A review by ablotial
Time Stops For No Mouse by Michael Hoeye
5.0
This book was awesome! I think it's one my mom gave me ages ago and I assumed would be a silly kids book, but boy was I wrong about that.
I picked it up because a challenge for one of my groups here said I needed to read a book featuring a mouse or a rat, since it is the Year of the Rat for the Chinese Calendar. And all the characters in this book are rodents of some type, with the main character being a mouse named Hermux Tantamoq. (P.S. The names in this book are my absolute favorite, they are very unique and adorable: Mirrin Stentrill, Ortolina Perriflot, Linka Perflinger, Tucka Mertslin, Pup Schoonagliffen, Nurella Pinch...) Although they are all rodents, I have to admit that didn;t seem especially important to this book. I'm pretty sure they could have all been human and it wouldn't have changed the story at all, minus a few comments about fur combs and whiskers curling.
Hermux meets a mysterious woman who brings him a totally destroyed watch to fix immediately. She'd prefer it to be done today (it's a matter of life or death!) but settles for picking it up at noon tomorrow. Hermux fancies himself in love with her after that brief encounter (ok so ugh but whatever) and is terribly disappointed when, after working overtime and delaying other customers' work to complete hers on time, she neglects to pick it up. He senses something is wrong and decides to investigate, throwing himself into a major conspiracy. The mystery was fun, the characters were cute. It was well written, and used some formatting to show newspaper articles and handwritten notes. I immediately purchased the second book to read -- it's exactly the kind of book I hope my kids love when they're in middle school.
I picked it up because a challenge for one of my groups here said I needed to read a book featuring a mouse or a rat, since it is the Year of the Rat for the Chinese Calendar. And all the characters in this book are rodents of some type, with the main character being a mouse named Hermux Tantamoq. (P.S. The names in this book are my absolute favorite, they are very unique and adorable: Mirrin Stentrill, Ortolina Perriflot, Linka Perflinger, Tucka Mertslin, Pup Schoonagliffen, Nurella Pinch...) Although they are all rodents, I have to admit that didn;t seem especially important to this book. I'm pretty sure they could have all been human and it wouldn't have changed the story at all, minus a few comments about fur combs and whiskers curling.
Hermux meets a mysterious woman who brings him a totally destroyed watch to fix immediately. She'd prefer it to be done today (it's a matter of life or death!) but settles for picking it up at noon tomorrow. Hermux fancies himself in love with her after that brief encounter (ok so ugh but whatever) and is terribly disappointed when, after working overtime and delaying other customers' work to complete hers on time, she neglects to pick it up. He senses something is wrong and decides to investigate, throwing himself into a major conspiracy. The mystery was fun, the characters were cute. It was well written, and used some formatting to show newspaper articles and handwritten notes. I immediately purchased the second book to read -- it's exactly the kind of book I hope my kids love when they're in middle school.