The Mole Sisters and the Piece of Moss

January 1, 2001
Schwartz (Rose & Dorothy) strikes just the right note of preschool humor with the resourceful and relentlessly optimistic mole sisters--who never make a mountain out of a molehill. Instead, they carry a piece of moss who fears it's "dull" to the "top of the world" to show it a good time. And, in the second title, they convert their mole hole into a swimming pool to make the best of a rain storm. Schwartz's colored pencil artwork, framed by a wide margin of white on the small square pages, sets the siblings against a modest landscape of rounded hills punctuated by tufts of grass. The moles' faces, with dot eyes and pointy snouts, are identically blank, but the similarity of their chubby forms, and their mirrored poses as they bounce on the moss ("BOINGA-BOINGA"), or roll home down a hillside ("Ready?... Set?... Go!") contributes to the books' humor. The moles' giddy cheer carries readers along in the quirky plots. This light, playful pair of books provides sunny company. Ages 2-4.