Ned Mouse Breaks Away

Toronto, ON, Canada: Groundwood Books. Nearly New Condition /Nearly New Condition. 2003. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0888994745 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Green boards with bright silver titling on spine. No ownership inscription. Illustrations by Dusan Petricic. 68 pages clean and tight. NED MOUSE has been sent to jail. His crime? Writing "The government is unfair to mice!" in his spinach. But Ned does not like jail. He does not like his tiny cell. He does not like the food. And he does not look good in stripes. "I would give my right arm to be out of here," he thinks. Thus begin his attempts to make a break for freedom. He tries digging a tunnel. He tries building an escape plane in shop class. He tries fleeing down the drain hole in the tub. Yet each time his attempts are foiled by the keeper - the big gentle guard who has the brains of a tree but who is devoted to his job, which is to keep prisoners in their cells. The years pass, and Ned very nearly gives up. Then one day he receives a letter from his long-lost friend Mort, who tempts him with stories of the beautiful sunrises at his house by the sea. Filled with new determination, Ned comes up with the most daring escape plan yet. And all he needs for his plan to succeed is the cooperation of the gullible keeper. Award-winning author Tim Wynne-Jones brings his wit and humor to bear in this gently subversive fable. Pen and wash illustrations by Dusan Petricic beautifully capture Ned's despair, hope and determination, and cleverly convey the bizarre conceit of his masterful escape plan. Tim W nne-cones is the multi-talented author of books for all audiences. His picture books about the enigmatic cat Zoom have brought him wide acclaim. He is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award - for Some of the Kinder Planets and The Maestro - and he has received dozens of awards for both his children's and adult works, including the prestigious Boston Globe Horn Book Award. His books have been translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. His most recent young adult novel, The Boy in the Burning House, won an Edgar award. DIAS'dn Petriii6 is one of Canada's most distinguished editorial cartoonists. Born in Yugoslavia and trained at the Academy for Applied Arts in Belgrade, he is also the illustrator of a number of award-winning children's books, including Tumbledown Hill by Tim Wynne-Jones and The Longitude Prize by Joan Dash. .