The Tale of Two Bad Mice

Two mice — Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca — find a doll's house with the door wide open and the dolls' breakfast laid out on the table. The food turns out to be made of plaster. Tom Thumb's disappointment ends in a small but thorough rampage. The dolls watch, helpless.

Beatrix wrote it during a wet week's holiday at Hastings in late November 1903 — one of three stories scribbled in a single exercise book. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca were real mice, caught in the kitchen at her cousin's home in Gloucestershire. Beatrix rescued them from the cook, brought them back to London, and tamed them. Norman Warne, her editor, built her a glass-fronted cage so she could draw them through the front.

The doll's house in the book was the one Norman Warne had made for his small niece Winifred. The book is dedicated to her — "For the little girl who had the doll's house" — and it was during this book that Beatrix and Norman first worked closely together. They became engaged the following summer.

The cover shown is the original edition. Amazon carries the copies in print today.

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