Mouse Soup Bookmark | Arnold Lobel Watercolor Art | Children's Classic Story Gift

A good story is better than any soup. A weasel caught a mouse. The weasel wanted to make soup. The mouse wanted to go home and finish his book. The mouse had no physical advantages in this situation. The mouse had no speed and no strength and no claws and no particular intimidating qualities of any kind. The mouse had stories. The mouse told the weasel four stories so compelling and so complete and so entirely absorbing that the weasel forgot entirely about the soup and sat listening with his whole enormous weasel self while the mouse slipped quietly away through the door and walked home through the woodland and made himself a cup of tea and picked up his book and found his bookmark still holding his place exactly where he left it and continued reading. The weasel sat alone with a pot of soup that had no stories in it. The soup was not as good as it should have been. The weasel knew why. The weasel had learned something important that afternoon even if it was not the lesson he intended to learn. A good story is better than any soup. The mouse knew this. Arnold Lobel knew this. Now you have a bookmark that says so. ✦ ABOUT THIS BOOKMARK A richly illustrated watercolor scene rendered in the warm soft palette of Arnold Lobel's original illustrations — the particular gentle ambers and warm greens and honey golds of a world that was made with complete love for the reader who would enter it. The scene moves from the weasel's kitchen at the very top — the large soup pot steaming on the wood stove, the weasel's enthusiastic soup recipe card on the counter, the mouse's book open on the kitchen table with a bookmark holding his place because he absolutely intends to return to it — through the four story images that the mouse told in the warm luminous center of the bookmark, all four stories flowing together as one continuous dream of narrative the way the mouse told them, seamlessly and compellingly and with complete dedication to the task of being too interesting to interrupt. The four stories flow through the center of the composition — two boulders who argued until their bees moved away and then became lonely and became friends, an old woman whose crickets sang so loudly she put them in the attic and then missed them when they stopped, a mouse who sat in a thorn bush until a stranger told him he was alive without the thorns and he got out and found a much better path, two women who found a beehive and argued about the honey until the bees settled the argument themselves in a way that left everyone stingier and wiser. All four of them present in the warm center of the bookmark as one continuous flowing narrative dream, the rainbow prismatic light scattered warm across all of them from the afternoon sun through the kitchen window catching a glass jar on the shelf. At the very bottom the mouse's own home — small and round and entirely right, the warm amber light visible through the door left slightly ajar, a cup of tea steaming on the step, his book waiting with the bookmark in it, the particular domestic warmth of a creature safely home after an adventure that required nothing but a good imagination and a complete commitment to using it. The soup pot is still on the weasel's stove somewhere above. The soup never got the stories it needed. The mouse is home with his tea and his book and the bookmark holding his place and everything is exactly as it should be. ✦ BOOKMARK DETAILS — Size: 2.05 inches wide by 6.65 inches tall — Printed on premium card stock — Laminated for durability — water resistant and long lasting — Full color watercolor illustration front with matte finish — Arrives ready to use in your current read — the one you were reading when something interrupted you and to which you absolutely intend to return ✦ PERFECT FOR — Every reader who has ever been interrupted mid-chapter and felt the specific injustice of it — People who understand that a well-told story is the most powerful tool available to any creature regardless of size — Adults who loved Arnold Lobel as children and return to him now and find he knew more than they realized — The reader in your life who would absolutely use a story to escape any situation and has probably already done so — Anyone who has ever talked their way out of something using narrative and felt completely justified about it — Children who love Mouse Soup and the adults who read it to them and love it more — Book lovers who believe that stories are survival which they are and always have been — Birthdays — specifically the birthday of the person who always has a story ready and always uses it well — Holiday gifts — the reader on your list who would rather have a bookmark than almost anything else which is the correct preference — Treating yourself — you are reading this listing right now instead of doing something else and that is a form of storytelling and you deserve this bookmark ✦ A NOTE ON THE FOUR STORIES The mouse told four stories to the weasel. Each one was complete. Each one was true in the way that stories are true which is more deeply and more usefully than facts are true. Each one held the weasel so completely in its world that the weasel forgot he was a weasel with a soup pot and became simply a listener with a story happening to him which is the best thing a story can do to a person or a weasel. The boulders who became friends when the bees left. The crickets who were missed when they were silent. The mouse in the thorn bush who found a better path. The bees who settled the argument about the honey in the most efficient and most just way available to them. Four stories. One mouse. Zero soup. A very good afternoon. ✦ A NOTE ON THE BOOKMARK IN THE BOOK The mouse was reading when the weasel found him. He put his book down on the weasel's kitchen table with the bookmark in it because he intended to come back to it. He was right to intend this. He did come back to it. He went home and picked up the book and the bookmark was still there holding his place and he continued reading and the book was very good and the tea was exactly the right temperature and the weasel's soup was not as good as it could have been. This bookmark exists because the mouse needed one. It is now available to you. It will hold your place while anything is happening. It will be there when you come back. Come back. ✦ A NOTE ON ARNOLD LOBEL Arnold Lobel gave the world Frog and Toad and Mouse Soup and Owl at Home and a library of early readers that understood children completely and trusted them entirely. He wrote books that taught children that friendship is devotion and that stories save lives and that a creature's size has nothing to do with their power and that home is the most important destination and that a good book and a cup of tea at the end of a difficult day is not a small thing but one of the great things. He was right about all of it. This bookmark says so. ✦ ALSO IN OUR SHOP This bookmark is part of our Arnold Lobel collection alongside our Frog and Toad bookmark — the two most beloved books of one of the most beloved authors in the history of children's literature, each honored with the warmth and specificity that Lobel brought to every page he ever drew. Mouse Soup pairs beautifully with our Frog and Toad bookmark for the reader who loves both the friendship and the storytelling of Arnold Lobel's world — the complete Lobel philosophy of kindness and courage and the extraordinary power of a well-told story rendered in two bookmarks that belong together on the same shelf. ✦ SHIPPING Ships within 3 to 5 business days. Arrives in a protective sleeve inside a rigid mailer so your bookmark arrives perfectly flat and ready to use. We did not use a snail for delivery. We considered it. The snail would have taken four days and while that worked out beautifully for Toad's letter we felt you should have your bookmark sooner. You have been waiting long enough. Come home. The tea is ready. ✦ ABOUT OUR SHOP Every bookmark in our shop is designed and produced professionally by us — made with care in our own studio and printed on premium materials we stand behind completely. We are a small passionate operation and we treat every order like it matters because it does. We are committed to five star service on every single order — from the moment you click to the moment your bookmark arrives at your door flat and perfect and ready to live inside your favorite book. If anything is ever less than exactly right please reach out and we will make it right immediately. We respond to every message promptly and we mean it — real people, real responses, no automated runaround. Thank you for supporting a small independent bookmark maker. It means everything to us and we do not take it for granted. We hope this bookmark finds exactly the right book and exactly the right reader. Michelle and Julie The Luna and Loom 📚