A detail from the cover of Emily's House
First published in 1990, this picture book has metamorphosed into a board book with infinite charm for a new generation of small fry. Its protagonist - a perhaps too weighty term for this one - is the Emily of the title, a doll-like little girl who "lived in a little brick house/ With a creaky old door and a little brown mouse."
Rhyming couplets advance the tale that concerns Emily's distress about "too much noise in here!" The noise of the old door that creaks and the little brown mouse that squeaks provokes a tear or two from our heroine, and an, "Oh what to do?" The little brown mouse offers a solution: "Get us a pussycat too."
When the pussycat's meows only add to the cacophony, little brown mouse suggests that a puppy dog would help … and on it goes, as sheep, billy goat, big brown cow and turtledove enter the fray, adding their signature noises and providing book's audience ample opportunity to add their own versions thereof.
Joanne Fitzgerald's watercolour illustrations for this cumulative tale are all that you might wish for: delicate enough to render a fairy-tale cast to the pastoral landscape and little brown "houseness," and particular enough in their detail, particularly of Emily's domestic arrangements, to invite hours of delighted inspection.