Miriam YoungResenhas

Miss Suzy is a little gray squirrel who lives happily in her oak-tree home until she is chased away by some mean red squirrels. Poor Miss Suzy is very sad. But soon she finds a beautiful dollhouse and meets a band of brave toy soldiers. How Miss Suzy and the soldiers help each other makes a gentle, old-fashioned tale that will capture the imagination of girls and boys alike. Enchanting illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner Arnold Lobel are sure to make the kind squirrel and the gallant soldiers the everlasting friends of all who turn the pages.

Miss Suzy is driven from her comfy little home in a tree by an invasion of bully squirrels. She takes refuge in a dollhouse in the attic of a nearby abandoned home and tries to make the best of things even while she years to return home. She's even welcoming to some kind visitors who appreciate her hospitality, unlike those greedy ruffians from earlier.

It's a simple and sort of odd fantasy, but it has a pleasing if obvious ending. Though I worry it could be read as a MAGA bedtime story.

Miss Suzy is a little gray squirrel who lives happily in her oak-tree home until she is chased away by some mean red squirrels. Poor Miss Suzy is very sad. But soon she finds a beautiful dollhouse and meets a band of brave toy soldiers. How Miss Suzy and the soldiers help each other makes a gentle, old-fashioned tale that will capture the imagination of girls and boys alike. Enchanting illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner Arnold Lobel are sure to make the kind squirrel and the gallant soldiers the everlasting friends of all who turn the pages.

It's wonderful when your children fall in love with a book you loved as a child.

Four witches - Hecate with her narrow face and stone-cold eyes, Murka with her long nose, Ulga with her jutting chin, and round-faced Nannette - all rode together as part of a witch mobile, hanging in a toy shop. Each witch longed for the mobile to be purchased by a particular kind of customer - Hecate wished for a sailor, Murka for a wealthy lady, Ulga for an airplane pilot, and Nannette for someone she couldn't quite define - and each watched as the seeming perfect person entered the shop. Each time however, something went wrong, and although the other witches blamed Nannette, when Halloween night came, they exacted their revenge on the evasive, would-be buyers. All except Nannette, who used her magic to visit the poor little girl who couldn't quite afford to buy the mobile. Informed that she had done it wrong, Nannette cast a spell meant to punish the shopkeeper, but the result of her enchantment was most unexpected...

Published in 1969, The Witch Mobile is quite text-heavy for a picture-book, and features quirky artwork that alternates between black and white ink drawings and full-color panels. It is the first title I have read from author Miriam Young, who appears to have written more than forty children's books, but the fourth from illustrator Victoria Chess, whose work I have encountered before in some of Verna Aardema's folkloric retellings (This for That: A Togo Tale and Princess Gorilla and a New Kind of Water: A Mpongwe Tale), as well as in W.K. Jasner's early reader, Which Is the Witch? I didn't really enjoy the artwork in the Jasner, but here I found the visuals rather interesting, and I appreciated some of the creepier elements - the toothy grins on some of the customers! - which went well with the witchy theme. The conclusion of the story was not unexpected, but I liked the way that Young got us there, and think that young readers who enjoy witchy tales will find this one very satisfying. Because of the length, I would recommend this one to older picture-book audiences, and to more advanced beginning readers as well.

Cute story, nice illustrations.

A childhood favorite, I've enjoyed sharing this story with my children.

Loved it.

Another few years on me since I last read this book with toddler Luisa, and now reading it with toddler Emmett, I find myself slightly more rankled by the bland masculine heroism of the toy soldiers and the way Miss Suzy "mothers" them (we don't need that), but I still love her quiet heart and the textures of her world, even if they don't resonate the same way with Emmett, a car lover.

Almost wonderful - but I'm a pacifist and I cannot accept soldiers as heroes in a picture-book. Swords kill, and killing is bad. It's true that red squirrels are aggressive & destructive, though, even to the point where anthropomorphizing them as a gang of hooligans is not far-fetched.

I liked this book because it had a good message of friendship that was executed in an imaginative way. This book was essentially about a squirrel named Miss Suzy who was kicked out of her home in an oak tree by ruthless red squirrels. Miss Suzy make herself a new home and takes care of some toy soldiers as well. One night the toy soldiers went to Miss Suzy’s old home and got it back for her by scaring away the red squirrels. The unusual friendship between the squirrel and the toy soldiers was inspirational. Miss Suzy did not expect any thing from the soldiers but company. She fed them and tucked the in at night. The actions of the soldiers displayed their love and gratitude for what Miss Suzy did for them.
I also liked this book because the characters were well developed. Miss Suzy was a squirrel but she portrayed all the human like qualities that a house-wife of the 60’s would most likely hold. The author wrote, “She liked to cook, she liked to clean, and she liked to sing while she worked.” She toke immense pride in her home and cherished every detail. The red squirrels were clearly the villains of the story and the reader was shown this by their destructive actions. For example when the squirrel bombarded Miss Suzy’s home the author wrote, “They broke her broom and threw out her acorn cups. Then they ate up her whole winter’s supply of nuts.” Lastly the toy soldiers were the brave heroes of the story. The soldiers were out numbered but that did not stop the. They marched to the old home in the Oak tree and said to the red squirrels. “Will you go peaceably, or must we fight?”½

gated community that doesn't allow Jews. Young girl upset by loss of friends and a witch(?)that seems to avenge the injured.

Fiction; I was expecting this book to be more informational than it actually is, it was as if the author was trying to provide some information without being too obvious.For example, it mentions how an oil truck takes oil to people's homes for heating purposes however it does not go as far as labeling the parts of the truck. It also does not use the correct name for all of the trucks but more of a descriptor that a child could easily recognize such as the "road mender truck." She did a good job of making it seem like the story was being told by a child, I think the main purpose of it is to spark interest in children about trucks not necessarily to inform them.

added this for my sister Anna, just so she could remember how much we have always enjoyed this book and Miss Suzy's acorn mugs.

[a:Miriam Young|226589|Miriam Young|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] is perhaps best known today for her children's books like [b:Miss Suzy|652386|Miss Suzy|Miriam Young|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176767372s/652386.jpg|3259972]. [b:Mother Wore Tights|8131511|Mother Wore Tights|mirian young|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1272926704s/8131511.jpg|12927434] is a different sort of tale. Young wrote about her mother's youth in San Francisco in the 1880's in [b:No Place for Mitty|8131638|No Place for Mitty|Miriam Young|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|12927600]. In [b:Mother Wore Tights|8131511|Mother Wore Tights|mirian young|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1272926704s/8131511.jpg|12927434] [a:Miriam Young|226589|Miriam Young|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] writes of her parents' vaudeville career and her life growing up in a vaudeville family. The story begins by introducing Myrtle, a seventeen year old girl who was "Frisco born and Oakland bred" who marries a vaudeville man she meets while she's on the chorus line. The edition I'm reading is the overseas edition for the Armed Forces. It is a tiny little booklet that would easily fit in a soldier's pocket. To keep the cost of production low and the books lightweight, they were printed as magazines and then cut in half to make pocket-sized books. Fairly short books, like [b:Mother Wore Tights|8131511|Mother Wore Tights|mirian young|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1272926704s/8131511.jpg|12927434], were printed on the [Reader's Digest)size presses, and the books measure a diminutive 5 1/2 by 3 7/8 inches.Longer books were printed on pulp size presses. In both sizes, the text was printed in double columns of type and the books were bound on the short rather than the long side. If you want to learn more about the The armed services editions (ASE), I recommend [book:Books in Action the Armed Services Edition|2600137].

Miss Suzy has a lovely home in a a tree. When it gets overrun by mean red squirrels she moves to a doll house and makes friends with toy soldiers who help her regain her tree.

Wonderful book! Moving story about an little boy who puts his friends' needs before his own desires, and sees the joy he is able to bring by doing things for others, rather than only himself. A book all children should have read to them.

I remember this book so well from childhood. I love how cozy it is, and how it lets you imagine ways of living that are humanly inhuman; different, with the acorn cups and twig brooms that focus a kid's attention on the materiality and craftedness of everyday items and are such a tonic after the, like . . . sheer spuriousness of Slurpee cups and plastic brooms from Wal-Mart. But still the same, and this little grey squirrel is even more of a person now that I remember the squirrels in my own attic, once upon a time, and imagine that they were chased out of their tree by some maurading reds. I love how Miss Suzy lives alone, an independent woman in a room of her own. I love how the habits of red and grey squirrels as presented are ecologically sound--it is Miss Suzy who goes to live in the house, and the reds who outcompete her. I don't, of course, agree with the demonization of the red squirrels, who are the heroes in their struggle as much as there are any "heroes" in the nonhuman world. But hell, let's just say that these particular red squirrels were douchebags, and that Miss Suzy is a real charmer.½

Miss Suzy is the first book I ever loved. She is a sincere squirrel and a hero as well. She rescues and is rescued, she shows that even if you are down and out, it's possible to find your way back home.

What Keery wants most of all for his birthday is a horse. What he gets is one dollar. But oh, what that dollar starts!

To delight his little brother, who had a rather dull Easter basket and insists the Easter bunny was merely delayed, Keery spends his dollar on ten clearance ducklings at the pet store. Meanwhile he works hard to earn money for a horse. But it's the ten fat ducks that make his fortune.

FROM PUBLISHER'S INFO:
Miss Suzy is a little gray squirrel who lives happily in her oak-tree home until she is chased away by some mean red squirrels. Poor Miss Suzy is very sad. But soon she finds a beautiful dollhouse and meets a band of brave toy soldiers.

How Miss Suzy and the soldiers help each other makes a gentle, old-fashioned tale that has captured the imaginations of girls and boys alike for forty years. Arnold Lobel's enchanting pictures are sure to make the kind squirrel and the gallant soldiers the everlasting friends of all who turn these pages.