Tales of Mr. Snuggywhiskers: The Autumn Tales
By: C F Crawford / Narrated By: L H Crawford
Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
Tho’ I’d deeeeearly love to trash this, I’m NOT—I’ll just say it’s charming… for younger listeners… MUCH younger listeners… reeeeally MUCH younger listeners…
I can be uncouth; I can be abrasive. I can even be mean-spirited and petty.
One thing I do NOT do, however, is trash kids. (Neither do I kick puppies; I’m no Puppy-Kicker… or Kid-Trasher!).
And that’s pretty much what we have here. Tales of Mr. Snuggywhiskers is a family affair. Mom created stories just for her children, and one has done its illustrations (And I was rather disappointed that this wasn’t one of those rare Kids audiobooks that changes images as the text goes along!), and one has done the honors with the narration. So, see, I SHAN’T be doing any trashing and will couch my review taking it all within such context.
Hallie and Cory, two very young girls, are mysteriously shrunk into itty bitty versions of themselves (Via, I believe, a magic branch here, and a couple of magic branches there when they travel to Grandma’s house), and they meet Mr. Snuggywhiskers. He’s a well-meaning, well-spoken mouse, husband to his wife, father to his ten children, who lives in the tree in the girls’ backyard. From the start, they, children and mouse, get along like a house on fire.
As this is a collection of Autumn Tales, there’s no overarching plot, and (Unfortunately… Wait! Am I trashing it by saying “unfortunately”?!?) each Tale is lacking plot and purpose also. So, see? I’d deeeeearly love to trash it. But I said I’d take it within the context of this being a family effort, and maybe for a younger audience than it says it’s shooting for.
Let’s go with that, shall we, and let’s see how this collection works best.
If you’re a parent, and you’re tucking your kids in at night, what better way to enchant them than by telling them stories about themselves doing all sorts of ordinary things while they’re magically itty bitty? In one of the tales, there’s some house cleaning the girls help the Snuggywhiskers family do, along with a list of cleaning supplies, and chores done, fatigue being felt. This COULD sound like a boring tale, but what child does NOT feel bored with household chores they might have to do; and what better way to make all that stuff tolerable than by suggesting they execute duties as bite-sized minis of themselves, alongside mouse-friends?
This is a series of the mundane, and it’s made, quite possibly, magical. Sure, there are fun things like Halloween costumes, and some loving things like traveling by airplane all the way to see Grandma… but how much neater is it all when you have a mouse in your pocket, or a mouse stowing away in your luggage? Thanksgiving is a special time, but try spending it with a mouse, receiving a portion of a single green bean that was sliced with the file end as snapped off a set of nail clippers. And how much more magical can a tree be than by traveling up to a squirrel’s home for a visit, just you and your sister, in a cup attached to a string and a little pulley?
I will NOT get into an entire spiel about Mr. Snuggywhiskers taking off and leaving his (very large) family so that he can jaunt off to school to hang out on Halloween. And I won’t get into Mr. Snuggywhiskers being placed in a school desk and almost immediately turning it into a Man-Cave, a place for getting the heck away from his responsibilities so that he can Man-Out and chill sans family. I just won’t do that, awright?! Instead, I’ll go for the narration done by Hallie (L H Crawford?) herself.
Awesome! That girl totally has a future in audiobook narration. I generally dislike child narrations; okay okay, I’ll be honest: I’ve never heeeeeard a child narrate! but I think I woooould dislike them given that I loathe precocious children (Haley Joel Osment at the Oscars had me rolling my eyes and barfing into my popcorn). So I was oh so pleasantly surprised to hear just the right amount of drama and enthusiasm L H put into the stories, neither too cloying, and no overacting done either. She’s gotta work on her male voices, but that’s pretty much a tricky thing for every voice actor: Doing the opposite gender. Other than that, I think she’s really quite gifted, and I enjoyed her performance greatly.
Sooooo, slow going if you’re gonna be a twitchy stickler, but if you hearken back to days of your youth, when things could be dull but could go from boring to magical with just the right image? And if you’ve got little ones and you wanna inspire them to see enchantment in a tree, a novel act in swishing a broom, wanna make that plane ride just a trifle less irritating, do introduce them to Mr. Snuggywhiskers and his world. The book ends on a kinda cliffhanger which had me scrolling for the next audiobook but, alas, this is the only one in the series available.
But I dunno. A charming tale, redolent with the changing of colors, the entry of cooler days, longer nights. Kinda makes me wanna see what-all they get up to during the Winter, makes me wanna find out as Fall meanders into the next Season.
Dunno (again!). Might even have to just go ahead and read it on my kindle… >Gasp< Read? Meeee?!?
Yup, this listener considering Reading…
Whoulda thunk it?!?
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