Why do we like mouse stories so much?

edutton

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i'm kind of a sucker for them. As are a lot of other people, it would seem! Redwall, Mouse Guard, Mice Templar, Desperaux, even Brambly Hedge... parenting turned me into a bit of a fantasy-mouse junkie. To the point that I'm even plotting my own story, now, but still I honestly wonder exactly why?
 

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I suspect no one who loves to read mouse fantasies has ever had them running amok in their house? It's pretty hard for me to see a mouse and see anything cute about them. :tongue
 

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There's something endearing about portrayals of cute anthropomorphized small animals, I guess? It's also easier to go there in a story than creating a likeable alien species whole-cloth.

Personally, I love cats, and I'd be scared poopless of a culture of tool-using cats with human levels of intelligence. "But the floof! They're so cute!" And so Machiavellian, cruel and sociopathic. "But the floof!" But the cruelty, death and dismemberment.

I guess animal fantasies are a way to project our idealized selves?
 

heza

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Hmmm... I think it's easier, in some ways, to anthropomorphize mice. They have what appear to be tiny little hands and can hold and manipulate objects (realistically) in ways that dogs and cats just can't. They are also adorable.

Another aspect of it, I think, is that we really dig tiny, hidden worlds. Mice, with their diminutive size, living as they do, with their tiny hands, are uniquely positioned to have urban societies where we can't see them. Cats and dogs are too big to have hidden cities. Birds don't live in walls or underground. :Shrug: We also like tiny worlds built from our cast offs, and mice are natural scavengers.
 

frimble3

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I think Heza's got it right - it's the paws and the thought that they could be secretly leading little lives much like ours. They're perfectly sized for dollhouses, etc. Like Borrowers, but furry.
And, although icky to have running around your house IRL, with the right illustrator they can be adorable.
There are darned few stories about anthropomorphized rats, who are apparently smarter, and have bigger, more capable paws. (Only one I can think of is 'Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.)
 

jlmott

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Blame Walt Disney ;). Actually, there may be a bit of truth to that, insofar as anthropomorphized mice have proven to be successful in the past, so it would make sense to use something that's been shown to have a proven track record.
 

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The near hands thing makes sense. There are anthropomorphized dogs and cats who have their paws modified into hands, but it does require a more cartoonish treatment of them.

Mice are about as small and helpless as a mammal can get. They're nearly at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak, and we tend to like stories about the "little guy" making good, and such stories are probably even more relatable to kids. And while they're pests, house mice also live in a hidden world that's next to ours but mostly out of sight, so that captures our imagination in the same way wainscot fantasy worlds do. Oh, and there are so many different species of adorable mice (or mousy creatures) that don't live in our pantries too): voles, deermice etc.

I can remember popular anthropomorphic mouse stories from my own childhood too: The Cricket in Times Square (the focal character was actually a mouse who lived in a subway station in New York and befriended a lost cricket from the countryside), Robert Lawson's Rabbit Hill books (the rabbits were the main characters, but there was an important mouse too), Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Robert Lawson's Ben and Me, told from the pov of a mouse who lived in Ben Franklin's hat.

And of course, there are no shortage of cartoon mice, from Disney's Mickey to Jerry (of Tom and Jerry fame), and plenty of others.
 
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Marissa D

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Not to mention Stuart Little and Ralph S. Mouse and the Geronimo Stilton books and Richard Scarry's mice... I think there are so many mouse characters in kidlit because they make a great stand-in for child readers, being small and at the mercy of bigger creatures, yet still being brave and plucky, having adventures and doing exciting things.
 

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YES!! To all of the above!! I am a fellow mouse-junkie working on my own mouse fantasy and currently reading the second book in the Mouse Scouts series because I CANNOT get enough of mice! They are cute, they are tiny, I love tiny worlds, I love cute animals! What's not to love?
 

Kalsik

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Long story short, mice are considered cute in recent times. That's pretty much it.
 

neandermagnon

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I suspect no one who loves to read mouse fantasies has ever had them running amok in their house? It's pretty hard for me to see a mouse and see anything cute about them. :tongue

I had a mouse run amok in my house and still like mouse characters in books etc. My 8 yr old (then about 6 or 7) loved the mousey. Mouse runs across the floor. Me + older daughter: "OMG a mouse!" Younger daughter (with love hearts in her eyes): Mousey!

I think small kids like small animals. I even said to my younger daughter "you're not the smallest mammal in the house any more".
 

Criccieth

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YES!! To all of the above!! I am a fellow mouse-junkie working on my own mouse fantasy and currently reading the second book in the Mouse Scouts series because I CANNOT get enough of mice! They are cute, they are tiny, I love tiny worlds, I love cute animals! What's not to love?

Mouse-poo in your cutlery drawer. Opening your tupperware cupboard to see a mouse running away. Oh - and finding a mouse in your cold oven!

That said - yeah, they're cute. Even the one in my bread-bin was cute, sitting there staring at me, jaws busily working on the end of my loaf of bread! And the one in the oven did an AMAZING leap straight down to the floor and then vanished through a 5mm (I'm not kidding) gap in the kick-boards. I loose my cat on them - I won't put poison down because a) kids; b) cat and c) bio-accumulation.

But I do wish they'd clear off out of my house!
 

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I suspect no one who loves to read mouse fantasies has ever had them running amok in their house? It's pretty hard for me to see a mouse and see anything cute about them. :tongue

Mouse-poo in your cutlery drawer. Opening your tupperware cupboard to see a mouse running away. Oh - and finding a mouse in your cold oven!

And the gnawing at 3 AM... and the mouse "seeds" stashed in everything... and the reek of mouse urine when cleaning... and the mouse infesting the family vehicle (even popping up on the hood on the freeway, and scurrying in the ceiling upholstry)...

I get that they look cute and make good candidates for anthropomorphizing, but danged if I wasn't always rooting for Tom in Tom & Jerry cartoons, even as a kid... cat person at heart, I suppose. (We live-trap and relocate when possible, though - not always possible. Got a live-trap guy we contact to deal with rats, too - he observes for poison, kills humanely, and donates them to raptor centers. On a tangent, it was quite disturbing how many rats caught on our property showed signs of poisoning from neighbors quite some ways away...)
 

frimble3

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Ah, but we let lots of hungry, dirty creatures into our homes. Cats, dogs, teenagers. They, like mice, have other appealing qualities.
Although, donating the unwanted rodents to a raptor center seems a most fitting end.
 

Criccieth

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The W European blizzards have driven even more of the little........so-and-sos into my house. I swear my cat is getting lazy - couple of years ago she caught loads.
 

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i'm kind of a sucker for them. As are a lot of other people, it would seem! Redwall, Mouse Guard, Mice Templar, Desperaux, even Brambly Hedge... parenting turned me into a bit of a fantasy-mouse junkie. To the point that I'm even plotting my own story, now, but still I honestly wonder exactly why?

Maybe it's because mice are the quintessential "little guys/gals"? Even in stories centered around anthropomorphized animals, mice tend to be the smallest and weakest. Kids in particular tend to relate to that sort of thing, but adults can to.

Or maybe it's because we're fascinated by miniaturization, and anthropomorphized mice can populate scaled-down metropolises. Mice have front paws that are like little hands, so it's maybe easier to envision them using tools and holding tiny swords without too much artistic license.

Also, in stories about mice that live more the way mice actually live (inside the walls of buildings or in Times Square subway stations), they can provide a sort of "fly on the wall" observation or commentary of human society. They're somewhat separate from our world and concerns--enough to have goals of their own--yet they're also interdependent with us and vulnerable. So there are lots of plot opportunities.

Rabbits are pretty popular as characters too. We've got Peter Rabbit, Uncle Wiggly, Watership Down, Lawson's Rabbit Hill Books etc.
 

maghranimal

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I think because mice have been such a part of mainstream tv/movie/lit culture for a long time. Mickey Mouse?! Tom & Jerry, Mrs. Frisby. They're harmless adorable critters that are more accessible based on the way they build their nests and hold things in their paws. It's the same for rats, although not as much. They have a worse rep. for some reason despite being incredibly smart.

And yes—never, EVER use poison. That mouse or rat can then get eaten by a cat, owl, etc.