Earhart
The Incredible Flight of a Field Mouse Around the World
In Torben Kuhlmann’s lovely illustrated novel Earhart, a field mouse builds an airplane to fly around the world, mirroring the exploits of the famous aviatrix.
A mouse inventor who manufactures machines in her underground workshop finds an envelope with a Ugandan stamp on it. She is captivated by the thought of a faraway land where creatures like the depicted lion live. She resolves to construct a plane and see Uganda for herself. However, her fellow mice resent her ambition, and a transcontinental voyage spells peril as well as excitement.
The mouse’s feats are a conscious parallel to Amelia Earhart’s round-the-world travels, and the two share a few pages toward the book’s end, injecting make-believe into the historical record by sketching the mouse into reproduced photographs of Earhart at the peak of her career. The chapters give equal weight to words and images and maintain a rapid pace. After the field mouse sees the “Little Daredevils” act in St. Louis, its retired mouse pilot becomes a trusted advisor during preparations for her flight. Elsewhere, a junkyard raccoon archivist, in an ironic aside, makes the mouse promise that she’ll let him eat her when she returns.
The mouse den is beneath a vegetable garden, making it part agrarian idyll and part technological hub. Town and city scenes re-create vintage 1920s Americana. Two-page tableaus of the field mouse soaring above the vegetable plot and approaching New York City thrill with their aerial perspective. There are also tiny details to notice, such as a cat peering out from the window above a bookstore. Sepia tones lend a period look to the newspapers, blueprints, photographs, and letters interspersed throughout.
Earhart is a delightful adventure novel whose inventive animal heroine aims to fly around the world.
Reviewed by
Rebecca Foster
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
