Maestro Mouse and the Mystery of the Missing Baton

K-Gr 1—This introduction to the orchestra struggles with a strained rhyming text and unrefined illustrations. When Maestro Mouse's baton disappears right before a performance, it's up to the children in the audience to find it. They fruitlessly search the stage, "They looked inside the French horns, too, to see what they could see./It wasn't there-and neither was it in the timpani." As the maestro thanks the little mice for their help, one boy notices the baton sticking out of the conductor's sleeve, and the performance is saved. The story has potential value for its focus on music appreciation, but forcing the text to rhyme creates distracting issues, like dropping a significant name to form a rhyme, as in the pairing of "Ludwig Van" with "mouse and man." Unfortunately, the washed-out illustrations of the mice-people are not strong enough to compensate for the ungainly language, although the illustrator's background in architecture is evident in the nicely detailed depictions of the inside and outside of the concert hall. The endnotes include useful information on the parts of an orchestra, famous composers, and online resources for further information, as well as a note about the art. The three pages of workbook-style activities for kids may not be ideal for library lending.—Marian McLeod, Darien Library, CT