The Great American Mousical by Julie Andrews Edwards & Emma Walton Hamilton Illustrated by Tony Walton

This fantasy was written by Julie Andrews Edwards who is none other than Julie Andrews who played in the Disney version of Mary Poppins! I was delighted to notice that the character she played in Mary Poppins seemed to have jumped right into the pages of this book. Her passion for theater and entertainment illuminated the pages like a spotlight on the stage. Several mice characters played in the cast and crew for the miniature Sovereign Theater in Times Square. The humans were concluding their final performance in the big Sovereign Theater while the mice were preparing to rehearse their New Years Eve performance in the miniature model of the theater in the basement. Edwards propelled the plot into a dual spin when the reader learns of two story problems to be developed in a parallel manner. The leading mouse lady, having been caught in a mousetrap is taken off in a truck and dumped into the snow across town in New York City. During her absence the plot thickens two-fold: The cast and crew struggle to adapt the mouse performance without her while mourning their loss, and at the same time Adelaide, the leading mouse lady finds her way back with an adventurous journey complete with meeting new mouse friends along the way. Each friend helps her further her journey home, and one of them accompanies her and results in the two of them falling in love. The reader is riddled with suspense and rejoices when Adelaide makes it back across the city and to the final act of the performance where she makes a surprising entrance on stage. Her appearance on stage astonishes and delights the mouse audience, and the reader begins to be satisfied that the problem has been resolved....BUT... Some interesting complications spice up the plot as it gains momentum. Ironically a baseball misplaced by a small boy early in the story serves as the means by which one of the mice learns the humans are talking about how the theater will soon be demolished. Yet at the end of the book that same baseball serves as a tool to roll down the stairs and to lure the small boy to retrieve his ball and to discover the miniature model of the Sovereign Theater that leads to the humans realizing the theater's worth and value thus their change of heart in cancelling the demolition plans. The reader is twice delighted and satisfied with the resolution to the story, and all seem to live happily ever after as the mice celebrate that the show will go on and their leading lady has been returned.