, labelled-- Rice--Coffee--Sago--but when she turned them upside down, there was nothing inside except red and blue beads. Then there was no end to the rage and disappointment of Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca. They broke up the pudding, the lobsters, the pears and the oranges. Between November 26, 1903 and December 2, 1903, Potter took a week's holiday in Hastings, and, though there is no evidence that she did so, she may have taken one or both mice with her. She composed three tales in a stiff-covered exercise book during a week of relentless rain: Something very very NICE (which, after much revision, eventually became The Pie and the Patty-Pan in 1905), The Tale of Tuppenny (which eventually became Chapter 1 in The Fairy Caravan in 1929), and The Tale of Hunca Munca or The Tale of Two Bad Mice. [3] [4] [5] Potter hoped that one of the three tales would be chosen for publication in 1904 as a companion piece to Benjamin Bunny, which was then a work in progress. "I have tried to make a cat story that would use some of the sketches of a cottage I drew the summer before last," she wrote to her editor Norman Warne on December 2, "There are two others in the copy book ... the dolls would make a funny one, but it is rather soon to have another mouse book?", referring to her recently published The Tailor of Gloucester. [5] Winifred Warne and the doll's house built by her uncle Norman Warne

Such a lovely dinner was laid out upon the table! There were tin spoons, and lead knives and forks, and two dolly-chairs--all SO convenient! A reviewer in Bookman thought Two Bad Mice a pleasant change from Potter's rabbit books ( Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny) and believed neither Tom Thumb or Hunca Munca were completely bad, noting they both looked innocent and lovable in Potter's twenty-seven watercolour drawings. The reviewer approved Potter's "Chelsea-china like books" that were Warne's "annual marvels ... to an adoring nursery world". [3] Just before New Year's 1904, Warne sent Potter a glass-fronted mouse house with a ladder to an upstairs nesting loft built to her specifications so she could easily observe and draw the mice. [7] The doll's house Potter used as a model was one Warne had built in his basement workshop as a Christmas gift for his four-year-old niece Winifred Warne. Potter had seen the house under construction and wanted to sketch it, but the house had been moved just before Christmas to Fruing Warne's home south of London in Surbiton. Norman Warne invited Potter to have lunch in Surbiton and sketch the doll's house, but Mrs. Potter intervened. She had taken alarm at the growing intimacy between her daughter and Warne; as a consequence, she made the family carriage unavailable to her daughter, and refused to chaperone her to the home of those she considered her social inferiors. Potter declined the invitation and berated herself for not standing up to her mother. She became concerned that the whole project could be compromised. [7]The little girl that the doll’s-house belonged to, said,—”I will get a doll dressed like a policeman!” The tale's themes of rebellion, insurrection, and individualism reflect not only Potter's desire to free herself of her domineering parents and build a home of her own, but her fears about independence and her frustrations with Victorian domesticity.