There are so many wonderful words in this book! Some of them are made up I'm sure - such as those in the nonsense songs of the mice - but others are just terribly old-fashioned and have since fallen out of use, so it's fun to be introduced to them again.

This is a fairly obvious little book, and you know exactly what's going to happen once the tailor saves the mice, but it's still so charmingly done that it's a pleasure to read. Though there's a sort of tailing off that doesn't tell anything of Simpkin, the tailor's cat and repentant villain of the piece, who is by far the most interesting character. Given that the mice are providing stitching and lucre, one hopes that poor old Simpkin spends the rest of his life supping on sausages instead of rodent.