COTTONBALL COLIN

In a tale pointedly addressed to overprotective adults, a mother mouse finally lets her littlest one go. The smallest of ten siblings, Colin is forced to stay indoors all day with his mother hovering about—dosing him with unspecified medicine from small brown bottles in Ross’s typically bright, slapdash watercolors. At last, though, she takes Grandma’s suggestion that he’ll be all right if he’s wrapped in a big ball of cotton. Colin ventures outside and the chase is on, as he’s mistaken for a snowball by a boy, a tasty piece of bread by a duck and a juicy rabbit by a fox. Back home he saunters, cotton-free and exhilarated. After that, there’s no holding him back, and as the final scene indicates, even cats had better be on the lookout. Parents will get the point. Young children daunted by how dangerous to mice and other small creatures Colin’s world turns out to be may be happier with the sibling support in Martin Waddell’s Tiny’s Big Adventure (2004), illustrated by John Lawrence. (Picture book. 5-7)