Times Stops for No Mouse (The Hermux Tantamoq Adventures #1) by Michael Hoeye (2003)
Middle Grade Fiction | Crime & Mystery
Blurb:
“Hermux Tantamoq is an ordinary, hard-working mouse, living in an ordinary metropolis. But when adventuress and aviatrix Linka Perlfinger walks into his watchmaker’s shop, his life becomes anything but ordinary.”
–Goodreads
pooled ink Review:
This book is fabulous. I read it as a kid and I read it more than once. It still remains a proud member of my bookshelf where I’ve no doubt I will pluck it down to read again when my silly adult life finds some spare time.
D’you know that phrase about how some men are born great and others are called unto greatness? Well that’s Hermux Tantamoq. He’s just an ordinary, hard-working clockmaker mouse who stumbles into a life where adventure whisks him away and he must make a choice whether to embrace it or run away. Of course Hermux embraces it! His knees quake a bit, his whiskers twitch, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing or getting into, but Hermux is an honorable, good-hearted mouse and he takes up the quest regardless.
I know, I know, a mouse? A book about mice? Well quit being ridiculous because this book is splendid. It’s an adventurous, thrilling mission Hermux bounds upon and it had me from page one! Sure I was in third grade when I first read this book (once again thank you beloved Scholastic Book Fair at my school) but a good story is a good story. Some stories are restricted into age or genre categories but other stories go beyond such things. The Harry Potter series was for children as was The Chronicles of Narnia but did that stop people of all ages from reading and enjoying the adventures they told? Of course not! Sometimes a good story is just that, a good story and it can breathe unbound by such restrictions.
A fun tale of a dear old mouse thrown into a life of adventure! Whether read on one’s own or read as a bedtime story I definitely recommend it to kids of all ages so long as they have an open mind and a soaring imagination.
Cheers.
Purchase here: Time Stops for No Mouse
Recommendation for similar books: Redwall (series) by Brian Jacques
Meet Michael Hoeye!
Michael Hoeye has worked as a farmer, fashion photographer, stagehand and high-school teacher. He and his wife, Martha, live in a stone cottage in Oregon with their cat, Lionel. They enjoy the company of nine big oak trees, six bigger fir trees, three fat squirrels, a noisy family of woodpeckers and a travelling circus of nuthatches, blue jays, crows, finches and robins.
-Goodreads
pooled ink 