The Stoplight Mice features a boy named Sneakers and his horse, Quicksilver. This is a children’s book that provides a fun example of how to do collaborative problem solving. It is a useful skill to learn, especially when surrounded by people who don’t seem to know how to fix a problem themselves.
Sneakers and Quicksilver visit Grumpyburg, which looks like a modern-day town or city. The people there are unhappy and unwilling to work with each other. There is a traffic jam in Grumpyburg, with each driver demanding that the other driver move out of the way for them. The people of Grumpyburg didn’t understand how to take turns.
Sneakers finds two people who had the skills necessary to build a stoplight for Grumpyburg. They worked together, but didn’t quite solve the problem. A tiny mouse named Melody knew what to do to make the stoplight work properly.
The people of Grumpyburg were not listening to the mice because they were small, and considered to be unimportant. I think this is something that happens with a lot of children. Their ideas are overlooked because they are small and young, and the adults around them think they know better. The Stoplight Mice story shows that no matter a person’s age, or their size, they can still make a difference.
The colorful illustrations in The Stoplight Mice are delightful and enhance the story for children who are still learning to read. The inspiration for this story came from bedtime stories that Tom McNellis created for his daughter.
The Stoplight Mice – Tom McNellis is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites (unless you are the author of this book).