The Mouse and His Child was published by Harper & Row in 1967, and it occupies a unique position in English literature: a book marketed for children that is simultaneously a philosophical novel about existential freedom, a political allegory about exploitation, and an emotional investigation of what it means to have no home and to seek one.
The mouse and his child are a wind-up toy: a father mouse holding a child mouse by the hands, designed to dance in circles when wound. They have no autonomy — they can only move when someone winds them, and they can only perform the dance they were manufactured to perform. Discarded from a toy shop, they end up in a dump ruled by Manny Rat — a predator who exploits broken toys as slave labor.
Their quest is for “self-winding” — the ability to move without external agency, to choose their own direction, to be autonomous rather than mechanical. This quest takes them through a world populated by characters of Dickensian vividness and philosophical depth: a frog who has read too much philosophy and can no longer act, a theatrical troupe of shrews performing The Last Visible Dog (a play within the novel that mirrors the novel’s own themes), and Manny Rat himself (whose tyranny is sustained by others’ helplessness).
Hoban’s achievement is to use the most artificial possible characters (clockwork toys) to explore the most fundamental human questions: what does it mean to be free? Can a creature designed for one purpose choose another? Is home a place or a state of being?
Collecting The Mouse and His Child
First edition (Harper & Row, New York, 1967): Cloth binding, dust jacket, illustrated by Lillian Hoban.
Market values:
- First US edition in dust jacket: $80–$250
- UK first (Faber, 1969): $30–$80
- Signed copies: $100–$300