Entertainment
Some Stuart Little Fans Are Just Learning the Titular Character Isn’t Actually a Mouse, 80 Years After E.B. White’s Tale Was First Published
NEED TO KNOW
- Stuart Little fans have recently discovered that in the novel, he is a boy-like mouse, not a mouse
- Fans of the film trilogy were surprised by the revelation, as that take on the story has Stuart adopted as a mouse
- The discussion about this detail dates back to when E.B. White first prepared to publish Stuart Little in the mid 1940s
Stuart Little isn’t who you think he is.
Fans of the film series, which comprised of 1999’s Stuart Little, 2002’s Stuart Little 2 and 2006’s Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, remember following the tales of a little white mouse who fit right in with the rest of the Little family.
What many don’t remember is that Stuart Little isn’t actually a mouse. The films are inspired by the 1945 children’s book, written by Elwyn Brooks (E.B.) White. While in the films, Stuart is adopted, that’s not the case in the original tale.
In his book, White writes, “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.”
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The opening passage describes Stuart as looking just like a mouse. “He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse.”
Film critic Chris Evangelista recently tweeted about the realization, starting a dialogue from both those who were aware of this and those who were hearing it from him first.
“I’ve just now learned that in the STUART LITTLE book, Stuart is not actually a mouse but a human boy who looks like a mouse, and I don’t know how to process this,” he wrote.
White had written several tales about the adventures of Stuart Little for his 18 nieces and nephews before compiling them into a book. He first got the idea for the character while working at The New Yorker in 1926.
According to White, per The New Yorker, he fell asleep on a train and “dreamed of a small character who had the features of a mouse, was nicely dressed, courageous, and questing.”
When he wrote the book, there was a mixed reception in the publishing world, with some saying the book would never be embraced by libraries or schools because there wasn’t a clear enough delineation between make-believe and reality.
In original editions of the book, Stuart is “born,” rather than having “arrived,” but that feedback indicated the idea seemed a step too far. White’s colleague at The New Yorker, co-founder Harold Ross, suggested Stuart should be adopted instead.
While libraries formally held the line and didn’t stock the book for a time, librarians and teachers who knew of the circumstances would find ways to get it into young readers’ hands.
The movie took liberties, but White’s fight for Stuart to be a mouse-like boy is an important part of his history, even if some are bewildered by it.
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