Mikey Mite Goes to School

Susan Manningham teaches sociology at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Gilles Gauthier has penned a gentle pair of junior novels that will
touch the heart of every adult while delighting and reassuring the child
reader. These wonderfully sympathetic stories are surely intended to be
shared by adult and child. Mikey Mite is a diminutive and delightfully
difficult boy who constantly runs afoul of his inflexible teacher, Mrs.
Gesundheit. Through the eyes of the narrator, Mikey’s only true
friend, we begin to see what Mrs. Gesundheit cannot—that Mikey’s
outrageous behavior is a cry for help. Mikey has trouble with school
work, his authoritarian father, and the school bullies as well as his
teachers. His only friend, besides the girl telling the tale, is Attila,
the school guinea pig. But Mikey’s creative solution to Attila’s
voracious appetite is to purchase vegetables “on credit,” creating
yet more trouble for this school scapegoat. At this point, one might
think that things can’t get any worse, but they do.

In Mooch Gets Jealous, we meet Carl, another school underdog, who is
befriended by Maggie, a fortuitously tall, red-haired virago who is a
newcomer to his school. Carl is smitten and his aging German shepherd,
Mooch, comes down with a debilitating case of jealousy. As this story
unfolds, it deals with love, loss, and aging in a gentle and sensitive
manner.

Translated by Sarah Cummins and humorously illustrated by Pierre-André
Derome, these novels are a treasure. They are child-size editions with
bold, easy-to-read type and an accessible format. Highly recommended.