lection

orris and timble: the beginning

17 august 2024

I resolved to review more new children's books here, and ten months later, I'm following up with Kate DiCamillo's Orris and Timble: The beginning.

It's a spare picture book with the number 1 on the spine, promising that you can build a whole collection of Orris and Timbles in the years to come. Orris is a rat, and Timble is an owl. What do owls eat? I asked the three-year old I was reading to. Rats. What do you eat? I asked. Fruit. But that's a different story.

Orris is safe from predators in his hideaway behind his mouse-hole, with his prized possessions: a marble, a sardine can, and such. Right outside the mouse-hole, there's a mouse-trap, but Orris is unimpressed. Only when Timble gets caught in the mouse-trap is Orris confronted with a problem; and so the plot begins.

"Do one good and noble deed and pay for it the rest of your life," Orris remarks philosophically (62) … can there be 62 pages in this book? In fact there are 76, but they are light on text, most of them being taken up with Carmen Mok's gentle, subdued illustrations.

A three-year-old's review of Orris and Timble: The beginning would probably note that there's an embedded story which won't make sense till you're four or five. Orris tells Timble a fable about a mouse and a lion that offers strong parallels to their rat/owl dynamic. But when you're three, what are the mouse and lion suddenly doing in the middle of the rat-and-owl story?

DiCamillo, Kate. Orris and Timble: The beginning. Illustrated by Carmen Mok. Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2024.

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