The Horn Book Guide

RELIGION

Tompert, Ann

The Pied Piper of Peru

32 pp. | Boyds | March, 2002 | Trade ISBN 1-56397-949-7 $$15.95

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Kestutis Kasparavicius. Tompert retells a legend about St. Martin de Porres, a Dominican brother in Lima, Peru. Martin, ordered to rid the monastery of mice, leads the animals to the safety of the barn where he feeds them daily. Told from the point of view of one mouse, the story is engaging, but the cute, clothed mice in the illustrations seem at odds with the otherwise realistic, detailed paintings depicting seventeenth-century monastic life.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth