August 2011 Guest Editor Julie Hearn has chosen this favourite tale: "When I was little I believed, absolutely, that Mrs Tiggy-Winkle washed my grandad’s socks and ironed his pocket handkerchiefs, even though he wasn’t a small animal. To this day, I can’t look at a foxglove . . . or a squirrel in the park... or a row of lettuces in a vegetable patch... without remembering my childhood collection of Beatrix Potter books. I knew most of the stories by heart, before I could read, and The Tale of Two Bad Mice was my favourite. There is a dark side to Potter’s tales that I somehow understood, and respected. If Peter Rabbit’s father could end up dead in a pie, then Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca – those ham-smashing, bolster-ripping, cradle-stealing, very bad mice – might just as easily have been pulped in the nurse’s mouse trap, or caught and punished by the police-man doll. But they weren’t. Phew!"
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is as lively and funny today as it was when it was first written. See the chaos that ensues when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two naughty little mice, creep into Lucinda and Jane's doll's house one morning. They are not happy to discover that the delicious food is made of plaster and won't come off the plates, or that the canisters on the dresser don't contain real rice and coffee, only coloured beans! They set about taking things to make their little home more comfortable, but end up creating a terrible mess. What will happen when the dolls come home from their walk in the park? The Tale of Two Bad Mice is number five in Beatrix Potter's series of 23 little books, the titles of which are as follows: The Tale of Peter Rabbit ; The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin ; The Tailor of Gloucester ; The Tale of Benjamin Bunny ; The Tale of Two Bad Mice ; The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle ; The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher ; The Tale of Tom Kitten ; The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck ; The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies ; The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse ; The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes ; The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse ; The Tale of Mr. Tod ; The Tale of Pigling Bland ; The Tale of Samuel Whiskers ; The Tale of The Pie and the Patty-Pan ; The Tale of Ginger and Pickles ; The Tale of Little Pig Robinson ; The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit ; The Story of Miss Moppet ; Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes ; and, Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes .
Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. During her rather lonely childhood and later, as a young woman, she studied art and natural history. She acquired her love and knowledge of the countryside during family holidays, at first in Scotland and then in the Lake District. She started her career as children's author and illustrator in 1901 when she was thirty-five. In the years before the First World War, demand for her work was so great that she was publishing an average of two new stories a year. As she became financially independent, she was able to buy some land in the Lake District and in 1913, on her marriage to solicitor William Heelis, she moved to live there permanently. For the last thirty years of her life, writing and illustrating gave place to a second career as a sheep farmer and countryside conservationist.
Her little books never lost their popularity however and today they sell in their millions, translated into numerous languages, and the pleasures of those timeless tales continue to be enjoyed by children all over the world.
